Trump Administration Wants To Decide What Food SNAP Recipients Will Get

I hope this is the right spot for this. Sorry i don't know how to embed text.
www.npr.org...

The Trump administration is proposing a major shake-up in one of the country's most important "safety net" programs, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps. Under the proposal, most SNAP recipients would lose much of their ability to choose the food they buy with their SNAP benefits.

The proposal is included in the Trump administration budget request for fiscal year 2019. It would require approval from Congress.

Under the proposal, which was announced Monday, low-income Americans who receive at least $90 a month — just over 80 percent of all SNAP recipients — would get about half of their benefits in the form of a "USDA Foods package." The package was described in the budget as consisting of "shelf-stable milk, ready to eat cereals, pasta, peanut butter, beans and canned fruit and vegetables." The boxes would not include fresh fruits or vegetables.

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Okay so i can understand where they are coming from, but... My first job when i was a kid was as a cashier for a high end grocery store. I always found it weird when people would come through buying stuff like Filet mignon or lobster tail. As i got older i started volunteering for a homeless outreach, i had to leave a few years ago due to belief differences (wasn't a fan of it becoming a cultish work camp for the so calles man of god in charge) but many of the residents received snap benefits. And honestly many of them abused it. They would trade their benefits for things like tobacco or use it to buy junk foods or soda. Then go to food banks and get the "real food".

I do think it needs to have some stipulations put on what can be bought and what can't. But this plan is crazy. They are taking the the potential nutritional value from the program. But take away the or limit the amount of junk that can be bought and make the consequences hasher for those that sell them for money or other goods. Educate people on the importance of nutrition. Also those that are capable of working help them find jobs and make it mandatory that they work so many hours per week.

It should be for healthy essential products, that’s it! No soda, no candy, no KFC, no fast food! Believe it or not, in New York this is racist. Your denying people of color enjoyable things in life like McDonalds and Pizza Hut. My state is one of madness

Well beggars can't be choosers,just a fact of life.The SNAP recipients could be somewhere else in the world,starving to death.

originally posted by: Somethingsamiss

I do think it needs to have some stipulations put on what can be bought and what can't. But this plan is crazy. They are taking the the potential nutritional value from the program. But take away the or limit the amount of junk that can be bought and make the consequences hasher for those that sell them for money or other goods. Educate people on the importance of nutrition. Also those that are capable of working help them find jobs and make it mandatory that they work so many hours per week.

I don't think Trump's out to starve people do you? One thing we do know is many Government programs have a lot of fraud and over use in them that just builds up over the decades. We have a tendency to just keep adding and never resetting the baseline. We saw this with taxes were the baseline was in long need to be reset. I don't know enough about SNAP and other programs, but I do know they have not been over hauled in a long time other than just adding more and more to them, and this might be the time to look at them and reset them back to a manageable state.

So effectively they are saying the government knows best what people ought to eat.

And then there is the aspect that people have unique food-based allergies or intolerances. The package contains milk and nuts, which are two of the biggest foods that many people are incapable of eating.

As the article mentions, now the government needs a distribution network for this food, and systems for keeping it fresh. Government tends to be inefficient at logistical systems like this, so a proposal which claims to be aimed at saving money will end up costing even more, on top of dictating to the aid recipients what their meals will be, regardless of their own health needs, preferences, or cultural context.

Sounds like typical US government thinking.

a reply to: WUNK22

Imo denying people McDonalds is doing them a favor,that stuff is horrendously unhealthy.

a reply to: Xtrozero

I agree completely.

originally posted by: joeraynor
So effectively they are saying the government knows best what people ought to eat.

And then there is the aspect that people have unique food-based allergies or intolerances. The package contains milk and nuts, which are two of the biggest foods that many people are incapable of eating.

As the article mentions, now the government needs a distribution network for this food, and systems for keeping it fresh. Government tends to be inefficient at logistical systems like this, so a proposal which claims to be aimed at saving money will end up costing even more, on top of dictating to the aid recipients what their meals will be, regardless of their own health needs, preferences, or cultural context.

Sounds like typical US government thinking.

Wrong. People can eat whatever they want....if they pay for it, themselves. This what the gov't won't pay for.

