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Newt Grigrich speaking to a crowd in Ames, Iowa. Image via Wikipedia

Some Truths about the SNAP Program (Food Stamps).

Newt Grinchrich (oops) has, in one of his daily ravings, ranted at length recently about the amount of people receiving Food Stamps. He would have you believe that the rise in Food stamps (SNAP Program) comes from all those unemployed lazy poor people sitting around all day spending their welfare benefits on drugs. There is no evidence in support of his theory. Just one of those things that because he said it, it must be true. After all, Newt Gingrich wouldn’t tell a lie, would he? Well, yes. He would. And this tripe he’s preaching just ain’t true.

The real truth about the rise in Food Stamps (SNAP Program), within the last 10 years, does not come from the unemployed, among whom the percentage of those receiving Food Stamps has actually declined approximately 46%, but from those people whose wages are so low that no matter how hard they work they still need help to feed themselves and their children.

Food Security Status of U.S. Households; 2008

In the U.S., hunger is not a metric by which statistics are kept, however, they do measure what’s called “food insecurity”. Food insecurity is defined in two ways: “low food security” and “very low food security”. As defined the the Census Bureau, very low food security is “the normal eating patterns of one or more household members were disrupted and food intake was reduced at times during the year because they had insufficient money or other resources for food”. In 2008, 17 million households met this threshold. In 2010, 21 million people were classified as working-poor. That’s nearly 9.6 percent of all American families living below 100 percent of poverty and having at least one family member with a job. Last year, 3.5 million older Americans lived below the poverty line.