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Food Stamp Program Pros And Cons

877 Words4 Pages

Chad Johnson
Suna Ridouane
ENGL 1302
12 September 2014
Have Food Stamps Contributed to an Overly Dependent Underclass?
Imagine it is 3am and you awake from a dream that has your mouth watering for some chocolate chip cookies and vanilla ice cream. You head to the kitchen and open the refrigerator and behold, every food product you ever wanted to purchase was there. The design of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as the Food Stamp Program) is to provide government assistance to purchase food for low and no income people. While some may argue that SNAP contributes to an overly dependent underclass by diminishing the value of work, becoming a burden on taxpayers, and often fraudulently used, others believe …show more content…

The rules for receiving SNAP benefits have allowed individuals to become dependent on the program to the point where there is no urgency to cancel the program. Because benefits are available monthly, a person’s eagerness to find a job has diminished. Likewise, in 2013, SNAP assisted 47 million Americans costing taxpayers $82.5 billion dollars. It is illegal to knowingly use, transfer, acquire, change or possess SNAP benefits in any way not authorized by the Program. States have different thresholds for prosecuting food stamp fraud. For example, In Tennessee, there is a $100 minimum fraudulently obtained before officials will consider prosecuting, but in Texas, the minimum is at …show more content…

The disabled and elderly, children, and the homeless can all benefit from SNAP. The purpose of this program is to provide supplement wages to service low-income individuals during an economic crisis such as unemployment. SNAP is also accommodating when one income in the family is not sufficient to sustain any longer. Nearly 91% of the families availing SNAP are below the poverty line, whereas more than 55% of recipients are currently sustaining below half the line of poverty. The program ensures that the participants in need of more support are given greater

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