[Cin]

Originally Posted by Miss Tick

This April Fools’ Day, Congress will play a cruel trick on the country’s most destitute people: It will make their food disappear. They will lose access to food stamps—not because they’re no longer in need of assistance, but because, in a way, they need it too much.

A twisted legislative quirk embedded in the Clinton-era welfare reform law is timed to go into effect after March 31 in several states, blowing a gaping hole in the already threadbare social safety net.

The cuts purport to impose fiscal discipline on poor people who are “able-bodied adults without dependents” (ABAWD)—meaning adults without young children. The rule sets a three-month limit on food stamps for across a three-year period “when they aren’t employed or in a work or training program for at least 20 hours a week.”

The formula, which suggests a lack of “work ethic,” does not account for how long you’ve been searching for a job, or local social conditions. The main defining characteristic of the “able-bodied” is apparently that they’re breathing—and hungry. “These are not people who are sitting on their sofas eating bonbons,” says Margarette Purvis, head of Food Bank for New York City. “Our system does not have the adequate resources for all of these ‘able bodies’ to do exactly what the government is supposedly saying what they want them to do. The systems are not there. Plain and simple.”

The cuts are one component of the Clinton administration’s infamous 1996 welfare reforms, which imposed harsh limits on benefits through bureaucratic “sanctions” and onerous work requirements, which exacerbated extreme poverty and pushed many out of the welfare system altogether.

...those private charities that conservatives praise as a surrogate for public assistance for the hungry are themselves resource-starved.

According to Food Bank surveys, in the city’s shadow sector of food aid, roughly half of the food pantry network is running on empty: driven by volunteer labor alone, or struggling with dwindling stocks and budget deficits.

“If the average soup kitchen or food pantry in this city was a person, they too would be low income,” Purvis says. “And that’s where we’re telling these people, who have nothing, to go.”

So on April 1, an unknown number of able bodies will be told the government has no relief left for them. Then, perhaps, their bodies will line up at their local church pantry, only to find empty shelves. That’s what they get for being too able, yet too poor, while living amid too much wealth.

http://www.thenation.com/article/con...le-in-america/

Originally Posted by Kätzchen

Well, tomorrow is April 1st. States nation wide have been fairly quiet about the major shift in how the SNAP program will be administered from here on out, unless there's an massive change in social policy affecting hunger and poverty for millions of Americans.

More on this quiet little development in the world of the unemployed. So you can't find a job? Well no food for you. See if that doesn't motivate you.

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/04/food...-are-strapped/

New restrictions in the federally funded food stamp program have begun affecting hundreds of thousands of needy families throughout America, as revived rules designed to incentivize people looking for work result in the loss of benefits for 500,000 to 1 million people in 21 states. The Department of Agriculture program, known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, implemented a rule Jan. 1 that reinstates a three-month time limit for those receiving benefits who don’t have children or a disability and haven’t found a minimum 20-hour-a-week job, a requirement that was previously suspended thanks to recession-induced unemployment levels.

For many Americans, the three-month deadline came April 1.

“We can only serve people so much food,” says Travis Niemann, program manager at the Portland pantry. “Right now it’s SNAP changes, before that it was the housing crisis.”

Food banks across the country are expecting an uptick in demand, as clients lose their benefits. The timing is particularly bad in states such as Florida, where the tourist season and the temporary jobs associated it with it draw to a close.

“Shortly, we’ll have kids out of school, and families who rely on school lunch are going to be facing that pinch as well,” Richard LeBer, president and CEO of the Harry Chapin Food Bank of Southwest Florida, tells Newsweek. And there’s no way to keep up with the hole the SNAP cutbacks will leave. “If you added up all the food banks in the country and put all their food together, it’s not efficient to meet the need,” LeBer says. “The SNAP program dwarfs the combined capacity of the food bank network. We’re doing our best to be a stopgap.”

In states such as Oregon, some counties are exempt from the rules thanks to high unemployment. Only two of the state’s 36 counties have a low enough unemployment rate to be affected by the changes. But in others, like in Missouri, lawmakers passed a bill that prevents its counties from seeking the waiver. The state legislature overrode a governor’s veto last year to enact Senate Bill 24, which “tied our own hands,” Jeannette Mott Oxford, executive director of Empower Missouri tells Newsweek. “There’s a belief here that somehow punishment works,” Oxford said, that by punishing families receiving benefits, they’ll be more inspired to find a job. “Hunger just doesn’t achieve anything good. Our food pantries are already stressed. Adding this on top of it will be a real challenge.”

The SNAP changes won’t help anyone, Rebecca Vallas, managing director of the Poverty to Prosperity Program at the Center for American Progress, tells Newsweek .

“It’s not just a cruel policy, it’s a stupid policy,” she said.

“It’s premised on the idea that somehow making jobless people hungrier is going to help them find work faster. What it’s really going to do is push hundreds of thousands, maybe millions looking for work into deeper hardship, and for no good reason.”