SNAP: They need your voice

(Recently Tom Sell and I were panelists for the Lubbock County League of Women Voters. They asked me to discuss the impact of proposed congressional budget cuts on the SNAP program. Christy Martinez-Garcia, the publisher of Latino Lubbock asked me to summarize my comments. This article appears in the current edition of Latino Lubbock.)

One in seven Americans now receive SNAP benefits.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) provides financial assistance to purchase food for people whose household income is 130% of the federal poverty level. The average participant in Texas receives $132 or less than $1.50 per day.

As you would expect, in times of economic hardship, the cost of SNAP grows. As unemployment declines and household income improves, the cost of SNAP decreases because less families need it.

That number jumped dramatically since 2008 when the economic downturn caused millions of people to lose jobs and income. For those one in seven, SNAP (formerly known as Food Stamps) is a life line to maintain nutritious for food insecure households.

The people using SNAP are your friends and neighbors. People your children go to school with. People you go to church with. People you see when you are out shopping. SNAP targets the most vulnerable people in our nation. According to USDA, seventy-six percent of SNAP households included a child, an elderly person, or a disabled person. These vulnerable households receive 84% of all SNAP benefits.

A debate is taking place in Washington as our elected leaders work to pass a Farm Bill that will fund SNAP in the future. There are some who say the cost is simply too much and we must find ways to reduce the cost by limiting access to the program. The federal budget must be balanced. It is a shame that one in seven Americans must rely on SNAP benefits to supplement their grocery bills they argue.

Others say it is a bigger shame to balance the budget on the backs of the poorest, most vulnerable citizens in our communities. Unemployment has stabilized but it will be several years before people who lost their jobs during the recession regain their financial footing.

Roughly 75% of the families served by the South Plains Food Bank and our network of agencies throughout the South Plains are also receiving SNAP benefits. Just as the number of people utilizing SNAP has increased, the number of families we are serving on a daily basis has increased by 20 percent. The number of families needing assistance has stabilized but it is not going down.

 Recently I visited with a volunteer at one of our agencies, First Baptist Church. She told me they are continuing to see new faces coming to the church asking for help. Many of them are coming from professional jobs.

The average time a family utilizes SNAP and the food bank is nine months. While it may seem forever, it tells me that families are recovering from the downturn, but not very quickly.

The cuts proposed by the House Ag Committee would reduce funding by $16 billion. According to estimates provided by the Texas Food Bank Network, 9,884 people living in our Congressional District, District 19, could potentially lose SNAP benefits. Many of these people will turn to the South Plains Food Bank and our agencies for assistance, further straining our already limited inventory of food.

The cuts are touted as a way to reduce the federal deficit. According to the Congressional Budget Office under the current law, the annual cost of SNAP will decline by $7.5 Billion over the next decade.

You may know one of the 1 in 7. They need your voice. Congress will make a decision soon on the future of SNAP. Now is the time to call our Congressman and Senators to ask them to oppose cuts to the SNAP program. Tell them, “SNAP works. Let’s not balance the budget on the backs of the poor. Please.”

David Weaver
South Plains Food Bank

Soup Kitchen Birthday

I saw a soup kitchen birthday.

I found myself at a soup kitchen on Thursday, June 14, 2012.

As communications director for the South Plains Food Bank part of my job is to find clients willing to speak to us for our hard copy newsletter that gets mailed out about four times a year.

I was at the soup kitchen with a group from California that assists us with gathering interviews and writing the client stories for the newsletter.

There were lots of people there that day to eat lunch – for most of them it was just another day.

But for Yasmin it was a special day.

It was her Birthday. She was turning four years-old.

I watched as the soup kitchen volunteers handed a small gift sack to her. The toddler’s eyes lit up. She pulled at the crumpled up tissue paper – uncovering a Barbie doll and a stuffed animal. Both of which she cuddled throughout the lunch.

One of the volunteers made the announcement that it was Yasmin’s Birthday and led everyone in the traditional Birthday song. They had two day old donated bakery birthday cake, but no candles. Her name wasn’t on the cake, which had already been cut and put into little serving boats. No balloons or little friends to giggle with as she opened her gift.

I cried. I had to step outside because I couldn’t hold it together.

It still makes me cry.

It will haunt me forever.

It changed me forever.

Watching such joy on Yasmin’s face as she opened her one present and hearing everyone sing to her – and witnessing the exceptional kindness of those volunteers made my heart hurt.

It all hit pretty close to home. I have never been homeless, but I know what it is like to have no gift to give your child.

Connor was turning 2 and I had no money. We had found out just three months before that he had type 1 diabetes. I had only been employed full-time for about a month.

I purchased his cake that year using SNAP (food stamps) benefits, but had no money for a gift. I watched as everyone else brought him something, but I had nothing to give him. The Christmas before had been the same way – he would have had nothing under the borrowed tree if it hadn’t been for friends, co-workers, family and even strangers who knew what a difficult time we were having.

It was humbling for me – then and now.

Birthdays should be celebrated – especially by children.

No child should have a soup kitchen birthday.