Trump Administration Proposes New Food Stamp Program
By Samantha Woolf 2/14/2018
Courtesy of Creative Commons
The Trump Administration is proposing a new system for feeding families on food stamps. The plan is part of the President’s proposed budget and involves substituting almost half of the current cash benefits with a box of food.
Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said the new system would affect 38 million Americans who currently receive $90 or more through food stamps per month. According to the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture), the new program would save almost $130 billion over 10 years.
The USDA “America’s Harvest Box” would feature foods grown by American farmers. The USDA claims that the box would include the same food value of what households could buy with the removed half of their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits.The boxes will contain poultry, canned vegetables, peanut butter, pasta, and shelf-stable milk.
Critics of the proposed system like Stacy Dean of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities find problems with the possibly limited amount of choice households on will have in their America’s Harvest Box foods and the logistics of families picking up the Harvest Boxes if they do not own a mode of transportation.