#that most workers have to rely on food stamps and government assistance just to barely survive | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

artistlove17 · 5 years

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YES!!!

My fiance and I got approved for food stamps and assistance today!! And I know, I know "get a job, you don't have kids and you're young, you shouldn't be relying on the government."

We've been trying... seriously. We're staying with my grandfather right now because we are homeless after everything with my landlord and Nana a few months ago. And we have a shitty, broken down car that barely makes it around town... so everything has been really fucked up and hard. But my Aunt suggested that we apply for SNAP until we get a job because we have NO food... I mean literally all we have right now is half a gallon of milk, a carton of eggs and a bag of rice and a couple cans of green beans. We are on our last leg right now and struggling really fucking hard.

We've applied to 2 places and haven't heard anything back. And the third place told us that they wouldn't know they had any jobs for 2 more weeks and they'd call us back.... so we have really been at a loss for what to do. And we are out of time with waiting.

So we applied for assistance today and we got it! So in a week we should get our card and be able to finally get some groceries!! Ya'll have no idea how excited I am to actually have some real food... it's fucking pitiful. 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

But!! The best part is... they'll help us look for a job!! Our case worker is going to meet with us in probably about 10 days (I believe is what she said) and she'll give us a list of places that have sent her applications and we can fill out applications through them and she will send them back for us. Her doing this means we have a MUCH MUCH higher chance of getting a job, and quickly!!! So hopefully in a couple weeks we'll have new jobs and actually get back on our fucking feet!!!!!

Ugh. I'm so glad we went today and are now heading in the right direction! I've been trying so hard and my dad cut me off and said he wasn't helping me anymore, but then bitched me out because I don't have a job yet. Which didn't make any sense because how the hell was I supposed to get a job without a reliable car or gas money... and he cut me off so...??? Also how the fuck would you expect me to work with no food... I've done that shit before and made myself so sick I legit thought I might die. I seriously thought about going to the hospital and I hate hospitals... I don't ever want to feel like that again... that shit was bad.

My dad is a whole other problem... his only concern right now is my pregnant 17 year old stepsister and her baby, so I'm just a fucking nuisance to him. He keeps bitching and telling me to get a job, but hasn't ONCE offered to help me or sent me anything about places even hiring! Even though I've literally asked for his help several fucking times and he says he will... but he NEVER DOES. I never hear anything back until he has to pay for something else and wants to bitch at me again. He pays my car insurance and for my storage unit... but he pays for my stepsiblings insurances as well and they live with him!! He's constantly taking them out to do stuff (movie theater, fast food, trips, etc.) and keeps groceries in the house... but he acts like him doing 2 simple things to help me out right now (when I most fucking need it) is just too much to ask!? And I'm his only biological fucking kid... but I get treated like I don't belong and I'm just a problem to him.

I'm just fucking sick of everything and so damn ready to have a job and get my own place again. And as soon as I get stable again I'm done with my dad. I'm telling him to stop paying for shit for me and I'll deal with it myself, I'm tired of the guilt tripping. You can't go blow $400 on your new family but then tell me that you can't give me $20 to get something to eat or to put gas in my car... fuck that bullshit. He just doesn't give a fuck about me or want to do anything for me. He never has. He left my mom and I to be homeless before... he literally refused to take me in when my mom became homeless. I had to stay with her at her friends house and watch my mom sleep on their couch while I shared bunk beds with their son. My mom hated it and worked herself to death to get us out of that situation while all my dad did was sit in his 3 bedroom house and smoke pot with his buddies. He would hardly take me on the weekends, let alone take care of me for a month or two.

I'm just glad to finally have some real help and hopeful that things will get better. And I'm glad I didn't need his help to do it. ✌

#parent #parents #dad problems #dad #familyproblems #got a job #get a job #job search #job #jobs #homeless #needajob #anewstart

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emedhelp · 5 years

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The Trump administration plans to gut food stamps, hitting red states hardest – ThinkProgress

President Donald Trump’s latest attack on working families will hit especially hard in the states that voted for him: More than half of the people who are set to lose access to food stamps under regulations proposed this summer live in states that went for Trump in 2016.

One in every twelve people who receives food stamps nationwide will lose them under the policy — some 3.6 million people, according to new analysis by Mathematica, the private policy analysis firm the Department of Agriculture (USDA) has relied upon for the past 40 years.

“I was surprised by the extent of the impact in some of the southern states, such as Texas,” Mathematica senior research programmer Sarah Lauffer said. The impact was always going to be severe in states that apply the current rules in the most generous fashion, but southern states have generally not extended their eligibility lines quite as far. Despite that, Lauffer said, her team found “34% of elderly Texans receiving benefits will lose them through this rule.”

Almost 400,000 people in Texas currently receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits would lose them. Another 328,000 in Florida, 200,000 in New York, 97,000 in Georgia, and 176,000 in Washington state face cuts, to name just a few standouts.

Almost one in five Wisconsin households currently getting help with their groceries will lose the benefit, as well as 16% of such households in Oregon, Nevada, Iowa, and Delaware. Two of every 13 SNAP households in Minnesota and Texas will have to find food money elsewhere.

The administration plans to slash benefits by ending a popular, bipartisan policy known as broad-based categorical eligibility (BBCE). That policy protects low-wage workers from a quirk of poverty-assistance law known as the “benefits cliff,” whereby earning or saving slightly too much money can trigger a low-income family’s eviction from public assistance programs.

Ending the expanded eligibility system for SNAP will also boot roughly half a million kids out of free school meal programs nationwide. The administration has insisted those kids could all hop right back in by filling out application forms currently mooted by the BBCE system, but experts have warned it doesn’t necessarily work that way.

