A "loophole" that helps hungry Americans buy food
On Friday, President Obama signed the 2014 farm bill into law, complete with a change to the food stamps program intended to save the federal government $8.7 billion. Republicans wanted much deeper cuts, and some of us liberals thought it was unwise to make any cuts to a vital, extremely effective antipoverty program (crazy bleeding hearts). So, yay compromise. If that’s your thing, you can join the president in praising Congress for being bipartisan, solving problems, etc.
To mark the signing, both Obama’s agriculture secretary and the Democratic chair of the Senate ag committee echoed the moderate consensus: this reform closes a loophole that was allowing states to game the system on behalf of their people. Now the food stamps program is less loophole-y, and we saved taxpayers some money. Win/win.
Except that the food stamps provision in question isn’t really a loophole—not in the sense that it somehow channels food stamps to people who aren’t actually at risk of hunger. What’s been happening is that states have been giving people small bits of aid for heating bills—sometimes as small as $1—to help them qualify for larger food stamp benefits. According to the federal rules, if you get heating assistance from a federal block grant—money administered by the states—you get more food stamps, too.
