Changing SNAP (Corrected)

Just posted my guess on the SNAP proposal from the Trump administration--turns out I'm wrong.  There are existing programs to distribute staple foods: 

"Search here to find product information sheets for USDA Foods available to households through the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR), the Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP), and The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP). Staff who operate USDA Foods programs and participants often use this information to help prepare healthy meals. Each fact sheet includes a description of the USDA Foods product, storage tips, nutrition facts, and two recipes that use the product."

So the proposal is to expand the existing programs, not to piggyback on school lunch.  (The website even has recipes for using the staples, though the ratings on most of them are 3 stars out of 5.)

Changing SNAP (Food Stamps)

The Trump administration's budget includes a proposal to provide a portion of SNAP (food stamp) benefits to families in the form of a monthly food package of staples.

The proposal won't go anywhere--the grocers will see to that--so I'm not going to spend time on researching.  Instead, I'll offer the guess, only a guess, that within the USDA bureaucracy someone looked at the existing setup to buy and provide staples to schools (used to be government surplus commodities) and suggest piggybacking on the arrangements to expand and provide packages to families.  For anyone who wants to go further, here's the FNS link.

SNAP and the USe of Time

Don't remember where I got this from.

Note the significant difference in time usage. What it says to me is that SNAP recipients, specifically mothers with kids, are time-constrained so they buy food which can be microwaved or is otherwise ready to go.  Individuals who receive SNAP benefits have time to cook.  Extrapolating, it means that SNAP  mothers are feeding their kids more fast foods.  My guess is that's less a "food desert" problem than a time scarcity problem.

West Virginia, Farm Bill, and Food Stamps

The Post had an article on how West Virginia has changed from a bastion of Democracy to a state shortly to be dominated by Republicans.  In it, they mentioned that JFK's first executive order included a reactivation of a pilot food stamp program.   This morning Farm Policy discusses the conference committee on the farm bill with the food stamp program being the top issue.

A couple thoughts:

•   even in 1960, black poverty was mostly invisible.  Civil rights issues sucked all the air out of the room, leaving little room to consider other issues.  So the poverty in the Appalachian region was a big focus.  Not only did JFK do the food thing, he also got legislation creating an Appalachian Regional authority, covering parts of 13 states.  The idea was a pale imitation of the TVA, trying to coordinate federal programs to help the area (which included my home county).
• the references to "food stamp program" are a bit misleading. Beginning in the 1930's the Feds distributed surplus commodities to the needy.  In 1939 there was a brief attempt at food stamps--allowing the needy to buy stamps which could be used only to purchase food.  But I believe that program died with WWII.  The surplus distribution more or less continued.  (I'm not sure, but I think schools, Indian tribes, and foreign countries all got surplus food in Ike's administration, along with some of the poor.
•  JFK's order really started a new food stamp pilot project, which worked okay and got legislated in 1964.  I believe, without checking, that Sen. McGovern was a major force behind it. By 1964 the Harrington book on Poverty in America was making an impact; awareness of poverty among blacks was growing, but it still wasn't as racially centered as it seems today.  (Used to be, and probably still is, that the majority or at least plurality of food stamp recipients were white.) That's perhaps why some West Virginians discount the importance of SNAP; the program seems part of the landscape and no longer seems an effort by Dems to help WV whites.
• the problems with distributing surplus food to the food are somewhat similar to foreign aid (PL-480)--you have to establish channels to ship the food to the right destination and the available surpluses aren't necessarily what is most needed by the recipients.  So food stamps for the poor were similar to today's ideas of "monetarization" of food aid. 
• food stamps used to be sold, so you'd get $10 face value of stamps for $x in cash.  The idea was to expand the poor's spending on food.  As the program has evolved, that element faded away. 

Eating on Food Stamps

Rep. Stockman's staffer reports the results of a week on food stamps.

His purchases:

For $21.55 Ferguson purchased at Dollar Tree:
Two boxes of Honeycomb cereal
Three cans of red beans and rice
Jar of peanut butter
Bottle of grape jelly
Loaf of whole wheat bread
Two cans of refried beans
Box of spaghetti
Large can of pasta sauce
Two liters of root beer
Large box of popsicles
24 servings of Wyler’s fruit drink mix
Eight cups of applesauce
Bag of pinto beans
Bag of rice
Bag of cookies

For $6.03 at the Shoppers Food Warehouse next door Ferguson bought a gallon of milk and a box of maple and brown sugar oatmeal.

 The total cost is about 4 dollars less than the $31.50 Dems have been using.  I'm not sure I'd call it "eating well" as Stockman does, but he has the right idea, mostly.  Lots of rice and beans, some pasta and cereals--cheap calories and nutrition. He could have varied it by buying more in bulk over time.  I'd suspect it's a fairly healthy diet, vegetarian, although there's no fresh fruits or vegetables at all. 

Of course, I'd not want to be him when he feeds two young kids this diet for a week.  A stop at St. Elizabeth's might be next.

Editing Mistakes and Crop Insurance Fraud Used as a Weapon

In the political infighting over the farm bill, with supporters of farm programs attacking SNAP (food stamps) the SNAP people are fighting back by citing crop insurance fraud.  There's an article in the NY Times this morning on the subject--obviously the SNAP proponents have dug up some ammunition, including the recent NC case and a GAO report.  That's all good. 

