Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
Scott Walker’s Wisconsin Slashes Food Stamp Benefits
http://samuel-warde.com/2015/06/wisconsins-heartless-cuts-to-food-stamps/Imagine for a moment that you are 65 years old. You suffer from diabetes, fibromyalgia and severe migraines. Your Social Security benefit is $956 a month. You depend on food stamps in order to keep body and soul together. You’re at the grocery store, getting ready to pay for your order when you find out that instead of $120 a month, your food stamp benefit has been cut to $16 a month and nobody bothered to tell you.
You may have to imagine this horrible scenario, but Judy Beals does not. It is her life. Why? Because she lives in Wisconsin, where the poor, the elderly and disabled are considered burdens on society. How else does one explain it?
Last year, the Republican led United States Congress passed Agriculture Act of 2014, otherwise known as the Farm Bill. In an effort to reduce spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), a provision was included that states could determine food stamp eligibility by factoring in utility costs. Also known at the “Heat and Eat” bill it raised the minimum heating assistance provided by states from $10 a year to $20 a year. In other words, Congress said that families receiving $20 or less in heating assistance could no longer qualify for automatic food stamp benefits. In doing so, $8.55 billion was sucked out of low-income households. Those reductions are added to those that took effect in November of 2013.
Most states stepped up to the plate and raised the heating assistance to meet the federal requirements to prevent benefit cuts. Not so Wisconsin. One of four states that did not implement raises, Wisconsin, where Governor Scott Walker campaigned on drug testing for food stamp recipients, decided to go a whole other route. All applicants for FoodShare (the Wisconsin name for SNAP) are automatically signed up for heating assistance of $1 a year. So when the new law took effect, Wisconsin implemented the cuts on a rolling basis to new applicants and existing enrollees when it came time to recertify that they were still poor enough to qualify for the benefits. Anyone who could not provide a utility bill saw deep cuts because the state’s estimate of their income went up because they could not claim a deduction for utility payments – even though they didn’t get a utility bill.
You may have to imagine this horrible scenario, but Judy Beals does not. It is her life. Why? Because she lives in Wisconsin, where the poor, the elderly and disabled are considered burdens on society. How else does one explain it?
Last year, the Republican led United States Congress passed Agriculture Act of 2014, otherwise known as the Farm Bill. In an effort to reduce spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), a provision was included that states could determine food stamp eligibility by factoring in utility costs. Also known at the “Heat and Eat” bill it raised the minimum heating assistance provided by states from $10 a year to $20 a year. In other words, Congress said that families receiving $20 or less in heating assistance could no longer qualify for automatic food stamp benefits. In doing so, $8.55 billion was sucked out of low-income households. Those reductions are added to those that took effect in November of 2013.
Most states stepped up to the plate and raised the heating assistance to meet the federal requirements to prevent benefit cuts. Not so Wisconsin. One of four states that did not implement raises, Wisconsin, where Governor Scott Walker campaigned on drug testing for food stamp recipients, decided to go a whole other route. All applicants for FoodShare (the Wisconsin name for SNAP) are automatically signed up for heating assistance of $1 a year. So when the new law took effect, Wisconsin implemented the cuts on a rolling basis to new applicants and existing enrollees when it came time to recertify that they were still poor enough to qualify for the benefits. Anyone who could not provide a utility bill saw deep cuts because the state’s estimate of their income went up because they could not claim a deduction for utility payments – even though they didn’t get a utility bill.
26 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
To you with your plans and ability to help your brother.
Sadistic bastards. 
[URL=
.html][IMG]
K&R!
