The monthly costs for the thrifty plan for a family of four participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is increasing by 31% over the last three years.
The United States Department of Agriculture stated the food stamp benefit amounts are based every year upon the cost of the Thrifty Food Plan.
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A recent federal report shows food insecurity is on the rise in the U.S. while some organizations are pushing to increase the amount for food stamp benefits for families.
The Farm Bill that currently funds the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program has ended, leaving negotiations to continue. SNAP was formerly known as the food stamp program.
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The U.S. federal program formerly known as food stamps had peak spending levels in 2023 that were more than double pre-pandemic times.
Now, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is set to be reauthorized as it reaches the end of its five-year budgeting cycle.
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Nationwide, electronic benefits transfer fraud is estimated to cost taxpayers up to $4.7 billion annually, according to the Government Accountability Office.
In 2022, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program distributed over $113.7 billion to nearly 22 million households.
The federal government entrusts states to reduce fraud in safety net programs. In March, the U.S. Department of Agriculture told all 50 states to plan to fight EBT skimmer fraud, which happens when bad actors install a card reader on top of a legitimate point of sale at a retail store.
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Several prominent Democratic campaign groups accessed Republican voter data as a result of what Snap, the owner of Snapchat, called an unintentional data leak, allowing those groups to optimize midterm ads, Axios reported.
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Spending on food stamps has increased by $53.5 billion – an 89% increase – in the two pandemic years. By comparison, that’s how much the entire program cost in 2009 during the Great Recession.
Spending on the U.S. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program grew 88.5% from $60.3 billion in 2019 to $113.8 billion in 2021. Spending on the SNAP program had previously peaked at $79.8 billion in 2013 before declining for the next six years.
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A recent administrative action has permanently increased benefits for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by 25 percent. Unfortunately, this historic boost fails to address the structural problems that plague this nearly 60-year-old program.
The official Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) webpage proudly proclaims that, “SNAP provides nutrition benefits to supplement the food budget of needy families so they can purchase healthy food…”
To that admirable end, the program formerly known as food stamps distributed $79 billion to 40 million people last year. Yet this desire to provide wholesome food to needy families conflicts with clear evidence that wholesome food is not what they think they need. Whether they play by the rules or not, people receiving SNAP benefits currently spend between 70-100 percent of that benefit on things other than healthy food.
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Virginians who receive food stamps will continue to be eligible for higher pandemic-era benefits through June, the Virginia Department of Social Services announced.
Families receiving food stamps through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program will see additional benefits automatically loaded onto their EBT cards. The funds will be added n June 16.
A household of one will be eligible for up to $234 monthly while the emergency funding continues. A family of two could receive up to $430, a family of three up to $616 and a family of four up to $782. The funding gradually increases for every additional member of a family.
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Stafford County is sending some extra cash to its 3,900 Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients in the form of $150 worth of restaurant vouchers to one of 100 local restaurants. County Board of Supervisors Chair Meg Bohmke said the nearly $800,000 program is the first part of the Stafford Cares initiative, a series of programs aimed at helping the county recover physically, mentally, and financially from COVID-19.
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The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Sunday blocked a Trump administration change to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) that could have removed eligibility for almost 700,000 unemployed, able-bodied Americans.
A lawsuit filed in January by a multistate coalition alleged a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) rule wrongly reversed a decades-old policy that allowed states to waive SNAP work requirements. The previous rules granted waivers for larger geographic areas by lumping certain regions with lower unemployment with locations registering higher unemployment, as well as carryover unused exemptions.
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