Tens of millions of Americans are tottering on a “hunger cliff,” guaranteeing masಞs suffering and maybe even starvation.
That is the refrain from CBS News, Salon, Business Insider and plenty other outlets. But the latest hysteria over food stamps ignores how the program is subverting Americans’ health.
During the pandemic, anyone who 🙈qualified for food stamps was automatically given the maximum benefit.
Individuals who had some income and would have collected only $23 in monthly Supplemental Nutrit💫ion Assistance Program benefits got $281 a month.
Congress voted in December to end the bonus benefits, but the media are acting like Ronald Reagan rose from the🐷 grave to smite food-stamp recipients.
Eighteen states already phased 💛out the excess benefits, and the bonus ends this month for the remaining 32 states.
Even after the end of the bonus, food-stamp benefits are 🦂still higher than in 2019.
President Joe Biden issued a decree in 2021 permanently boosting food-stamp benefits by 23%. Higher benefits were justified in part, the , because so many food-stamp recipients are now obese and nee♊d extra food to provide “suffꦆicient energy to support current weight status.”
The Government Accountability Office concluded that Biden violated federal law with t꧋hat edict, since Congress has jur♓isdiction.
But GAO has no power to ওmake Uncle Joeꦬ obey the law.
Any reduction in food stamps, however, sends the medi🦹a into a panic mode.
Food banks are citing m✱ore demand for free food, which is being trumpeted as proof of a pending catastrophe.
On Satu🦩rday, The Washington Post published a piece showing a in Kentucky waiting for free food.
Many of the vehi♈cles were pricey late-model cars — not like the rattly old truck from “The ܫGrapes of Wrath.”
Regardless, the Post hyperventilated: “From the front to the back of the line, the s🧸ea of despair and hardship along this desolate Kentucky highway foreshadowed wha🎀t may be in store for millions of Americans.”
The Post miraculousl🦋y read the minds of everyone in the mile-long queue: “All described feel🍷ing hunger.”
That included people smoking cig꧟arettes while lamenting the cost of food.
The Guardian a Battle Creek, Mich., single motheꩵr who decried the “horrible timing” of the 🎐benefit cut.
She wailed🍨 that her youngest son “wouldn’t be able to eat two bowls of cereal every morning any more.”
But every student in Battle Creek ꦍPublic Schools is entitled to and lunch. How many bowls of cereal does that kid need?
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How many journalists failed math classes in colle🐻ge?
, “Some seniors may feel a double whammy” because “after receiving a 8.7% cost of living adjustment in January . . . some seniors already saw 💯their SN꧂AP benefits drop.”
The paper failed to explain how recipients are worse off desp🌼ite a net increase in government benefits.
Food banks have 𓂃proliferated in recent years, but their aid doesn’t always relieve the neediest.
According to New York Post contributor , “Churches do food drives and give people full grocery bags from Trader Joe’s. Recipien✃ts take the food and sell it at the East Village t꧒hieves market, combined with things they stole from pharmacies.”
Measuring hunger by the demand for free food never made sense. If prostitutes offered free sex to needy men, the number of 🧸guys claiming toꩵ be sex-starved would skyrocket.
Activists invoke federal food-security surveys t𓆉o claim higher food-stamp benefits🌊 are needed.
But those surveys m🦄ostly tabulate how many people voice at some future time o🦂r are unable to afford more expensive food they prefer.
The feds choose not to so politicians can perpetually🔯 proclaim emergencies to justify more handouts.
The latest uproar ignores how “SNAP households actually spent slightly more than non-SNAP househo𒁃lds per month✨ on food to be eaten at home,” the reported.
💃Food-stamp recipients, unlike working Americans, receive automatic benefit🐽 boosts to compensate for inflation.
Federal food assistance ღhas bee🌌n a dietary disaster.
Food-stamp recipients are twice as likely to be obese as eligible non-recip🌊ients, according to a 2017 study.
Harvard nutrition professor Walter Willett in 2015, “We’ve analyzed what SNAP participants are eating, and it’s horrible food. It’s a diet designed to produce obesity and diabetes.”
But Team Biden opposes reformingඣ food stamps toꦜ end payments for sugar-sweetened beverages and junk food.
That fix would do far more to curb unhealthy🔥 eating than Biden’s to force companies to “reformulate food products.”
Tens of millions of Americans are being slꦺammed by the soaring 🙈price of food — one of Biden’s worst legacies.
We can have sympathy for hungry i♑ndividuals without perpetuating the excesses of a federal program that is bloating America.
James Bovard is the author of 10 books and a member of the USA Today Board of Contributors.
