Food stamps, federal government and states

Investment Analysis Clubs Macro Economic Trends and Risks
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The federal government pays for food stamps (SNAP benefits), while states are responsible for administering the program and covering a portion of its administrative costs. Nationwide, 12% of the population receives SNAP.

On Thursday, a federal judge ordered the Trump Administration to fully fund November SNAP benefits for roughly 42 million low-income Americans, including nearly 1 million Washingtonians. Judge John J. McConnell Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island condemned the administration for ignoring his initial court order and withholding food benefits “for political reasons.” In the sharply worded decision, he wrote: “This Court is not naïve to the administration’s true motivations.”

So far, households that were scheduled to receive their monthly benefits between Nov. 1 and Nov. 7 have received 100 percent of their SNAP benefits for November. That is more than 250,000 households across Washington. At this time, the remaining beneficiaries are expected to receive the entirety of their November food assistance on the date when those funds are typically issued. However, the Trump Administration immediately asked the Court of Appeals to put the federal court’s decision on hold.

The Supreme Court late Friday temporarily allowed the Trump administration to continue to withhold some funding for food stamps, the nation’s largest anti-hunger program, the latest twist in a dizzying legal battle with great stakes for millions of low-income Americans.

The Trump administration told states that they must “immediately undo” any actions to provide full food stamp benefits to low-income families, in a move that added to the chaos and uncertainty surrounding the nation’s largest anti-hunger program during the government shutdown.

The Agriculture Department issued the command in a late-night Saturday memo, viewed later by The New York Times. That guidance threatened to impose financial penalties on states that did not “comply” quickly with the government’s new orders…. [end quote]

In total, more than 500,000 Washington households receive SNAP benefits. So the pause in the distribution of SNAP money means that about half the households received their November SNAP money but the other half won’t unless something changes.

Last week, Governor Ferguson directed nearly $2.2 million to provide additional support to Washington’s food banks in the wake of the Congressional Republicans’ government shutdown. The directive aimed to provide weekly relief if SNAP funds were not restored. I don’t know if other states are doing this. The federal government can’t control what the states do with their own money but this is emergency, non-budgeted spending that would be burdensome if it goes on for long.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-the-states-most-dependent-on-food-stamps/

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Wendy

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Hey! As long as we’re talking about welfare queens, how about these guys?

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That’s just for one state, but if you look across the country you’ll find most states are pretty similar.

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These kind of wrong arguments only useful for political partisanship. We have no idea about those individual’s personal situation why they have to rely on SNAP benefits. Wal-Mart’s minimum salary is $14 per hour in AK and much higher when you consider full time employees. I am sure the same is true for McDonald’s.

Now, in AK, if you make 1700 per month then you are not eligible for SNAP benefits. So clearly a person drawing minimum salary at $WMT is above that level in AK. So why are they drawing SNAP benefits? Is it a fraud? Absolutely not, it could be for other reasons.

If you are going to argue that these corporates are “welfare queens” because they are not paying basic minimum salary, your argument is false. This is the problem many democrat arguments. It is easy to create these kind of villain but that is not going to solve any problem.

What if $WMT does a screening where if you are going to be requiring SNAP benefits, and they deny you employment, because they don’t want the stigma of their employees being SNAP beneficiaries? Of course you will not like it, but you are pushing companies to those position because of unreasonable criticism.

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It would certainly appear that WalMart has lots of part-timers making less than $1700. Or there’s lots of fraud going on.

DB2

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Only if they’re a single-person household are they’re working full-time.

Uf…that’s rough. Not as rough as the talking points from the other side -

"Congressman Clay Higgins of Louisiana chided SNAP recipients on X last week, writing that if families haven’t been smart enough to stockpile a month’s worth of food they should “never again receive SNAP, because wow, stop smoking crack.”

"Lawyer and M@G@ pundit Mike Davis, not to be outdone, said on X that SNAP recipients should “get off your fat, ghetto asses,” and “stop reproducing.”

Walmart would never do that because it’s bad for business. Walmart takes advantage of the double-dip from SNAP benefits.

  1. Their low wages are subsidized by SNAP.
  2. 25% of SNAP benefits are used to buy staples at…wait for it…WALMART!
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Ah. Let me introduce you to the real world. Walmart has a strategy (yes, outlined in internal memos) of keeping employees as part-time, not full time. They are not eligible for PTO until they have 3 years “continuous” employment, even as part time, which the company may interrupt at any time. They may be eligible for some health care benefits, but not all.

Most of my co-workers had been at the store for years, but almost all of them were, like me, part time. This meant that the store had no obligation to give us a stable number of hours or to adhere to a weekly minimum. Some weeks we’d be scheduled for as little as a single four-hour shift; other weeks we’d be asked to do overnights and work as many as 39 hours (never 40, presumably because the company didn’t want to come anywhere close to having to pay overtime).

Know many of these “been at the store for years” workers do you suppose need SNAP benefits?

Many of my co-workers didn’t have cars; with such unstable pay, they couldn’t secure auto loans. Nor could they count on holding on to the health insurance that part-time workers could receive if they met a minimum threshold of hours per week. While I was at the store, one co-worker lost his health insurance because he didn’t meet the threshold — but not because the store didn’t have the work. Even as his requests for more hours were denied, the store continued to hire additional part-time and seasonal workers.

Most frustrating of all, my co-workers struggled to supplement their income elsewhere, because the unstable hours made it hard to work a second job.

As Yogi might say, “You could see a lot just by observing”.

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That’s why I mentioned it could be specific to individual situation, They may even belong to 2 wage earner family with 4 kids, for ex.

Yeaay… you scored a partisan point, but how does it help move the needle? If your goal is to help people, focus on that. If your goal is to show someone is bad, then you can focus on that, but just be clear that is your goal.

You are free to believe what you want to believe. OTOH, you can do a simple math of how many people are employed by WMT in the state of AK? 53,000, even if you remove the 15K corporate employees, do you really think the 1318 employees are where WMT is making money… Actually they can eliminate most of those jobs… it is coming.

It makes no difference to $WMT, they are stables. That means people will buy whether they are paying out of their pocket or with SNAP. You cannot go hungry beyond few meals.

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