Many people in the state of Florida receive food stamps a government benefit given to those who need help with food supply. SNAP benefits (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) help provide a food source to over 45 million Americans in the United States that is over 14% of the population. (USDA "Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)") Although when food stamps first came into the picture as an available benefit only the ones who truly needed it were receiving them it now seems that almost anybody who does not need the benefits receives the most. We often see people in gas stations or grocery stores buying food that has no nutritional value to it and then at the register pulling out a food stamp card to make the purchase, this …show more content…
It was denied but personally I agree with this bill and think it should have been passed, because these kinds of food do not have any value and are not necessities for a person to have. If the government is providing you with ways to feed yourself and your family then buy the quality food, it lasts longer and helps make people stay healthy. People can live without soda, and if they get upset with the bill because they can only by healthy food and drink such as juices and vegetables then they need to come up with the money to buy the extra foods that are unneeded.
To qualify for SNAP benefits the base how much you will get or if you can even get any by two test, a resource test looking at your assets, retirement or disability and they also test by income, there is gross monthly income and net monthly income for example a household size of four has to be bringing no more than $2,584 in order for them to qualify for some benefits. After looking at monthly income they look at if you own a car or what bills you may have to pay. (Delaney "Americans Feel Strongly About How Poor People Should Spend Their Food
With more and more people becoming unemployed and applying for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), it is imperative that we understand the benefits as well as problems this causes. Even while researching this topic and talking to some of my family and friends about it, it surprised me the amount of those who do not understand food stamps. Coming from the SNAP website, “Food stamps offer nutritional assistance to millions of eligible low-income individuals and families and provides economic benefits to communities” (United States). This program helps millions of people per year and gives upwards of $75 billion and rising. With the prices of food increasing due to inflation, beneficiaries are receiving around $400 at most per month. Using the Electronic benefit transfer systems (EBT), beneficiaries can buy goods from a grocery store using a credit-card like transaction, which takes the money off of their card. The benefits are received monthly on a specific date and vary in amounts from person to person. One family may receive $300 per month because they have three kids and need the extra money, while another may receive $100 or less depending on financial status. The application process includes completing and filing an application form, being interviewed, and verifying facts crucial to determining eligibility. In the past, these applications did not require a drug screening to get benefits, but more and more states are adopting this. There are many drawbacks to SNAP as well such as taking money from working people’s paychecks every week and people abusing the system. Talking about a very opinionated subject, we must remove bias and answer whether or not the Food Stamp system should be limited.
People should be able to purchase junk food with food stamps. Others might assume that they have no money so why waste it on junk food? Food stamps help numerous people if they struggle with food at home, or don’t earn enough salary. Moreover, why waste it on junk food?
Many families and people have become too dependent on food stamps. “Critics of food stamps and government spending, however, argue that too many families have become dependent on government aid.”(NoteCard #1) But if they did not have this program people would go hungry. “11.9 million people went hungry in the United States”... “that included nearly 700,000 children, up more than 50% from the year before.”(NoteCard #2, Point 2) The program does good and helps people but it also spends a lot of money to get people food stamps. “..food-stamp recipients has soared to 44 million from 26 million in 2007, and the costa have more than doubled to $77 billion from $33 billion.”(NoteCard #5) But in the end, is it worth it? People need the assistance. It does help people from going hungry and keeps them at least with a little food in their stomach to that keeps them from starving. A lot of people who could not get jobs, were eligible for the program because they did not have a source of income. “Critics of food stamps and government spending, however, argue that too many families have become dependent on government aid.”(NoteCard #1) Since not everyone could get work, the government changed the requirements and it went for the better and for the
The federal Food Stamp Program is an assisted nutrition program that helps millions of eligible, low-income individuals and families (United States Department of Agriculture). This program gives its recipients extra money each month to try to help them have better food security. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is also the largest program in the federal safety net (United States Department of Agriculture). In Ohio’s Appalachian counties, there are 515,300 recipients which is 25.4% of the population (Job and Family Services). The Supplemental Nutrition Program is a good program except for one problem that can be fixed relatively fast and one problem that it will take a little time to solve. The problem that can be fixed right away is that the Supplemental Nutrition Program can be abused by the recipients buying junk food instead of healthy food. The problem that will take some time to fix is that some recipients make unhealthy food choices because they do not have access to a local supermarket. In order to fix these two problems the Food Stamp Program needs to better regulate what can be bought with the Food Stamp card and items in convenient stores need to be better stocked in order to keep accepting Food Stamp cards.
In today’s America, there are many people who would either be disgusted at the very mention of Welfare or be highly grateful for its existence. I believe that in order for welfare to be more effective in America, there must be reform. From the time of its inceptions in 1935, welfare has lent a helping hand to many in crisis (Constitution Rights Foundation). However, at present many programs within the system are being abused and the people who are in real need are being cheated out of assistance. The year after the creation of welfare unemployment was just about twenty percent (Unemployment Statistics). The need for basic resources to survive was unparallel. Today, many people face the same needs as many did during the 30s. Some issues with
This SNAP program originates from the latter half of the nineteen-thirties around the Great Depression. One of the worst problems from this era in our history was feeding everyone. SAMP was first introduced in New York in 1939 and they actually used orange and blue stamps, thus creating the term “Food Stamps.” John F. Kennedy helped to fuel the second stage of the process through his campaign. There was pilot program between 1961-1964 filled with studies, reports and legislative proposals”(FNS). “The Federal Food Stamp Act of 1964 is the most significant food plan in the united states” this act started it all. “It provides food stamps for needy individuals that can be exchanged like money in authorized stores” (Cornell). The same year the act was passed “there were 380,000 people in twenty two different states.”
