Food Stamp Numbers Game

Regarding "Food Bank CEO eating on a poverty budget", Lisa Falkenberg documents the challenge taken by Brian Greene, CEO of Houston Food Bank to survive on what is alleged to be the average weekly budget provided by federally subsidized food stamps, aka SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), estimated to be $28 per week.  The intent of this article to portray welfare spending as measly is misleading on a number of levels.  First, the $28 weekly number is itself is easily challenged, since available data show that in 2011, spending for Food Stamps was $85 Billion for 42 million recipients, an average of $40 per week. 

 

Second, nowhere in her article does Ms Falkenberg bother to explain that food stamp subsidies are "means tested", with the lowest income recipients getting far more than $28 per week, and higher income recipients getting far less.  And what is totally unremarked upon is the totality of the scores of available welfare programs at the municipal, state and local level for food, housing, utilities, medical care and outright cash subsidies, which demonstrate that yearly welfare spending for the nation's roughly 105 million recipients is over $9000 per recipient. 

 

Those figures do not include the additional cost of educating the children of the poor, another $10,000 per child per year, nor the two meals per day available at the vast majority of schools, free of charge. 

 

I'm confused as to what purpose articles like this serve, other than to mislead.  With out-of-control Entitlement spending bankrupting the nation, you'd think Custodians such as Mr. Greene would have an obligation to advocate for more responsible use of taxpayers' dollars, and avoid misleading publicity stunts designed to promote more out-of-control spending.

 

Pete Smith

Cypress