Thoughts about this Child Nutrition Program that Obama just signed

[LynneSin]

It concerns me how we can actually badmouth this program when there is alot of good involved with it.

First, there is a serious issue with childhood obsesity in this country and it starts with the fact that schools have cut deals with Food Corporations that allow the placement of junk food in the cafeteria. You might as well let the schools cut a deal with Phillip Morris and put a cigarette machine in each cafeteria. These corporations knows that the sooner you can hook the kids on highly addictive processed foods loaded with sugar, salt and other processed chemicals the better it is for them to make lifetime users of their products. The food companies learned that from the cigarette companies. The reasons schools made deals with the Food Corporation was it added money to their budgets, which were woefully underfunded. This program will help provide the extra funds needed that will help schools cut ties with these unhealthy options.

Second, more children will now be able to receive low-priced or free school lunches. A free school lunch means a family on foodstamps have more stamps to use for other meals. Some of these kids this might be the only healthy meal they receive each day.

Childhood obsesity leads to a host of health ailments out there and honestly, I think it's the leading cause of hyperactivity in our children. I've seen kids turn from the sweetest child out there to the spawn of satan just after downing a sugary soda or eat a candy bar. Those little bodies can't handle all that junk - might as well give those kids crack, it's the same affect.

Food Stamp funding has almost doubled under Obama, so it's not like we're taking that away. In the long run this is a good program and it's not that overly costly for us to do.

[TwilightGardener]

1. Agree with all you said. I understood the importance of school lunches

and breakfasts when my kids used to ride the bus home on Friday afternoons with poor kids who had an arrangement to take home giant bags full of unused cafeteria food, so their families could eat over the weekend. Just broke your heart. Glad they're going to get healthier food.

[LynneSin]

2. I know, it helps but it's never enough

Kids only go to school 5 days a week and then they are off in the summertime. But it's a start.

[liberal N proud]

3. End of an era

I know it is a good thing, but I also think of it as an end of an era. It was in the 1970's that we all convinced our school administrators that students should have lounges and in those lounges we need soda and candy machines.

So I feel a twinge of sadness that something that my generation thought was an achievement over the system to get some privileged amenities that were not previously available to students.

But then we were not so fat back then and maybe that is how I ended up that way. Couldn't have been the beer. :rofl:

[Supersedeas]

28. some days

[Lasher]

4. The merits of the school lunch/breakfast program are not in question.

Here's the problem:

Obama signs bill cutting 2.2 billion from food stamps

With his wife by his side, President Obama on Monday signed the child nutrition bill, strongly pushed by the first lady, who has made nutrition part of her campaign to help the young get healthy.

<snip>

The bill also increases the spending per meal by about 6 cents, President Obama noted. He said the money for funding the increase came from cuts in the food-stamp program but that he was committed to working with Congress to find a way to restore those funds.

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-obamas-food-bill-signing-121310,0,2298518.story

This comes at the very same time that the Obama tax cut deal sails through the Senate, at an unfunded cost of almost $1 trillion over the next two years.

That's the problem. Come on, you know that.

[LynneSin]

5. Not even close

The fact that we've doubled what we've put into food stamps (from 31B to 67B I think) means we are focusing on it.

And remember, Presidents can multi-task.

Finally food stamps are not perfect since it is easy to sell foodstamps for pennies on the dollar to pay buy other things. At least a decent school lunch program that is properly funded means these kids have a chance of getting some food.

[Lasher]

7. Are you saying it's a good thing to defund the food stamp program?

If that's what you're saying, then I don't agree, particularly during this recession. Just because we've recently put money into it doesn't mean we should take money out. And yes there is some abuse. That doesn't mean we should take money out either.

You're going back to justifying the school lunch program. Like I said, its merits are not in question. The problem this:

[LynneSin]

8. Well let's see, since we're spending $30million more than under Bush

And this is another program that pays for food - I think we'll be ok.

You're dealing with Apples and Oranges here trying to use this program as another reason to bash Obama.

Seriously, go for the big fish (like the tax cuts).

Geez, Obama could pass gas and it would send DU into a Tizzy.

[Jakes Progress]

11. Cough, cough (crock of shit) cough.

Why did Obama raise the amount for food stamps? Did he just guess at a number? Did the economy for the poor magically improve in a week? Do you not understand that thousands of families will not be without food stamps because of the shift in funds? Or do you not care?

