Unit 5
Republicans Want to Cut SNAP Funding

Summary:
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), also known as Food Stamps, assists roughly 46.5 million Americans every month.  It is a federal aid program that helps low and no income families buy food and is administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.  The number of people enrolled in the SNAP program greatly increased during the recession a few years ago, but now Republicans want to cut some funding to the SNAP program that would save an estimated $125 billion over ten years by switching to block-grants to states.  The amount of money a state receives currently is determined by the state's needs.  They are proposing that states receive a set chunk of money every year to spend on the program.  Republicans propose that moving SNAP to the state level would reduced administrative costs, but the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities claim that more than 90 percent of the money for SNAP goes right to the EBT cards, and not for administrative purposes, which means the cuts would be directly affecting families.

Analysis:
According to a CBO report a 15 percent budget cut would reduce benefits as much as $600 a year for some families.  When you look at $600 over the course of a year, that isn't that much per month.  It's about as much as a cell phone bill, in some cases it's even less.  Cutting some funds to this program, in my opinion, wouldn't be that bad of an idea.  It could save billions of dollars and save the taxpayers money.  I understand helping out people who are truly in need, but I don't want to be paying taxes to help pay for peoples' Sunday morning coffee and doughnuts. Maybe instead of cutting funding for the program, they can put tighter restrictions on the people they let receive benefits from SNAP and save the money for people who are truly in need.  SNAP is a federal aid program designed to help people, making it part of our Social Policy.  We extensively discussed social policy during unit 5 along with economic policy, foreign policy, and other public policies.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121316/republican-house-budget-proposal-would-cut-snap-food-stamps