Food Stamps 70 Percent Increase- Highest It's Ever Been
The number of people using Food Stamps has jumped 70 percent in the last four years, the Congressional Budget Office reported. In 2011 alone, 45 million people received government assistance.
Food Stamp usage is expected to increase until 2014, said the CBO, because by 2014 the economy is expected to turn around and improve. As it stands, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) spent $72 billion last year, which is a $30 billion increase from 2007.
Those numbers are incredibly high and reflect the poor economy, the CBO stated in a new report.
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"Labor market conditions deteriorated dramatically between 2007 and 2009 and have been slow to recover; since 2007, both the number of people eligible for the program and the share of those who are eligible and who participate in the program have risen," the report read.
By 2022, the CBO projects that "34 million people (or about one in 10 U.S. residents) will receive SNAP benefits each month, and SNAP expenditures, at about $73 billion, will be among the highest of all non-health-related federal support programs for low-income households."
Policymakers concerned with the rising costs of the CBO have offered suggestions on how to scale back the program. These suggestions are merely ideas at this time and have not been proposed before Congress or other government leaders.
The first two ideas are to change either the eligibility rules or benefit amount.
"For example, changing broad-based categorical eligibility would decrease average annual outlays by $1.2 billion over the 2013-2022 period and reduce the number of participants by 1.8 million per year," states the report.
The last options including "changing the administrative costs of the program" or "changing the way the program is funded." Transferring money from one government account to the SNAP program could help save $2.5 billion per fiscal year, the CBO estimates.