So you think you'll be ok? Whew. I'm glad of that. My clients might not be. They rely on food stamps to feed their families. Some of them will be cut so that this program can be funded.

It sounds like a good program. It sounds like a program that deserves funding. Why though, was it necessary to get the money from the poor? Why starve some to feed others? Why couldn't he go get the money from his rich friends. He's done a lot for them recently. How about cutting one fifth of one percent from the tax cuts he just gave to the incredibly wealthy? I think they will be okay. I think they will have food on the table. Many of my clients won't because of this.

Yes. It is apple and oranges. But in a society where you don't see poor people as interchangable pr points, those apples and oranges go on the table.

Geez, Obama could take milk from babies and some of DU would be outraged if others pointed it out.

[onenote]

29. no one is going to be cut out of getting food stamps

Apparently you are the one who doesn't/can't understand how the cut, estimated at $2.2 billion (although no one has been able to explain the basis of that estimate) works.

The cuts have nothing to do with eligibility. They have to do with the maximum benefit. That benefit, prior to the Recovery Act, was tied to the Dept. of Agriculture's calculation of the cost of food for a family of four under what is known as the Thrifty Food Plan. As inflation drives up the cost of the TFP, the maximum benefit increased each year. Of course, one problem with that approach was that it involves a lag. Costs go up before the benefit goes up.

So, in part to address the lag and in part to provide additional stimulus to the economy, in 2008 Congress gave a temporary boost to the maximum benefit by specifying that it would be set 13.6 percent higher than the June 2008 TFP. I haven't found a source that calculates this increase, but I believe that it was around $80 per family of four per month at the highest end of the scale. This boost was intended to be temporary -- the phase out mechanism was inflation: the boosted benefit would not be increased as inflation increased the cost of the TFP. Once the inflation-adjusted TFP caught up with the 13.6 adjustment, the entire "boost" would have effectively been terminated, but no one would see any cut since going back to the inflation adjusted rate would result in the same maximum benefit.

The problem was that the 13.6 percent figure appears to have been based on the historical rate at which the TFP had increased in the past several years. (I'm not sure of the exact calculation, but it appeasr that the average increase from 2000 to 2008 was around 3.4 percent, which would mean that the assumption was that the "boost" would have evaporated in four years, or sometime in around 2012. However, with the economy stalled, and inflation flat, the TFP has not grown in the past few years as it had in previous years. Thus, the likely end date of the boost is further out in the future.

The amendment to the Recovery Act included in the nutrition act imposes a "hard" termination date of October 2013 on the boost. How much difference that makes depends on what happens to food costs between now and then. If they remain flat, then the maximum benefit will revert to a level close to what it was in 2008 (because food costs will be close to what they were in 2008). If inflation spikes, the level to which the maximum benefit reverts will be higher -- in theory, if food costs spike by 3.3 percent between now and 2013, the maximum benefit will drop by 3.7 percent, to a level that equates to the current food cost estimate.

I think having the boost in effect, even if it only marginally raises the maximum benefit above what it would otherwise be by a samll amount is a good thing. But I don't have a clue what the TFP rate will be next year, let alone in three years and neither does anyone else. So the $2.2 billion is just an estimate and until someone can explain the assumptions on which that estimate is based, I have no wasy of judging how accurate it is.

Finally, and back to the point I started with, the cut is in the maximum benefit that an eligible recipient can receive. No one gets cut out of the program by this. They just get, possibly, by some amount that can't be known today, some amount less than waht they get today (but no less than what they would have gotten before the temporary stimulus-related boost).

[Lasher]

16. Have you ever heard of Grover Norquist?

Remember, he's the guy with the 'starve the beast' strategy to drown our social programs in a bathtub. Here's how it works: cut taxes until we're broke, then cut spending on our social programs. You do understand this, right?

And this is just how it looks. You say I should go for the tax cuts. That's exactly what I'm saying. It's wrong to go almost $1 trillion dollars into debt over two years to extend the Bush tax cuts, and at the same time cut the food stamp program even one dollar. The school lunch program should be funded without cutting the food stamp program.

More importantly, this is a strategic blunder that helps set the stage for fulfillment of Norquist's fondest dream. What's the next social program to be cut so that the wealth gap can be expanded? Surely you don't believe this is the end of it.

This is an important issue. Since you brought up the subject, you should be prepared to debate it fairly instead of trying to hide behind your phony 'apples and oranges' and 'Obama bashing' charges.

