Trump Cuts Food Assistance to a Million Claimants

FOOD POVERTY - Despite the coronavirus pandemic the Trump administration has no plans to scrap or delay a rule change that could strip federal food assistance from a million claimants – a programme called SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program).

The rule would impose more strict work requirements on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients and constrain states’ authority to waive those requirements — people are questioning the sense of this in the middle of a pandemic.

Sonny Perdue, head of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, told House lawmakers during an Appropriations Subcommittee hearing this week that the Trump administration considered pushing back implementation of the rule, set for April 1, but ultimately decided against it.

Image: Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) 

“Really it’s a cruel rule, taking food out of the mouths of hungry individuals,” Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) told Perdue during the budget hearing on Tuesday.

1.3 to 1.5 million people could lose federal nutrition assistance under the Trump administration’s SNAP rule change. The Agriculture Department’s own estimate indicated that the rule would strip benefits from more than 700,000 people.

ABC Comment: As in the UK the stripping of the benefits system is being used to subsidise tax cuts to corporations, wealthy inderviduals and to tackle the deficit, paying the bankers who caused the Great Recession, not their victims.