2,000,000 Low-Income Americans To Lose Benefits Under House Farm Bill

Nothing is more emblematic of the Trump doctrine than to spit in the face of a poor, homeless American.  Conservatives love to make it sound so simple.  Just pull yourself up by your bootstraps they say.  WHAT IF YOU HAVE NO BOOTS?  What if you literally have nothing?  These safety net programs are the last resort for millions of Americans.

Trump favors imposing stricter requirements on adult recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as food stamps, and has disparagingly described beneficiaries as “welfare” recipients.

Nearly two million low-income Americans, including 469,000 households with young children, would be stripped of benefits under the House version of the farm bill being considered [last] week....

About 34 percent of seniors in the program, or 677,000 households, would lose benefits under the proposal, according to the study. More than one in 10 people with a disability, another 214,000 households, would also lose eligibility.

Those estimates do not account for another proposal in the measure, which would impose strict new work requirements on beneficiaries.  An additional 1.2 million people could be stripped ....according to the Congressional Budget Office....

This is based on the House's bill passed in June which Trump wildly supports.  Meanwhile, the Senate's version of the bill, which received the usual bipartisan support, did not include any of the above.

 Senate’s version of the farm bill, which had bipartisan support, did not include tougher work requirements or the new benefit formula, and negotiators are struggling to reconcile such differences.

The reason this has been called a "farm bill" since 1933 is because it's filled with assistance (ie welfare) for our farmers.  It's the big hand of government assisting the free markets to prop up a food supply chain that otherwise can not survive.  Republicans and their love of small government on the surface would seem opposed to this but have always supported welfare of the corporate variety, in this case to farmers.  Hence, this assistance to both farmers and our poorest Americans have been tied together.

The U.S. Farm Bill is a comprehensive piece of legislation that covers most federal government policies related to agriculture in the United States. The Farm Bill is typically renewed every five years.  The Farm Bill was originally created in 1933 as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Agricultural Adjustment Act, which provided subsidies to U.S. farmers in the midst of the Great Depression.

The benefits of SNAP are enormous and misunderstood.   The social safety net is intended to help the neediest among us. 

“Those who rely on SNAP — two-thirds of whom are children, older adults and people with disabilities — should have access to benefits without undue barriers,” said Jasmine Hall Ratliff, a program officer for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which funded the Mathematica study.

TRUMP AND REPUBLICANS HATE CHILDREN.

....food stamp recipients are mostly children and elderly or disabled people. The number of able-bodied adults without dependents is slim....

There is strong evidence that SNAP reduces food insecurity and improves health outcomes, especially among children, who make up the majority of SNAP beneficiaries.

....the Agriculture Department said that 15 million households reported being “food insecure” in 2017.

“We must not accept mass deprivation in the wealthiest nation in world history as any sort of ‘new normal,’” said Joel Berg, the chief executive of Hunger Free America, a nationwide advocacy group. “Hunger is unacceptable in any society, but it’s particularly outrageous in the United States.”

Sources:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/06/us/politics/trump-farm-bill-congress.html

https://www.snaptohealth.org/farm-bill-usda/u-s-farm-bill-faq/

http://smartdissent.com/article/trump-executive-order-crushes-neediest-americans-children-disabled 

https://fns-prod.azureedge.net/sites/default/files/SNAP_ComChan_SNAPBenefits.pdf