re: Louisiana to require job training for thousands of food stamp recipients

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83% of all SNAP/food stamp benefits go to households with a child, senior, or disabled person. Most food stamp recipients are children and the elderly.

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Food stamp spending is a tiny fraction of overall government spending—just 2%

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Unlike our overseas engagements, the food stamps program is highly efficient in terms of bang for the tax-payers’ bucks: it reaches the majority of people who need it and has been shown to help lift 4.7 million people out of poverty (reducing child poverty by 3%), thereby reducing those societal costs.

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Each dollar spent in food stamp benefits generates nearly double that in local economic activity

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The majority of Americans have consistently supported the food stamp program and think cutting it is the wrong way to reduce government spending.

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The average monthly food stamp benefit per person is only $133.85, or less than $1.50 per person, per meal. Between 2009-2011 the purchasing power of food stamps declined by about 7%, or $47/month for a family of four, due to inflation in the cost of food. Only 55% of food insecure individuals are income-eligible for food stamps, and 29% are not income-eligible for any federal food assistance.

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Food stamp recipients are not lazy. Most food stamp recipients are senior citizens on a reduced income, people with disabilities, or working families with children who are not making enough to cover rent, heating, health care costs, and other necessary expenses, including food.

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The overwhelming majority of SNAP recipients who can work do so. Among SNAP households with at least one able-bodied adult, more than half work while receiving SNAP, and more than 80 percent worked in the year prior to or the year after receiving SNAP. These rates are even higher for families with children.

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There just seems to be a ton of misconceptions when it comes to this. People assume the worst with this.

I am all for cracking down on eligibility for food stamps, but keep in mind a majority of people actually do need this as they have no way to work due to disability/elderly/kids who qualify. Also, if you want to be mad about your tax dollars being spent.. perhaps channel it against other terrible spending and corruption.. this doesn't account for a big percentage of spending.. and it provides huge returns for the community.

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Despite such allegations, the USDA, which administers SNAP/food stamps, and the GAO, an independent federal agency charged with auditing and evaluating government programs, have definitively shown such arguments to be false. Furthermore, there is much less fraud in the food stamp program than the hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud in the farm programs that other members of Congress seem determined to protect.

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I don't know if I believe this, but I would consider cracking down on any who are receiving it falsely. They should enforce who truly qualifies. I am fine with food stamps for true disabled & very elderly.