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Food Stamps

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A food stamp proposal revealed by Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, has many people questioning the future of the relationship held between the food stamp program and the unemployed. Cantor wants to cut $4 billion dollars a year from the food stamp program by removing up to 4 million people from the program itself. His idea for removing these individuals from the program is found in the amount of unemployed individuals that are also food stamp benefit recipients. Anyone who is not raising children and is not currently employed will be limited to three months of food stamps every three years.

The requirement has been a suggestion since 1996, but it was waived by the majority of the states during and after the recession. This is mainly due to the fact that high unemployment rates were causing problems throughout the country. However, Cantor is seeking to eliminate those waivers. Regardless of how much people may be seeking for employment or working hard to make ends meet — or even how high unemployment may be in their state — under Cantor’s plan, there would be hardly any help for them from the food stamp program. The plan would ruin benefits for many of the poorest people throughout the country according to information provided by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

The average annual income for someone within that demographic is $2500. Many people are searching for work on an active basis but they cannot find any employment. Although unemployment rates may have been reduced during the past two years, it is still high enough to cause an issue for many individuals and make it significantly difficult for them to be able to survive without the help of some type of government aid. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “As a result of the proposed cuts, many of these individuals would fall deeper into destitution. Some would likely experience hunger as well as homelessness; money spent on food isn’t available to pay the rent, and with income this low, it can be very difficult to do both.”

The 1996 proposal to take away food stamps from the unemployed had assumed that most states would be able to offer workfare programs in exchange for the benefits — an idea that would have been suitable and worked well during those times. However, Washington didn’t provide enough funding to allow for states to be able to create those types of programs. There are only five states that have offered workfare or job training programs within the previous year.

Ultimately, although there are a lot of people who are concerned about the proposal from Cantor — there are an equal amount of people who believe that the proposal will fail due to the high amount of criticism that it has already received. Since there has already been a negative response to the proposal, it may be very difficult for it to be able to pass in the greater scheme of the situation.

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