{"id":88232,"date":"2013-10-31T17:02:22","date_gmt":"2013-10-31T16:02:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/catastrophic-food-stamp-cuts-just-the-beginning\/"},"modified":"2013-10-31T20:32:46","modified_gmt":"2013-10-31T19:32:46","slug":"catastrophic-food-stamp-cuts-just-the-beginning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/catastrophic-food-stamp-cuts-just-the-beginning\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Catastrophic&#8217; Food Stamp Cuts Just the Beginning"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>The massive blow to the program means that the roughly 47 million people with food stamp assistance\u2013that&#8217;s one in every seven Americans, 49 percent of whom are children\u2013will have their monthly assistance gouged.<\/p>\n<p>As\u00a0<em>Colorlines<\/em>\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/colorlines.com\/archives\/2013\/10\/automatic_cuts_to_food_stamps_coming_this_week.html\">reports<\/a>, &#8220;The total cuts will amount to about a five percent reduction for families who already struggle to make ends meet, and some states already began making cuts.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Instead of receiving an average of a buck-fifty for a meal, individuals in need of food assistance will get about $1.40,&#8221;\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.thenation.com\/blog\/176857\/week-poverty-no-time-wait-movement#\">explains<\/a>\u00a0Greg Kaufmann, poverty correspondent for\u00a0<em>The Nation<\/em>. &#8220;For families of three, the cut means they will receive $29 less in food stamps every month.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Nov. 1 benefit cuts &#8220;will be close to catastrophic for many people,&#8221;\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/8301-505145_162-57609936\/millions-on-food-stamps-facing-benefits-cuts\/\">said<\/a>\u00a0Ross Fraser, spokesman for\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/feedingamerica.org\/\">Feeding America<\/a>. According to the group&#8217;s recent analysis, the SNAP cuts<a href=\"http:\/\/feedingamerica.org\/press-room\/press-releases\/new-analysis-shows-local-effect-five-billion-dollar-cuts-to-food-stamps.aspx\">will result in a loss of roughly 2 billion meals<\/a>\u00a0for poor families over the course of 2014.<\/p>\n<p>A lack of support for the SNAP program in Congress was obvious this week as\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/headline\/2013\/10\/30\">lawmakers resumed talks on Wednesday\u00a0<\/a>over a Farm Bill that will inevitably include even deeper cuts to the program. The House has already passed a bill that would cut food stamps by $39 billion over the next 10 years, and the Senate\u2019s farm bill is slated to cut program by $4.5 billion in the same time period.<\/p>\n<p>Either way, families in need who are already losing big this week are set to lose more.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;People are living at the margins,&#8221;\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/2013\/10\/30\/us-usa-nutrition-food-stamps-idUSBRE99T0ZI20131030\">said<\/a>\u00a0Ellen Vollinger, legal director and SNAP advocate at the Food Research and Action Center. &#8220;It&#8217;s not an abstract metric for people. It&#8217;s actual dollars to keep food in the refrigerator.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Source: <a title=\"'Catastrophic' Food Stamp Cuts Just the Beginning\" href=\"http:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/headline\/2013\/10\/31-4\" target=\"_blank\">Common Dreams<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The massive blow to the program means that the roughly 47 million people with food stamp assistance\u2013that&#8217;s one in every seven Americans, 49 percent of whom are children\u2013will have their monthly assistance gouged. As\u00a0Colorlines\u00a0reports, &#8220;The total cuts will amount to about a five percent reduction for families who already struggle to make ends meet, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1213,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-88232","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1213"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88232\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}