[whistler162]

19. Actually it is more like apples now and oranges in the

future. Since the 2.2 billion is cut from future, iirc it was actually a non renewal of a temporary increase in the food stamp program.

[frazzled]

17. The Food Stamp program is NOT being defunded

The approx. $2B in funding -- which will not be implemented until late 2013, three years from now -- represents a tiny fraction of the huge increases the Obama administration and Democratic Congress put in place over the last two years. They upped the funding from 2008 (the first year of the Bush recession) from $38 billion to $68 billion. That was a near doubling of funding to stave off new disasters that were occuring and to act as stimulus to the economy.

$2B is a mere fraction of the $68 billion being spent. And it is not being hijacked into some materially different use but rather being redirected within the nutritional goals of the department. As the OP pointed out, it may actually help people in that more students will receive more meals at school (and more nutritional ones), leaving struggling families more of their food-stamp allocation for home use.

The outrage over this new law is not based in rationality or facts. It feels more like finding some detail with which to beat the administration over the head. If it weren't this, it would be some other aspect of the law. Stop -- and think of what is good for children and families, and especially for the poor.

And please, avoid using hysterical, fear-mongering terms like "defunding." The food-stamp program is in no way being defunded. It has never been stronger.

[Lasher]

20. Hysterical fear-mongering?

de·fund: to withdraw funding from.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/defund

Neither the timing nor the size of the withdrawal of funding morphs this act into anything else besides defunding. Go ahead, select any euphemism that you think might promote your obfuscation, but it's still defunding. And yet, despite this clear fact to the contrary, you insist that up is down just because you say so.

You have challenged me to "Stop -- and think of what is good for children and families, and especially for the poor." Yet it is I, and not you, who is guilty of "hysterical fear-mongering"?

Your claim about defunding is patently false, and by labeling my argument you are trying to stifle fair debate. I resent your inference that I have failed to consider the welfare of children, families, and the poor. Before you preach to others about rationality and facts, maybe you should get better acquainted with the concepts yourself.

[frazzled]

21. In government parlance, to defund is to completely unfund

A 2% reduction in funds (after a 100% increase)--pushed three years into the future--is hardly a defunding, in either Merriam's or the common definition of the term.

There is simply no reason to oppose the signing of this bill into law. None.

[Lasher]

22. Your ridiculous semantics game is not working.

Got a link to support your delusion that taking away $2 billion is not defunding? I didn't think so.

[onenote]

30. Can you demonstrate that it will be $2.2 billion?

Can you provide a link to how that figure was calculated? Because I've looked everywhere and while I see it referred to all the time, I can't find an explanation of how it was determined since, under the law, the cut is merely an early termination of a temporary stimulus-related boost in the maximum benefit that would, even if the "cut" had been enacted, be phasing itself out over time as inflation increases the Thrifty FOod Plan estimate that serves as the basis for figuring the annual maxmium benefit. In order to know whether the effect of the cut is $2.2 billion or more than that or less than that, you have to know what the benefit will be when the stimulus boost terminates and in order to know that you need to know what the change in food costs between 2008 and 2013 is going to be. Plus, you probably need to know the number of participants presumed to be in the program in 2013 and how that measures up to what the number really turns out to be.

[Lasher]

31. Sure.

$68B - $65.8B = a $2.2B reduction in funding.

You're welcome.

[onenote]

32. You are missing the point. Its almost certainly going to be much less of a cut than $2.2 billion

The $2.2 billion reduction reflects a Congressional Budget Office estimate of the yearly savings that will result from terminating the 13.6 percent boost in the SNAP maximum payment in October 2013 instead of 2014. But that estimate is based on the unrealistic assumption that food costs will not increase between now and 2020. That's right. 2020.

An illustration might help explain. Assume that the maximum benefit in June 2008 was $100. Under the law in effect at that time, that amount would grow each year based on the impact of inflation on food costs. But the recovery act gave a 13.6 boost to the maximum benefit, while suspending the inflation adjustment until such time as the inflation adjustment caught up with the boosted benefit. So, starting in 2009 and going forward, the benefit was going to be $113.60 in our example. It would stay at that level until such time as the original $100 benefit level,adjusted for inflation, hit $113.60. That way, no one would see a reduction in the maximum benefit. Based on historical rates of inflation since 2000, the expectation was that it would take around four years for this "catch-up" to occur. However, last August, as part of another emergency bill for medicare etc., the open-ended termination date in the recovery act was replaced with a hard date of April 2014. Because inflation has been flat in 2009 and 2010, the old assumption that the catch up would occur in a few years was replaced with an assumption that there would never be any catch up -- that food costs would effectively stay the same for the next ten years. Thus, the CBO assumed that between 2014 and 2020, the maximum benefit would drop all the way back down to $100 again. This obviously is a very unlikely scenario, but it provides an accounting fig leaf that allows Congress to claim that it has offset its proposed spending increase with a decrease.

