Twenty years ago, I participated in what was called the Food Frugality Challenge, designed to educate people from our community about what a family could afford on the amount provided by what then were known as food stamps, now as SNAP, for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
Since the average SNAP allocation at the time in Pennsylvania was 89 cents per person per meal, that was our challenge for a week. I kept a journal to catalogue how that went. My choices weren’t that interesting, outside of a dinner of reheated M&M pancakes. We ate lots of eggs and pasta.
I’ll get back to what I learned in a moment. I’m reminiscing because the federal government shutdown has focused attention on SNAP and its suspension, at least until the Trump administration responds to multiple court orders by providing some partial emergency funding. Losing SNAP would affect 2 million Pennsylvanians, roughly 1 in 8 state residents.
Private donors, governments and organizations of all kinds across the Lehigh Valley and the country are mobilizing to provide more support for food banks and other sources that would be needed to help make up the difference. That response is one of the few positive elements of this crisis.
People tend to react to the SNAP suspension in two different ways.
One is to be appalled that our most vulnerable residents will have to pay the price for our elected leaders’ inability to govern properly. Can’t they lock these people in a room until they figure out a way to reopen our government and address the health insurance crisis millions of people are facing? (And while they’re at it, do the same to Pennsylvania legislators whose appalling failure to pass a budget is increasingly damaging to schools, local governments and social agencies?)
The other reaction is that this may be a good thing, because we have too many freeloaders who should be forced to go out and work for a living instead of living high on the hog using our tax dollars. I’ve heard and seen more and more ignorant, bigoted comments from elected officials who have long since embraced cruelty as a winning political strategy.
During the Food Frugality Challenge, I learned a lot about the misconceptions people had about SNAP, many of which are resurfacing now.
One thing I found is that healthy food is expensive. It’s a lot cheaper to eat pasta and other fattening food than a balanced, nutritious diet.
Anyone who wanted a luxurious meal would have to sacrifice a lot the rest of the month, since the average allocation these days is just over $6 per person per day.
As for the makeup of recipients, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, more than 43% of Pennsylvania’s SNAP recipients are in working families. Almost 58% are in families with children. More than 44% are in families with members who are older adults or disabled. About 69 percent have incomes below the poverty line.
And they’re not cheating anyone. Pennsylvania’s fraud rate is under 1%. I got a lot of response to those columns back in 2005, including social service providers and people who were or should have been SNAP recipients.
One was a woman who didn’t have enough income to feed herself and her two children, but resisted accepting food stamps. Instead, she lied to her kids about having a big lunch at work, gave them all the dinner, then privately ate whatever scraps were left afterward.
Another was a woman whose husband left her with three children under age 14. She took a minimum wage job of 39 ½ hours a week — 40 was considered full time, and the company didn’t want any more full-timers — and could barely make ends meet as long as she got her child support payments. When the children’s father stopped making his payments, she applied for food stamps and continued for several months until her child support resumed.
“It enabled me to pay the rent and utilities and provide food for my children, and most likely kept us from being homeless,” she wrote.
“We certainly did not eat steak. Trying to stretch the amount of food stamps received to feed four healthy meals was certainly a challenge. I can tell you how to take one chicken and make three to four meals for four people from it. … Thank you for understanding the many circumstances that put people in need.”
If my car breaks down, if my heat goes out, if I get sick, if my paycheck is delayed, I have the resources to comfortably address the problem. But if you’re living on the edge, any unforeseen expense can have a catastrophic impact on your family.
If you’ve never faced that kind of pressure, that kind of uncertainty, at least try to understand that good people can be dealt very bad hands and that our goal — as individuals, as a society — should be offering a hand up, not judging and punishing.
Our opinions about who is responsible for the government shutdown should be immaterial when it comes to this subject. There are millions of people out there who for all kinds of understandable reasons need help to keep themselves and their children fed.
If you’re pitching in during this crisis, thank you. If you’re pointing fingers, stop.
This is a contributed opinion column. Bill White can be reached at whitebil1974@gmail.com. The views expressed in this piece are those of its individual author, and should not be interpreted as reflecting the views of this publication. Do you have a perspective to share? Learn more about how we handle guest opinion submissions at themorningcall.com/opinions.