The administration forecasts a $10 billion total draw-down in SNAP spending over the next five years once the policy is enacted. It didn’t estimate the long-term costs of making families hungrier and more desperate.

“Allowing families whose gross income is a little over the poverty level to receive food assistance helps make sure that both the kids and adults in the family are able to eat,” said Lisa Davis, Senior Vice President at the poverty policy center No Kid Hungry. “Children that don’t get the nutrition that they need end up with worse health-care outcomes, worse physical and cognitive development, they have poorer outcomes in school, they find it harder to concentrate, they don’t do as well on tests, there are more behavioral issues.”

The administration has always known it would be yanking food assistance away from millions. Department of Agriculture (USDA) officials said as much when they announced the new regulations in August.

“It doesn’t make any sense to us,” Food Research Action Center’s Ellen Vollinger said. “Taking food away from people is just going to make their food security situation worse, make them hungrier. It will have a negative effect on the economy at a time when some economists are warning us we would be in for another downturn.”

Non-profit groups across the country are dutifully filing public comments criticizing the rule and pointing out all the ways the USDA appears to have ignored evidence, congressional intent, and practical facts in issuing its proposal. The 60-day window for such comments closes later in the fall, and the administration will likely face legal challenges if it attempts to handle the objections with a pro-forma sweep of the hand.

But USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue has been determined to kill BBCE for months, ever since Congress decided to retain the policy in last year’s Farm Bill. There’s a strong chance the cut – in some form – will have kicked in by this time next year.

These families earn a little more than the statutory maximum income for SNAP eligibility. But that doesn’t mean they can afford to see even the modest food assistance they currently receive disappear from their monthly budgets.

“They’re making trade-offs between what bills to pay. Do they pay the rent, or get a car fixed so they can keep going to work, or keep the lights on?” Davis said. “We see those families cut back on food first. [BBCE] helps make sure that both the kids and adults in the family are able to eat.”

Trump’s policies hit barely-red states hardest

As Thursday’s state-level figures suggest, the categorical eligibility smackdown is going to hit especially hard in four states where very narrow Trump wins in 2016 tilted the electoral college irrevocably in his favor.

Trump won Wisconsin by less than 23,000 votes last time. He’ll have dumped 118,000 Wisconsin residents off of food stamps by Election Day if the rule goes through as planned.

One in every nine people currently benefiting from SNAP in Michigan will be booted under the rule – roughly 165,000 men, women, and children in total. Trump won the state by just 10,704 votes last go round.

In Pennsylvania, which Trump carried by just under 47,000 votes, his food stamps cut will dump more than five times that many people off the food-aid rolls.

The potential economic and electoral self-sabotage is particularly striking given that bipartisan majorities in Congress have repeatedly rejected this precise policy, as recently as last year. The right-wing crusade against broad-based categorical eligibility has never won a majority of Republican hearts and minds. Like the vast majority of voters who oppose cutting food stamps, the rump of GOP elected understand that BBCE is an effective investment in children’s long-term futures, local economies’ short-term health, and working families’ progress up the income ladder.

“For the most part the attacks on SNAP in recent years have not been successful. Congress has decided not to weaken snap in the 2018 farm bill, rejected multiple crazy assaults on it,” Vollinger said.

“We’re hopeful that there will be enough comment and insight brought to bear during this comment period that the administration would reconsider.”

Hunger’s ripple effect

It’s not just SNAP recipients who will feel the impact: The suffering the administration plans to inflict on working-poor families will likely also be felt in higher-income households, too, in the form of a broader economic slowdown. Consumer spending drives the whole economy. Cutting SNAP benefits means consumers have less to spend.

USDA staff issued updated estimates on the economic multiplier effects of SNAP spending earlier this summer. Though the Trump administration team’s official guesstimate is slightly lower than past multipliers, the report includes a variety of models. Each additional dollar of SNAP benefit paid out generates between $1.50 and $1.80 in total economic activity when the economy is struggling, their tables show.

The agency also broke the economic impacts out by sector, with some surprising results. The trade and transportation industry takes the largest hit from SNAP cuts. But across nine major industrial sectors the agency analyzed, the level of cuts to be imposed by the new eligibility restrictions stand to kill between 27,000 and 32,000 jobs per year over the next half-decade.

Forecasters who make their livings predicting what the economy will do next are already starting to worry that a nationwide recession looms. Multiple states have experienced recessions within their own borders in the past two years, and at least two appear to be on the brink of entering new contractions based on sudden jumps in local unemployment rates.

The national economy is still growing, but at a slower pace over the past two quarters than previously. The investor class is souring on long-term U.S. government bonds, producing the dreaded yet tediously named a “yield-curve inversion” – a phenomenon that does not guarantee a recession, but which has occurred prior to every U.S. recession in the last half-century.

The country’s manufacturing sector had been expanding for three straight years, but in August, it contracted – again, not a surefire sign of an overall downturn, but certainly an unhealthy indicator.

Presidents almost always get too much credit for good economies and too much blame for bad ones, as the financier and policy expert Barry Ritholtz noted in a recent column.

But Trump is doing more to actively poke the markets in the eye than your average president. And while the economist and investor classes grow alarmed about the sorts of sophisticated technical indicators that make the business pages, the administration is also planning to jab the working poor with a sharp stick.

Whether the SNAP cuts Trump seeks would help tip the country into a recession or not, they are certain to make life harder for people ill-positioned to absorb such a pinch. Presidents seeking re-election generally rise or fall with the health of the economy they’re credited – fairly or unfairly – with creating.

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