When it came time to fund the nutrition bill, Congress needed to find $2.2 billion savings, so it went back to the same fictional piggy bank. The nutrition bill moves the hard termination date of the recovery act benefit boost from April 2014 back to Oct 2013. THe CBO cost estimate assumes that this will save between $250 and #250 million a year for the period from 2013 to 2020. For example, the savings in 2020 are estimated to be over $250 million. But there only will be savings in 2020 if food costs between 2008 and 2020 are unchanged. Any increase in food costs will decrease the savings (because the maximum benefit will have gone up above $100). If food costs in 2020 are 13 percent higher than they are today (not an unreasonable assumption) there will be no "savings" in 2020.

[Lasher]

33. No, I'm not missing the point.

The amount allocated will be $2.2 billion less. It's just that simple. Go ahead, flail and turn yourself inside out trying to turn this truth into fiction. But don't expect me to play along.

Have a nice day.

[onenote]

34. This from the person who thinks the $2.2 billion will be cut in one year apparently

WHich is the only explanation I can come up with for your comparison of $68 billion, which is the amount spent on food stamps in one year and $65.8 billion which is that amount minus $2.2 billion. Only problem with your math is that the $2.2 billion is an estimate of the aggregate amount of cuts over a ten year period in which the "cuts" would not begin until late 2013 and continue through 2020. The estimated decrease in spending on food stamps in any given year, starting in 2014, averages around $310 million, not $2.2 billion. And the total can reach $2.2 billion only if it is assumed that once the temporary boost terminates in October 2013 (instead of April 2014 as scheduled), food costs are at the same level that they were at in 2008 and do not increase through 2020.


You obviously don't understand that the $2.2 cut is not an appropriated amount. Its an estimate of what would not have to be appropriated/spent over the next ten years if the termination of the temporary boost in the SNAP maximum benefit is accelerated from April 2014 to October 2013. I can't make you understand the Congressional Budget Office "scoring" process if you don't want to understand it. But it is a fact that the CBO estimate of the impact of the acceleration of the "early termination" of the recovery act's boost in the maximum food stamp benefit is based on the fiction that once the temporary boost in the maximum benefit is repealed in October 2013 the benefit will revert to June 2008 levels and stay there because the cost of food in 2013 and every year thereafter through 2020 will be no higher than it was in 2008.

So let me just ask you a simple question: Do you think that the cost of food in 2013 will be higher or lower or the same as it was in June 2008?

[Jakes Progress]

25. He means fear-mongering as in telling the truth.

You shouldn't do that you know. Oh. And you shouldn't get all hysterical over people who are hungry.

[Lasher]

26. I guess so, Jake

I am intrigued by this 'rationality' of which they speak.

[Hello_Kitty]

9. What that means is that the number of people who depend on food stamps has doubled. eom

[Still a Democrat]

10. About one third more recipients, actually n/t

[Hello_Kitty]

12. Whatever.

So that means federal funding had to increase to make up for shortfalls in cash-strapped states. Here in AZ the amount you get for foodstamps hasn't increased. The number of people applying for them has.

[onenote]

13. actually the amount has increased

The Recovery Act provision increased the maximum benefit by 13.6 percent. In other words, it didn't just provide more money for a greater number of recipients, it signficantly increased the maximum benefit available to each recipient.

The maximum benefit is set by reference to what is known as the "Thrifty Food Plan" -- an estimate of the cost of certain food items. Oridinarily, it increases with inflation -- as the cost of food goes up, the maximum benefit (albeit with a time lag) increases as well. The 13.6 increase was far above what the normal COLA increase would give. The idea was for it to serve as a form of stimulus for the economy (since you can't really put food stamps in savings and have to spend them). This increase was intended to phase out over time: that is, the COLA adjustment was suspended until such time as the Thrifty Food Plan cost had increased 13.6 percent to catch up to the increased benefits. It had been thought based on historical rates of inflation in the cost of food, that this would happen within a few years. But we entered into a period of extremely low inflation, including food cost inflation, so the increased benefits could well have continued past 2013. The change in the law that "cuts" SNAP by 2.2 billion ends the 13.6 increase and has benefits revert to their old level, but also restores the COLA adjustment as I understantd it. So its not really possible to know how much the cut really is -- $2.2 is an estimate based on information that we can't possibly know - what the COLA adjusted maximum benefit would be in 2013.