What's not so good is this correction:

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated the annual spending for the food stamp program and the amount of fraud involved. The budget is $75 billion a year, not $760 billion. The amount of fraud is around $750 million, not $760 million. The article also contained another error: Federal data shows that the rate of food stamp fraud, which has declined sharply in recent years, now accounts for .01 percent of the $75 billion program, or about $750 million a year; not 1 percent.

 Apparently the Times has fired so many fact checkers that they've no one left who knows the difference between 1 percent and .01 percent.  They were right the first time and their correction is wrong.

Corey Booker Revisited

Politico has an article on Corey Booker's menu on food stamps, at least one they suggest. The menu shows all the faults I assumed in my previous post on the subject: prices which don't allow for bulk buying, which is the way to go.

I also have to wonder about the prices they use: they say 2 Safeway eggs would be 53 cents, meaning they're allowing $3.18 for a dozen.   That seems high, I think our last purchase was about $2 and 18 eggs are even cheaper.  Maybe eggs are pricier in NJ?

Living on Food Stamps

Periodically some public figure tries living on food stamps to prove a point.  The latest such is Mayor Corey Booker, as reported here.

I think these are stunts, not signifying a thing.  If you're going to eat an adequate diet on food stamps, you've got to cook.  If you have to cook, you need a stove, you need utensils, and you need a stock of staples going into your week (i.e., flour, sugar, cooking oil, salt, etc..).  The second prerequisite is buying in bulk.  Buy big and buy cheap.  Buy 10 pound bags of rice.  Buy the bargains at the sales. Make big batches and freeze (assuming your refrigerator works).

Unfortunately living poor means you're more liable to unexpected adversity, and expected adversity, so you need to dip into your stocks and deplete the money and food stamps needed to buy big.    

The Paradox of "Food Insecurity"

ERS has its annual report on food insecurity.

There's a paradox here: the number of people receiving food stamps is at an all-time high. The number of "food insecure" people is high.  The number of obese people is high, with the poor having the highest proportion of obesity. This seems to me to amount to a paradox.

What's going on?  To analyze it, there's four characteristics of people:

1. poverty
2. "food insecure"
3. obese
4. receive food stamp

Receiving food stamps is a binary attribute: you either do or you don't during the time frame, the other three are more scalar, but government surveys convert them into binary attributes.  With 4 attributes, there's 16 possible combinations, ranging from: poor and food insecure and obese and receiving food stamps to not poor and not food insecure and not obese and not receiving food stamps.

It seems we don't have good data to map the distribution of people into those 16 combinations.  We can assume we know how the world works:

 In one conception, the people getting food stamps are the poorest of us; everyone who is really poor gets food stamps and only the poor get food stamps. In that world, everyone who is poor and obese gets food stamps. Implications:

•  food stamps are well distributed
• the food insecure get food stamps but don't manage them well.
• the food insecure are also obese, perhaps because they binge eat.

In another conception of the world, the world of the poor divides into two portions: one set is poor, no food stamps, and food insecure; the other set is poor, gets food stamps, and not food insecure.  Implications:

• food stamps are poorly distributed
• food stamps fill their role of preventing hunger and the only social problem is getting all the poor to participate in the food stamp program.
• NOTE: the missing issue is where are the obese in this conception.  

Now the ERS report says 57 percent of the food insecure participated in a food program (food stamps, WIC, and a third program), but they compare apples and oranges: food insecurity is for a calendar year, participation in food stamps, etc. is for the month before the survey, meaning a family which suffered food insecurity in January, goes on food stamps in July and is surveyed in August would count as food insecure.

What's my point: the ERS work lacks essential information.  Of course, in their defense I can imagine their surveyors would be reluctant to carry a scale and tape measure with them on their interviews so they could check the BMI of the respondents.   One of the prices we pay for privacy is the lack of information to make good policy.

FNS and Lost SNAP Cards

A smattering of stories reporting on the Food and Nutrition Service's proposed regulation (out for public comment) permitting states to request justification for issuing a replacement SNAP (food stamp) EBT card when it's the fourth one within a year.  Here's the FNS post.

This bothers me, but probably not enough to do the research I'd need to.  I'm bothered in part by this language:

The proposed minimum threshold is based on an analysis by FNS of electronic transaction data that demonstrates a statistically significant difference when a client reaches his or her fourth replacement card, indicating that transaction activity is three times more likely to be flagged as potential trafficking, which is the exchange of benefits for cash or other consideration, compared to clients with three or fewer replacement cards.

Now I'd assume the EBT cards operate like a debit card; lose one, you notify the issuer and they put a hold on the account and you get a new card.   I can understand that some of the SNAP recipients are prone to lose their cards; while not a recipient I've trouble losing things as my senility comes on faster.  So what I would imagine happens: recipient goes to the store on Monday and uses the card.  Recipient absent-mindedly puts the card in the trash on the way out.  Recipient needs the card on Wednesday and finds it's missing.  Recipient notifies issuer.  If someone found the card and used it, then there'd be a couple days of transactions.  So I could handle issuing a replacement with no more justification than "I lost it and can't find it" and having the government cover the transaction costs..  And it'd probably be hard to differentiate between the misuse of a found card and the use of a card sold by the SNAP recipient, just by looking at the transactions.

But, from the language I quoted I'm not sure that's what's going on.

And my bottom line would be, the default position for the government should be no more forgiving than a commercial bank is.