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, is a Federal food assistance program that can be traced to 1933. Since then SNAP has helped millions of Americans, who live below the poverty line, to purchase food and has been a safety net for Americans who have experienced hard times due to economic downturns. SNAP is an amazing federal program that without it, millions of Americans would be starving and economic activity would be down.
As of 2012, roughly thirty five percent of the population in the United States was living with some sort of government assistance. The Welfare Reform Act was passed into law in 1996. Many of the country’s leaders promised to end welfare with this act. (“Welfare Reform”) This act ended the legal entitlement to welfare benefits. The bill also created time limits and work requirements for participation in the program. Welfare in the United States should be reformed because reform decreases poverty, increases independence in the country’s citizens, and increases the quality of life for former welfare recipients.
Poverty is regarded as the major cause of food insecurity. A household food security depends on access to food. America has access to good healthy food. However, a family too poor to buy them do not enjoy food security. Rosenbaum and Neuberger (2005) report that each year the number of people using government food assistance programs grows. “Food stamps are targeted to those with the greatest need for help in purchasing food… [and] helps to lessen the extent and severity of poverty (Rosenbaum and Neuberger 2005)”.
Food insecurity can be “broadly defined as having limited access to adequate food” (Nguyen, Shuval, Bertmann, & Yaroch, 2015). While one might think that low income individuals who do not know where their next meal is coming from would be thin or underweight, many of those facing food insecurity instead struggle with obesity. This paradox may be a result of the very programs implemented to combat food insecurity in low income families. SNAP stands for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, a federal assistance program that gives money to households for food based on income and need. According to a study done by the USDA, “SNAP participants were more likely than income-eligible and higher income nonparticipants to be obese,” with SNAP participants being 40 percent more likely to be obese (2015). The problem is that even though SNAP provides resources to food insecure individuals, the food being provided is not nutritious and is thus contributing to the high rates of obesity in SNAP participants. Healthcare costs and mortality increase as more individuals become obese. Preventing these problems from happening by implementing nutrition education will increase SNAP participants’ health overall and bring down their healthcare costs.
Today SNAP is the new name of the federal Food Stamp Program. “SNAP stands for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The name was changed to SNAP to meet the needs of clients, which includes a focus on nutrition and an increase in the amount of benefit received” ("supplemental nutrition,"2011). Another detail about SNAP is its ability to respond to changing needs caused by economic cycles or natural emergencies on the local, state and national levels. It is second to unemployment insurance in its responsiveness to economic changes. SNAP is very helpful to low-income families’ monthly resources, increasing the chance families is able to meet basic needs.
Food stamp organizations help a variety of people from the disabled, single mothers, children and to those who cannot find—or are unable to—work. There are many out there who for some reason are unable to obtain necessary food, and without these programs, these people wouldn’t be able to survive in the money hungry world. Though these programs are put in place to ensure that people are being properly fed, there are people out there that think people use it only to abuse it. Single mothers are just one of the groups that gets a lot of harassment and are looked down upon. These individual’s are looked down upon due to the stereotypes and the overwhelming concern of them ruining the system due to a few. According to Poverty and the Homeless they said only 9 percent of single mothers stayed in there programs for more than seven years and less than 10 percent stayed more than eight years, also saying that most of them were young single mothers with children under the age of three (Williams). Single mothers are not the reason that the economy is going under, people just need an escape goat to blame so they don’t see their own ignorance. Mothers shouldn’t be wrongly accused for needing food stamps, because they could need them for a number of reasons. There are mothers out there that have been divorced and the husbands don’t pay child support. An article online talked about how this mother had recently separated from her husband and she was on food stamps. Her children didn’t know because she didn’t want to burden them with any more than they already had. She said, “I sold everything that wasn’t tied down. I eventually found three part-time jobs that would allow me to be with my sons when they got home from school, trying to keep their lives as structured and normal as possible — plus saving me $100+ a week in childcare, which is substantial when you make
According to the American Psychological Association, “In 2010, the poverty threshold, or poverty line, was 22,314 dollars for a family of four” (2). People living in poverty may be forced to depend on public assistance programs such as food stamps, or more formally known as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP. On the exterior, this program seems to benefit hungry families, but in all actually it is actually facilitating their obesity. The formerly mentioned family of four would be qualified to receive a maximum of 688 dollars a month in food stamps (North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services). That equates to just over 170 dollars a week or 40 dollars per family member. A paltry amount such as this forces families to make difficult decisions regarding the amount and type of food they provide their family.
However there are people in today’s society who take advantage of the SNAP system and commit fraud. “SNAP fraud is when SNAP benefits are exchanged for cash” (Fraud). This is illegal because when people trade in their benefits for money then they can buy anything they would like. Fraud is defeating the original purpose of food stamps which is simply being able to purchase food. Fraud is not only committed when people receive cash back but also when people lie about how much money they receive each month. “SNAP fraud also happens when someone lies on their application to get benefits or to get more benefits than they are supposed to get” (Fraud). People are not the only ones who commit. Retailers can also commit fraud if they have abused the system and try to regain access. “SNAP fraud also happens when a retailer has been disqualified from the program for past abuse and lies on the application to get in the program again” (Fraud). SNAP continues to happen today, but the United States Department of Agriculture has improved the system in fighting
"There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it." This is one of Mitt Romneys famous quotes. The scary part about this quote is that he is right. About half of our country is dependent upon government assistance, and some are passing this way of life on to their many children. This is the main problem, if the future generations begin to think this is a good way of life our government will crash, again. Government assistance is a problem due to the fact that; there is no incentive to work, people get handed money with no enforced restrictions, and there is no constant supervision for people, “needing” this assistance.