I was never on any assistance thank goodness but have friends that were in the 80's. Powdered Milk, bread, a block of cheese and some food stamps for essentials. They got by. We used to laugh about the block of cheese all the time. It was embarrassing but it was a single mom and she did it. I remember sometimes shopping with her kids and it was embarrassing but they turned out ok. LOL.

Now, it looks like a debit card. You can go to a kwikie mart and you know they will sell you anything. It is being abused and heavily at this time. Time to end the welfare mentality in the US. Those who really need it should get.

Good. Why should I subsidize some fat asshole's diabeetus?

This will go a long way to stop people from selling their benefits for cash.

I know several people right now that have 50/50 deals with snap recipients.

" I give you $50 cash for $100 in groceries."

They actually go to the store with the snap card holder to pick out the groceries.

the mocking tone and derisive attitude among some posters here is offensive and lacking in compassion. Either none of you have kids or you are just totally out of touch with reality.

I and my kids are on SNAP right now. Its the first time in my life ive been on welfare, and by god im damn thankful for it. And ill take it a step further: im glad my growing children dont have to subsist on crappy food boxes with crappier "food" inside of them. Canned food? For growing kids....what country is this again?

Some of you laugh at blocks of cheese and peanut butter like its a right of passage. I wonder what other kinds of human suffering you find entertaining. Yeah, i remember being a poor ass kid on welfare in the 80s. I put water on off brand cold cereal because we ran out of the dry milk. Oh yeah, gooooood times. I wonder if you had a child and watched them do that if you would find it funny....and would you justify it by saying idiotic crap like "well you COULD be starving to death in africa".

Yeah, or i could have just been killed before i was born to spare myself the nonsensical clanging noise coming from something that calls itself a human being.


we are in America. The best country in the world.....right? I'm fresh from Germany where they dont have homeless people because they made it a priority as a first world nation to make sure vulnerable people are taken care of, no matter what it takes. I'm not even a democrat or an SJW but somehow i just dont feel good about myself or my country if we can allow people to not be taken care of. Its not a human right, but it IS the right thing to do. For all the money our country has spent on unjust wars and the untold suffering it has inflicted on millions of innocents around the world i think we can handle doling out some money to our own people to make sure the gov at least made an attempt to do the right thing. If the people abuse it then so be it. When you give a present or help you dont get to choose how its used, otherwise dont even bother, youll just look like a jerk.

a reply to: WUNK22




OH SNAP!

lol.

Maybe I can have sypathy if they stop the draconian smoking laws.

Bummer to be on food stamps.

Feed the kids, under 12.

Dumpster diving is not a crime.

a reply to: tribal

You have to accept that a certain percentage of people are simply pricks, selfish nasty pricks that revel in other people's misery, I wish it weren't that way sadly though it is.

On topic, you can be certain whatever comes in those packages will be poor quality and guaranteed it's being done like this to line politicians pockets.

a reply to: tribal

HALF of the benefits will be given in food instead of items of choice.

The other HALF of benefits will still be available for you to make your own decisions with.

This will go a long way to ensure that some of the worst off of all children will actually get some food instead

of a parent nodding off on heroin with the all of the food money.

If Germany is so great feel free to go back there.

originally posted by: joeraynor
So effectively they are saying the government knows best what people ought to eat.

And then there is the aspect that people have unique food-based allergies or intolerances. The package contains milk and nuts, which are two of the biggest foods that many people are incapable of eating.

As the article mentions, now the government needs a distribution network for this food, and systems for keeping it fresh. Government tends to be inefficient at logistical systems like this, so a proposal which claims to be aimed at saving money will end up costing even more, on top of dictating to the aid recipients what their meals will be, regardless of their own health needs, preferences, or cultural context.

Sounds like typical US government thinking.

We could go back to the old Government cheese... What they can do is limit what can be bought with the funds. Meat, veggies and carbs, and leave it at that. They already limit what can be bought, so just tighten it up.

a reply to: tribal

If the people abuse it then so be it.

Bull#..it was not about comedy it was about how people got by. They just did it. They did not get 800 in SNAP and live outside their means. Now, LOTS of people do. But allowing abuse because you had it hard as a kid...creates a cycle of welfare.