Food stamp cuts affecting an estimated 4.7M Black households

By Frederick H. Lowe
Contributing Writer

(Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from TheNorthStarNews.com) — Approximately 4.7 million African-American households recently saw their monthly food stamp allotment dramatically reduced, Bread for the World has reported.

Bread for the World, a non-partisan, Christian citizens’ movement in the United States to end hunger, determined the number of Black households that would be affected by cuts in food stamps with United States Department of Agriculture data.

In 2010, Congress voted to cut $11 billion from Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programs or SNAP, and the first of three fiscal years of cuts began this week.

During the first fiscal year of the cut, which ends Sept. 30, 2014, $5 billion will be sliced from the program. It is not known how much money will be cut in each of the following two years.

Overall 47.6 million families will be affected by the cuts to food stamps, reports Washington, D.C.-based Bread for the World.

A family of four would lose $36 per month in food stamps, reports Bread for the World.

”This means families will have less money to spend to buy food,” Eric Mitchell, Bread for the World’s director of Government Relations, last told The NorthStar News & Analysis.

Bread for the World is now urging Americans to call their congressman and their senators to vote against additional deep cuts to SNAP via the Farm Bill.

The House passed a bill that would cut SNAP by another $39 billion. The cut would kick nearly 4 million individuals off the program and reduce benefits for thousands more, said Bread for the World officials.

The senate bill would cut SNAP another $4 billion. The two bills are now in a House-Senate Conference Committee.

This article originally published in the November 25, 2013 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.