After eating for a week like a food stamp recipient, it would suit Rep. Jo Ann Emerson just fine if she didn’t touch chicken salad again for months.
More importantly, the weeklong poverty diet taught Emerson, R-Cape Girardeau, lessons about what it’s like to live on a food stamp budget, she said. She’s renewed her goal to help reform the food stamp system, and she also vowed to be more frugal when grocery shopping.
“We need to help people cut down on eating food that isn’t good for them. It’s very hard to have a balanced diet” using food stamps, said Emerson.
“Boy, it is a safety net. It’s a portion,” she added. But then again, she noted, “the point of food stamps is to get people off them.”
Emerson joined three House colleagues who ate on a food stamp budget for one week in an effort to highlight the food stamp program and changes that are needed. Monday was the final day.
The House members’ $3-per-day eating regimen didn’t paint an entirely accurate picture of life as a food stamp recipient, said Roberto Salazar, who runs the Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service. More than 70 percent of food stamp recipients spend beyond what they receive in food stamps when buying food, he said.
“That’s the intent of this program — to supplement their food budget to give them additional food purchasing power,” Salazar said, applauding the congressional event for raising awareness about the program.
Instead, Emerson and the others acted as if they had no net income, relying solely on a $21-per-person weekly food stamp budget.
“We were more extreme on ourselves,” Emerson said.
A family of four with no net income could receive up to $518 per month in food stamps; a one-person household could get as much as $155. Half of all participants leave the food stamp program within nine months.
Food stamp reform is included in a $20 billion spending bill that Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., introduced this month, with Emerson the lead Republican co-sponsor. The legislation raises minimum benefits and eases access to the program.
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