Looking for Fraud? Don't Look at Food Stamp Recipients, Look at Wall Street [View all]

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http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/12/03-7


On 1 November, food stamp benefits were cut after Congress failed to renew an increase from the 2009 stimulus package. More cuts are on the table. (Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian)

Hunger will drive kids to do crazy things. Like stay at school.

A few weeks ago South Bronx public schools had a half-day, with dismissal at noon. Yet almost all the kids stayed an extra hour, waiting in the cafeteria to eat the schools' free lunch.

Teachers even got calls from parents of children who hadn't stayed, asking them why they let their children leave without a meal. The teachers explained that this had never been an issue before. Kids had always left when they could. The parents responded, "That was before the cut in food stamps. We get $45 less a month now".

The cuts to food stamps had come two weeks earlier, on the first of November, a result of Congress failing to renew the increase to the program in the 2009 stimulus package. That increase was included as a small attempt to blunt the pain of a recession that was disproportionally affecting the poor.

The school kids' neighborhood, the South Bronx, has been hit particularly hard by the recession. Here families live day by day on an average income of roughly $16,000. A drop in income doesn't mean less money for retirement. It means less food now, less clothing now, less everything now. Food stamps are often the only thing keeping families fed, and $45 dollars less a month has an impact.