◼ link - Andrea Peyser/New York Post
On Nov. 1, sizable cuts were gouged into the federal food-stamp program (or, as it’s now called, SNAP, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), which feeds 47.6 million people, or nearly one in six Americans. In the city, 1.9 million folks get the bulk of their Jell-O and Campbell’s Soup from stamps.
But news has spread among the poor, like leafy green vegetables, that it wasn’t heartless Republicans who triggered the cuts.
Rather, some of the food-stamp cash was snatched to pay for Michelle Obama’s pet project, Let’s Move.
What?
It’s come to this. Some 76 million meals a year will vanish from this city — poof! — partly because the president diverted money from SNAP to the first lady’s signature program, part of her Let’s Move anti-obesity initiative — the bean-sprout-heavy, $4.5 billion Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act....
The great food grab began in 2010, when President Obama, with Michelle and US Department of Agriculture honchos at his side, signed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. At the time, he admitted taking cash from one pocket to feed the other.
“Some of the funding [for the lunch program] comes from rolling back temporary increases in food-stamp benefits,” he said, starting in the fall of 2013.
“I’m committed to working with [Congress] to restore these funds in the future.”
It proved to be magical thinking.
Part of the problem is that the food-stamp program has grown like wildfire under Obama — to $80 billion last year, with a more than 70 percent increase in recipients just since 2008.
◼ RECORD: OVER 47 MILLION ON FOOD STAMPS FOR ENTIRE YEAR - Wynton Hall/Breitbart
