by Binoy Kampmark / May 18th, 2013
The United States might well be the most powerful nation on earth
in terms of military muscle, and wield economic clout despite being
severely humbled by the financial crisis. The country of business and
capital is not bound to fall off the historical stage too soon. Its
poor, however, might. Little is known about the huge swath of poverty
that prevails in the country, other than an unhealthy sense that the
existence of wealth presumes the existence of poverty. The United
States remains transfixed by a gilded age, obsessed, as William Dean
Howells suggested, by inequality. The Founding Fathers were less
interested in the essence of a democratic impulse than a republican
order, one of neat balance rather than levelling justice.
The politics of the belly remains a sensitive business, and political
leaders have been concerned what the hungry stomach might do. What
matters is wading off starvation, predicting what “nutrition levels” the
poor require, and how they might manage the logistics of reaching
grocery stores and food outlets. Much of this remains logistical
fantasy but important. “We got a picture of a gorge, with farm
surpluses on one cliff and under-nourished city folks with outstretched
hands on the other,” claimed Milo Perkins, responsible for the first
Food Stamp Program implemented in May 1939. Chronic unemployment existed
alongside agricultural surpluses that threatened to go to waste.
Food stamp schemes have remained a feature of the U.S. republic
since, a never-ending reminder of Perkins’ symbolic, and actual gorge of
inequality. Their effectiveness has been praised for not being
geographically restrictive, or periodical (such as school meals). The
technical boffins evidently felt that a revision of the term was needed,
coming up with the current term SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance
Program) in 2008. Current numbers of recipients (or “participants” as
policy analysts prefer) hover around 47 million.
The American Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA)
increased the SNAP benefit by 13.6 percent beginning April 2009. It was
always something of a shock absorber, a measure to make sure the
disaffected poor would be able to have something in their belly. But as
human vulnerability is treated as weakness by the budget hawks of the
GOP, the scheme was always going to come under criticism and eventual
savaging.
As of late, the axe man in chief is Paul Ryan, who holds the reins of
the House Budget Committee like a horseman of the apocalypse. Previous
estimates had projected Ryan’s cuts at hitting families of three by
about $20 to $25 a month, making it about $240 to $300 a year (Centre
for Budget and Policy Priorities, May 1). The cuts, it seems, promise
to be deeper than that – a staggering slash of $135 billion, or almost
18 percent over the next ten years. Chairman Ryan is evidently of the
view that the growth of SNAP’s budget is a problem that needs to be
rectified, even if it is not contributing to the nation’s long-term
budgetary issues.
As senior policy analyst Dottie Rosenbaum points out, writing for the
Centre on Budget and Policy Priorities (May 14), “The Congressional
Budget Office projects that SNAP spending will fall to 1995 levels as a
share of Gross Domestic Product by 2019.” Damn the state coffers,
private charities and non-profits such as Feeding America can mop up the
mess.
The way Ryan has proposed implementing the cuts will be accelerated,
with an initial $125 billion slashed over a period of five years. This
promises to involve a few standard tricks of the budgetary trade. One
is to implement cuts by changing the criteria for people to receive
them. Another might be to set the maximum SNAP benefit at 73 percent of
the Thrifty Food Plan. This, as Stacy Dean notes in the
Huffington Post
(May 19), is the estimate arrived by the U.S. Agriculture Department in
terms of assessing a family’s needs to afford a basic, adequate diet.
What is promised is an unprecedented across the board reduction that
will affect all recipients.
As most SNAP recipients – 80 percent or so – live below the poverty
line, with 42 percent earning incomes half that of the poverty line,
such cuts will be a vicious battering. In terms of numbers, we are
talking about 22 million children, of which 10 million live in
conditions deemed “deep poverty”. Keeping a populace fed might be the
sacred cow of many states but in the United States, it is a governmental
burden that requires lifting. The accountants promise to do violence
to the poor – again.
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