Yesterday I wrote about my own experiences from the free lunch system and how Arizona is planning to allow schools to opt out of it. Now here in Kansas we found a way to take food out of children's mouths a different way. Through the food stamp system.
In the war on "illegals" the state has made it where children of the parent are punished. Kansas has taken away the children's ability to receive food assistance. See these children are US citizens most of the time, but the fear that we would feed the "brown people" has filled the air here in this farm state. As we throw food off the continental shelf people here sit hungry. You can drive by fields and fields of wheat, corn, soybeans, then fields not planted, the farmer paid not to plant the field to keep prices in the commodities market up on top of it. The bread basket has hungry children.
http://www.kansascity.com/...
Under the old system, when Pedro’s family applied for benefits for his two U.S. children about a year ago, he was making $1,600 a month.
Kansas would use only a portion of that income (two-fifths, or $640) when determining whether the household was eligible for food stamps. (A family of five U.S. citizens earning $1,600 a month also would qualify.) Pedro said his daughters received $280 a month in food stamps.
Under the new policy, SRS doesn’t adjust the household income to account for the three non-citizen member. So while SRS counts the family’s full $1,600 income, it calculates food stamp eligibility as if the two citizen children were the only people in the household. At that income level, Pedro says he was told they don’t qualify.
Kansas is one of only four states opting to use this policy, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The others are Arizona, Utah and Nebraska.
“This is not a time, with this economy, when we should be withdrawing help from struggling families with children,” said Stacy Dean, vice president for food assistance policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington. “We have a demonstrated problem of food insecurity in this country and, in Kansas, this policy takes you further away from being able to solve the problem. It exacerbates the problem.”
According to information provided by SRS, from Oct. 1 to the end of 2011, once incomes were recalculated using the new policy, benefits were eliminated for 1,042 households.
SRS says it doesn’t know how many U.S. children living in those households no longer receive benefits.
However, an SRS report shows that in the first month, from October to November, 2,066 children dropped from the food stamp rolls in Kansas.
Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/...
I can tell you this, there was a time when food stamps made me feel rich and blessed. When the larder is empty and suddenly there is a bit a food in it you do feel rich. I also can say this for a family of 4 we got 270 dollars a month. At 100 dollars a week on just basics it doesn't go far.