Poverty In America: Defining The New Poor [View all]

[MindMover]

Welfare reform in 1990s helped slash cash benefit rolls, and yet the use of food stamps is soaring today. About 15 percent of Americans use food stamps, and it has become what some call the new welfare.

A big reason why is because of a deal struck between President Clinton and the Republican-controlled Congress in 1996. At that time, the number of Americans who received cash payments — what's often thought of as welfare — was at an all-time high.

The Clinton overhaul made it much harder to qualify for those payments, and today the welfare rolls are down 70 percent, but that's only if you define welfare in one way.

"We decided cash assistance is welfare and that's bad, but we decided food aid is nutritional assistance and that's good," says New York Times reporter Jason DeParle. "We made [the food stamp] program much easier to get on."

DeParle, who covers poverty for The Times, tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz that 18 million Americans have had to apply for food aid since the economic crisis began.

The program has become a political talking point for some critics of the program: Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich began referring to President Obama as the "food stamp president," and said "no president has put more people on food stamps than Obama."

It's not technically true, and in fact more people went on food stamps under President George W. Bush. What is true, DeParle says, is that more Americans depend on food assistance now than at any other time in modern history: 1-in-6 people or almost 50 million Americans. The question is whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.

http://www.npr.org/2012/04/22/151166529/poverty-in-america-defining-the-new-poor?