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Award-winning investigative journalist and founder/editor of ConsortiumNews.com, Robert Parry has passed away. His ground-breaking work uncovering Reagan-era dirty wars in Central America and many other illegal and immoral policies conducted by successive administrations and U.S. intelligence agencies, stands as an inspiration to all in journalists working in the public interest.

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who helped make our 25th anniversary with Jeremy Scahill a success!

For those who missed the event, or were there and really wanted to fully absorb its import, here it is in video

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JEREMY SCAHILL: Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker "Dirty Wars"

Listen to the full interview (30:33) with Jeremy Scahill, an award-winning investigative journalist with the Nation Magazine, correspondent for Democracy Now! and author of the bestselling book, "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army," about America's outsourcing of its military. In an exclusive interview with Counterpoint's Scott Harris on Sept. 16, 2013, Scahill talks about his latest book, "Dirty Wars, The World is a Battlefield," also made into a documentary film under the same title, and was nominated Dec. 5, 2013 for an Academy Award in the Best Documentary Feature category.

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Congress Targets Food Stamp Program for Deep Cuts

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Posted June 27, 2012

Interview with Ellen Vollinger, food stamp/legal director with Food Research and Action Center, conducted by Scott Harris

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As Congress debates the 1,000-page Farm Bill, Republicans have targeted the federal food stamp program for deep cuts, now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Over the past four years of the Great Recession, the numbers of Americans receiving food stamps has increased from 28 million to 46 million, with a doubling of the cost. With stubbornly high unemployment and millions of people facing the exhaustion of their unemployment compensation checks, many middle-class families will be turning to help from the food stamp program for the first time in their lives.

The U.S. Agriculture Department says that food stamp assistance helps keep five million Americans out of poverty. In order to be eligible to receive food stamps, a household must have a gross income below 130 percent of the federal poverty level. The Farm Bill which passed in the U.S. Senate on June 21 has $4.5 billion in cuts over 10 years that anti-hunger advocates say will harm large numbers of poor and struggling families. According to the Congressional Budget Office, an estimated half a million households a year will lose $90 per month in SNAP benefits. As the farm legislation moves to the GOP-controlled House of Representatives, conservative politicians who express little compassion for the nation’s poorest and most vulnerable citizens are expected to demand deeper cuts in the food stamp program than already approved by the Democratic- led Senate. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Ellen Vollinger, food stamp and legal director with the group Food Research and Action Center. She assesses the efforts underway in Congress to make deep cuts to the nation’s food stamp program, and the consequences for poor and struggling families.

ELLEN VOLLINGER: The Farm Bill is the legislative vehicle that every five years authorizes SNAP, formerly the food stamp program, and some other important programs. The nutrition title of that bill was the subject of action in the Senate this spring, and in the Senate, there was a vote to take out $4.5 billion out of SNAP benefits. Now, to put that in some context, that's a 10-year cut. The Congressional Budget Office means that 500,000 needy households on SNAP will lose on average, $90 of SNAP benefits a month. We know that people who are on SNAP are low income; they have very little income. Many of them are not only way below the poverty line, many of them are way below the poverty line and they are struggling in a tough economy. We also know that the benefits they have even before the cuts are very, very modest. The average SNAP benefit is $4.35 a person a day. So I say that, because a lot of times, when you hear figures coming out of Washington, there are billions here and billions there. But we know from the Congressional Budget Office estimate, this may mean $90 a month for households on SNAP; 500,000 of those households on SNAP. So it's real money, real food money that's on the table at risk for needy families.

BETWEEN THE LINES: What does this mean in human terms? What will these families go through without that $90 coming in each month? What does that mean on the dinner plate?

ELLEN VOLLINGER: Well, it means a lot. Your listeners are probably quite aware of how big a struggle it is for many families to be able to feed themselves. The maximum allotment on SNAP for a family of three is a little more than $500, about $526 (a month). So if that family were to lose $90, and some more lose more than that, some may lose a little less, you're likely talking about the last week of the month not having groceries to get through that. Many people across the country are already turning to food banks, food pantries and soup kitchens to supplement these already low SNAP benefits. It'll just mean that the struggles will be more acute. We don't know how the food banks and the food pantries and the soup kitchens that are already stretched are going to be able to meet that demand.

So we're working very hard to try to educate Congress that this will mean greater struggles for people across the country and we're hoping that they will rethink this cut and not make it.

BETWEEN THE LINES: I wanted to talk about the rising numbers of families in the country are reliant on food stamps now to make ends meet, and I've read that the numbers of people on food stamps has risen over the past four years from 28 million to 46 million participants. And, with more and more people reaching out for emergency benefits during these hard economic times, it seems counter-intuitive to be cutting these programs so deeply.

ELLEN VOLLINGER: Absolutely, and I think something that there are opponents of the program who just want to look at the growth and don't want to examine what people are up against and why it is that they have to turn to the program. We sometimes hear, "Well, people dont' want to work, or they're not really in need." There are plenty of examples of people not being able to find jobs, and even when they find jobs, not having wages and benefits that are sufficient to really meet their family's needs.

There's a statistic that the U.S. Labor Department puts out. It's called the U-6 measure. That sounds like a lot of economic jargon to people, but it's called the U-6 measure. What that does is give us a number of the people in the country, what percentage of the work force is either unemployed or under-employed and maybe discouraged and given up looking, the percentage of the work force is very similar to the percentage of people, of residents to people who are turning to SNAP. So it's both the unemployment that's going on and even among people who are working, they are often working at wages and hours that just are not enough to feed their family. So, to us, it's not a surprise, either on an anecdotal basis or when we look at the data, including that labor force data, why it is the SNAP program is serving as many people as it is.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Ellen, just to close up here. You know, there's a lot of thinking that many people in the country oppose food stamps, or oppose these social safety net programs. But you did a poll earlier this year that really contradicted that kind of common perception of the issues of welfare or social safety programs. Tell us about the poll, if you would.

ELLEN VOLLINGER: Yeah, absolutely. And I would recommend that if people want to see the absolute details, they can come to our website, which is www.FRAC.org. Peter Hart Associates, which is a major polling firm in Washington, did the survey and found that 77 percent of the Americans surveyed would not want to see SNAP cut. And that was across the board. It was somewhat higher among Democrats and a little bit lower among Republicans, but I think even among Republicans, it was over 60 percent that didn't want to see SNAP cut. So, one thing I think that it does underscore – it's something we've seen over many decades in the United States – and that is that the American public does not want to see people going hungry. That really is a shared value across party lines. It's something that is bipartisan and we hope would remain so.

Find information about the Food Research and Action Center at FRAC.org.

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