Take the Food Stamp Challenge ~  Live on a Food Stamp Budget for One Week

U.S. Representatives James McGovern (D-MA), Jo Ann Emerson (R-MO), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), and Tim Ryan (D-OH) have pledged to live on an average food stamp budget -- just $3 a day -- from May 15-21, 2007 and have invited other Members of Congress to join them in the Food Stamp Challenge.  The spouses of Reps. McGovern and Emerson will also be taking the challenge.  A number of advocate groups and Congressional staff are also expected to take part.

Members of Congress are living on a food stamp budget for one week in order to raise visibility and understanding around the challenges that millions of low-income American's face in obtaining a healthy diet under current food stamp benefit levels.

The Farm Bill, which includes the Food Stamp Program, is due to be reauthorized in Congress this year.

Throughout the week, Reps. McGovern, Emerson, Schakowsky, and Ryan as well as others taking part in the challenge, will post their experiences on the Congressional Food Stamp Challenge blog.

Read the Dear Colleague sent by Representatives Jim McGovern (D-MA) and Jo Ann Emerson (R-MO)

Read the Food Stamp Challenge Registration and Guidelines

To learn more about the Food Stamp Program, visit the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Service site.

Comments

[kevin mcdaniel]

I know there have been many who have suffered so much more in America's past to bring attention to urgent issues.And there are those who suffer daily from hunger. But I am so grateful for Jim, his wife, and the other members of congress who are going through great physical and mental stresses to bring the devastating hypocracy that is America's claim to be the richest country on earth, when in fact it is proven to be the most selfish, callous and greedy nation. Corporate CEOs are paid ungodly amounts of bloody cash, while their puppet politicians wrangle and sweat about raising the minimum wage to the welfare standard of just over $7/hr. Disgusting. Thank you Mr McGovern and the rest of you who represent what really being a good person is about. It is people like you who make me proud to be an American, and worms like King George Bush (either one) who make me ashamed.

[Citizen A.]

http://hillbillyhousewife.com/
has great info on feeding a family on next to nothing.

[Lynne Livingston]

As a child, in a family of 8, we were on food stamps many times. We also received butter, cheese, some dreadful canned meat and tuna from the government (I was too young to know what program that was). But I remember my mother trying to stretch the food from week to week and there never being enough. I am grateful that my husband and I don't have to worry about where our children will get their next meal or whether they will get their next meal. It is a travesty that our country gives only $21.00 a week to feed a family (no matter how large the family that's horrendous). We are a wealthy nation and should do more with public programs to make sure the less fortunate are taken care of.

[ThomET]

did the challenge work in ANYway?
did it solve anything?
did it help anything?
would you post your findings please?
Yes We are a wealthy nation and should do more with public programs to make sure the less fortunate are taken care of.but....will we?

[Stephanie Schuler]

Thank you for helping show how impossable it is to live on foodstamps. I am a 42 yr old femaledissabled due to illness.I need to eat organic as well.I get 623 a mo on SSI and 150 a mo foodstamps. I was getting 100.00 .I now live alone , the rent is 530.00 , with electric,phone and med bills as well as others.Do the math it doesnt work. Please help with the housing shortage for dissabled adults on ssi and dissablity.the waiting list can be 2-5 yrs.I am a wreck trying to live on this. I need help finding a place for under 350.00 for my feline companions and myself that is safe and livable.If anyone can help ,please do. we need to treat our poor and dissabled better than this.What if it was your kid, your grandmother?Would you help then.Do you know if we get help finnacially it is taken out of the litte money we get?!So thanks for trying to show how u can eat crap for what they give you to live on.maybe it will make those who make the rule change. I can only pray it happens before myself and many like me are on the streets or give up . S Schuler, Raleigh NC

[kim]

A single mom with a couple of kids living in Alabama gets $371 per month in food stamps.

Folks, it's not $3 per day per family. It's per family member and sometimes it's more than $3 a day. Nothing irritates me more than to read articles about how we are starving people on food stamps by using the $3 a day number.

Check out the budget boards online, there are thousands of families spending less and feeding more people. They make the effort. They make meal plans. They cook things from scratch. Why should we expect less of a family that uses food stamps?

[Walter Jeffries]

Why such a short period of time? To be meaningful how about doing this challenge for a whole year.

[Dick King]

The average food stamp allotment may be $21 per person per day -- I'll take the challenge authors' word for that -- but the food _budgets_ are not that low but are the amounts described in the table in this government document: http://www.fns.usda.gov/fsp/applicant_recipients/fs_Res_Ben_Elig.htm .

The point to keep in mind is that if you get less money than that table shows it's because the food stamp office applied an income test and found your income to be high enough that you should be expected to supplement food stamps with your own money.

I find this to be disengenuous, since I found this table with two Yahoo searches and the representatives involved in the challenge almost ccertainly understood food stamp calculations as well as I came to understand them in ten minutes of research. The allotment should have been $35 per day. Yes, I spend more on food than that, but $35 is categorically more than $21.

-dk

[Chris Chico]

Not that I believe food stamps are not sufficient but if the system needs more funds they need to revamp the requirements. As a nation we need to stop enabling lazy people and educate them better so they can afford to feed themselves! Not to mention that we are promoting irresponsible reproduction instead of penalizing it in a time of limited resources.

[r€nato]

I agree wholeheartedly with Chris Chico. We should strengthen the gene pool by allowing the poor to starve to death. I like to call it the Final Solution to poverty.

[Bev]

I just heard about this challenge and how some are saying how "impossible" it is to live on such a low amount of money. I beg to differ! My family of 3 has been living on an $80 a month food budget for over a year now. We eat healthy and get in our fruits and vegetables. I make a lot of things homemade and hardly buy processed items. We are definitely not starving or hungry either and the three of us thrive on $20 a week. And this "challenge" is saying it is "hard" to eat on $21 a week for ONE person?? WOW! If we had $63 a week for our family, which is $252 a month for a family of 3.....that would be a whole lot of food! We don't get food stamps, or WIC or any other type of government assistance but sounds like we could eat more on food stamps lol.

[网站建设]

thanks a lot,very good

[Randy]

Where does this $3/day come from? Here in Mass people get 3-5 times that.

[Acai Berry Detox]

hmm very interesting good read thanks

[Old Postage Stamps]

Not quite the stamps that I was after but looks like an interesting challange.

[Financial Spread Betting]

I think that this is a really good idea. Why shouldn't members of the congress live like normal people have to.

[Printing Mailing]

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