Last week Congress conference agreement on 2008 Farm Bill makes numerous improvements in domestic food assistance programs to help low-income Americans put food on the table in the face of rising food and fuel prices. The changes could provide an additional $9 million in the next fiscal year and could assist an additional 211,000 people by 2012.
The following is from an analysis by Dorothy Rosenbaum for the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. To read her full report click here. To read our prior posts on hunger click here.
The nutrition title of the conference agreement includes more than $10 billion over ten years in increases in these programs - including $7.8 billion for the Food Stamp Program, $1.26 billion for the Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP), and $1 billion for the free fresh fruits and vegetable snack program, which is targeted to schools with high shares of low- income families.
The nutrition title of the farm bill would:
End years of erosion in the purchasing power of food stamps by raising and indexing for inflation the program’s standard deduction and minimum benefit.
These changes would help about 11 million low income people, including families with children, seniors, and people with disabilities. With these changes, Food Stamp Program rules would fully account for annual inflation for the first time since the program’s creation over 40 years ago, and food stamp households would stop losing food purchasing power each year.
Support working-poor families by eliminating the cap on the dependent care deduction, Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Advocacy, center for budget and policy priorities, farm bill, food stamp program, Hunger
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