At least this is how it was explained to me by someone from the Dept. of Agriculture that is a neighbor.

[ipaint]

23. "other things"

You mean like shelter and electricity?


"As a recent Depression-era diary edited by Big Money's James Ledbetter documents, during the bank closures of the 1930s, desperate families would sell their passbooks to shuttered banks for 50 or 60 cents on the dollar. Reporting in 2010 in the severely "recessed" city of Hartford, Connecticut, which has been struggling for decades to rebuild from the death of manufacturing, I had a case of déjà vu. There I met several unemployed mothers who've surpassed their lifetime welfare limits who told me they sell their food stamps at the corner bodega for 70 cents on the dollar just to cover basics like utility bills and winter shoes for their kids.

"Nobody's had work for a few years now," Carmen Cordero, a longtime welfare rights activist with the Hartford-based group Vecinos Unidos, told me. "People need a base. They need a safety net. They need continued support. Women have to make horrible choices when they lose cash."

One woman I met, Eva Hernandez (she asked me not to use her real name because selling food stamps is illegal), a 28-year-old mother of two young girls, is now precipitously close to the edge. After working low-wage jobs at places like Dunkin Donuts and KFC for close to a decade, tapping public assistance off and on over the years to supplement her poverty wages, Eva used up her lifetime allotment of cash assistance. Last March, in the midst of the worst job crisis in at least a generation, Eva opened the last welfare check she will ever receive. Now, unable to find any work at all, she's been pushed to break the law to get by."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/seth-wessler/jobless-forced-to-sell-fo_b_467485.html


Anything to make a cut in food stamps look like a PR win for the president even if it causes further damage and violence to those who don't have enough to eat or pay for shelter and heat.

So essentially the president and congress increased food stamps because of the enormous demand caused by a working poor depression brought on by the filthy rich, which is only getting worse, and now with congress they will slash the increase to death piecemeal to pay for other desperately needed but underfunded programs.

Shifting funds from folks who don't have enough to eat to other folks who don't have enough to eat. That is what passes for progress. And don't forget the average of $70,000 taxpayer dollars in fun money that filthy rich criminals keep getting courtesy lawmakers and an administration that also will be the recipients of their own tax cutting $generosity$. Must be nice.

Any reason that tax windfall wasn't hit up for the first lady's program? Is the first lady aware that her program is being funded on the backs of the poorest of our citizens? This is ok with her, too?

[tavalon]

6. Yeah, this one is a good one

I'm gobsmacked. I hate that I'm gobsmacked when a genuinely good thing comes from this administration, but that's where I'm at.

[Jakes Progress]

14. Not a bad program. Just funded poorly.

Let's take food from these poor people and give it to those poor people. Let's just not ask the wealthy to do without anything they can possibly desire.

In short. Sure it's a good idea. But did if have to be funded by taking food from the poor?

[onenote]

35. As explained above, the $2.2 billion "cut" is an estimate based on shaky assumptions

Its not an actual cut in appropriated funds. No one knows at this point how the change in the law accelerating the termination of the temporary boost in maximum benefits will actually impact the benefits that are paid out.

FOr example, do you think food costs will stay the same between now and 2013? If you don't, then you will be relieved to know that the there is no way the change in the law cuts $2.2 from food stamp recipients over ten years. That's because the early termination provision in the nutrition bill would results in the estimated $2.2 billion reduction in the amount that food stamp recipients will receive only if food costs stay exactly where they were in 2008.

The Congressional Budget Office scoring process that came up with the $2.2 billion estimate of how much less will be spent on food stamps (over ten years) is a non-scientific process that can be used to produce "savings" that allow additonal spending even though, as is the case here, the likelihood of those "savings" ever occurring is remote.

[Clio the Leo]

15. thank you nt

[Scurrilous]

18. Thanks.

K & R :thumbsup:

[great white snark]

24. K&R

[vaberella]

27. This is DU...isn't this normal?! I don't find that there's any good to say about the President.

When I'm here anyway.