"Maybe to the surprise of some, this post isn't to disparage SNAP or anyone on it."

And yet you chose to write something minimizing the struggle of families living at the poverty line... "This would seem to be a matter of priorities." I say that's exactly why it's important for people like Booker to illustrate how little this suppliment actually provides.

Oh man, I know I'm going to regret this...

Russ, I agree that for some, it's not enough. But for the majority, it is. If people like Booker are going to be intellectually honest with this exercise, they'll take their $35 a week and add another $20 of their own money. I'm happy to take that challenge and I bet I can eat non-garbage for $55 a week. Heck, I have done it for a whole year. I found ways to make it work.

I'm sure there are people who are wheelchair bound with no family and are homeless with mental illness. They may be unemployable and even if they can get that $35 a week, it is all they'll get. That's an extreme case. But that's not good government to create policy for the extreme cases. Policy is written for the majority and that's who I'm discussing here. Booker is illustrating the extreme when I would like people to discuss the majority.

What a post for Thanksgiving! Let them eat cake!

So let's talk about the majority of the recipients of SNAP.
www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=2226

Roughly 93 percent of SNAP benefits go to households with incomes below the poverty line, and 55 percent goes to households with incomes below half of the poverty line (about $9,300 for a family of three). Also, as explained below, families with the greatest need receive the largest benefits.

Note as well 75% of all SNAP recipients are families with children. So your contention is that living below the poverty line (even with the program benefits) is more than enough for the majority, eh?

Simply because you could live for week or two does not mean there aren't consequences for families. It's real easy to say someone else's kids don't need the same nutriution that we in the middleclass take for granted. Yes, a college kid can eat Ramen noodles for a semester and get by, but I'm guessing even you wouldn't want to try that with a 4 year old.

I suggest you also read the section, "Supporting and encouraging work," in the link above.

Russ - You would be correct, except that many of those families are also receiving:
TANF
WIC
SSDI
Unemployment
Health care
Free education (babysitting)
Free breakfast and lunch at school
Public housing
Heating and electric assistance
Phone bill assistance

So when you and Booker pretend SNAP is all these families receive, you are being intellectually dishonest.

Literally nobody is starving to death in this country. More poor people have trouble with obesity than getting enough to eat. It's hard for me to feel bad when it's *always* the morbidly obese woman buying snack cakes with food stamps in front of me at the supermarket as her three children run around screaming at each other.

Notably housing costs, childcare expense, etc. are factored in to SNAP eligibility. And, yes, you folks clearly have nothing at all against SNAP recipients. Qu'ils mangent de la brioche (let them eat snack cakes?), indeed!

btw, Dan, Booker didn't say anything of the sort. He was responding to a comment from a member of the fringe-right. I found this interesting from the original ABC article.

Rucha Gadre, director of Food Bank Services at Mercer Street Friends, said a family of four making under $3,447 per month in her county gets about $150 to $250 a month through NJ SNAP.

Gadre took the food stamp challenge earlier this year, and she said it was “very difficult.”

“I think [Booker] will understand that the minimum benefit of $16 or trying to live on $30 for the whole week is not sufficient,” Gadre said. “There’s no way you could eat nutritious food.”

Even if Booker sticks to the dollar limit, Gadre said the experience still might not replicate the exact experience of surviving on food stamps, because low-income families might not have the luxury of searching for the cheapest grocery stores.

"Notably housing costs, childcare expense, etc. are factored in to SNAP eligibility"

Riiiight, Russ, and nobody engages in any shenanigans with "family units," "marital status," unreported income, unreported assets, etc. I suppose you think no illegal immigrants receive these benefits either. What planet do you live on?

This discussion shouldn't be about the two extremes-i.e."let them eat cake" or believing there is no substantial abuse of the system.It should be about having a safety net for US CITIZENS and LEGAL RESIDENTS that is sustainable and effective.I diverge from some conservatives on the role of government in addressing poverty and unemployment.We have taken the country I grew up in where you could lose a job and it wasn't the end of the world.Thanks to a variety of factors it can be just that today.
I don't mind my tax dollars being used to feed hungry children here in America.I am truly sick of "nation building"and sending Americans into harm's way for specious reasons.By "Americans"I have no problem including everyone who is legally here.I am a no compromise right winger on things like firearms rights and immigration enforcement,but we really need to take care of our own when we have people who produce nothing and manipulate money make tens of millions of dollars.The best way to defeat communist thinking is to have a society with a large fully employed skilled worker/lower middle class.Plenty of room for rich people and there will always be poor people.
Anyway-have a happy Thanksgiving-I THINK it'a holiday we don't have to argue about.

People have been playing the Food Stamp challenge for years. As Dennis Miller aptly points out the working poor are suckers-they could enjoy the same standard of living labor free by giving up the ghost and relying on Nobama.
In addition to:
TANF
WIC
SSDI
Unemployment
Health care
Free education (babysitting)
Free breakfast and lunch at school
Public housing
Heating and electric assistance
Phone bill assistance

we have free cell phones, attorneys, advocates, under the table income and the NEVER factored into crazy checks for the kids.
It's going to be a fun four years as we head toward the REAL Fiscal Cliff with the attitude of "He gave us a phone, he gonna do mo'"
www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpAOwJvTOio

Anyway-have a happy Thanksgiving-I THINK it'a holiday we don't have to argue about.
Posted by joe bernstein at November 21, 2012 7:18 PM

Not a chance Joe. A holiday Lincoln started:
" as a Day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens"
causes the likes of soulless shi*birds like this Russ Conway character to do nothing but cringe.

@Tommy-I figure people like Russ are just put here to complain so why pay them any mind?I certainly won't going forward.

"It should be about having a safety net for US CITIZENS and LEGAL RESIDENTS that is sustainable and effective."

I'll second all of that.

On the Homeland Security website where they promote social programs (talk about incongruous), do they mention that legal immigrants, for the most part, do not qualify for social programs until they have been here legally for five years? And, of course, illegal aliens don't qualify at all (except here in RI where, inexplicably, pregnant women get the social program red carpet rolled out for them).

dailycaller.com/2012/11/18/homeland-security-promotes-welfare-to-new-immigrants-in-government-welcome-materials/

As an aside, don't forget the high cost of food these days that I attribute, in part, to Obama energy policies (e.g., Keystone pipeline)that raise the cost of transporting food. If the socialists will leave the competitive free market alone, costs to poor people will be lower -- making that $35/week go further.

Art, you're right. Yet Walmart and their low food prices is the bad guy.