As Congress debates food stamp cuts, working poor worry, By Martha C. White, July 13, 2013, CNBC: “For one in seven Americans, the federal government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, aka food stamps, is all that stands between them and too little food. But the complicated calculus of financial survival for the working poor also means any cuts to the roughly $80 billion SNAP, as it’s known, being considered by Congress would be felt well beyond the grocery checkout line. Buying new school clothes, family outings, even getting a toehold in the financial mainstream could be thrown into limbo…”
Tag: Budget cuts
State Cuts to Unemployment Benefits
States make ‘historic and disturbing cuts’ to unemployment benefits, By Jake Grovum, July 11, 2013, Stateline: “North Carolina drew national attention last week when it dramatically scaled back its unemployment insurance program, ending benefits for tens of thousands and slashing the amount of time that jobless people can collect aid. But the North Carolina reductions, which drew fierce protests in Raleigh, were just the latest in a string of unprecedented and historic state cuts in unemployment aid. Even as the nation’s unemployment rate remains stubbornly high, other states have cut unemployment benefits to levels not seen since the 1935 Social Security Act created the program…”
Sequestration and Long-Term Unemployed
Sequester Hits the Long-Term Unemployed, By Catherine Rampell, July 2, 2013, New York Times: “Sunday was the five-year anniversary of the Emergency Unemployment Compensation program, a federal program signed into law by President George W. Bush that initially added 13 weeks of unemployment benefits to the standard 26 weeks states already offered eligible jobless workers. The 13 additional weeks of benefits were intended to be temporary, but as the recession worsened, Congress decided to keep the program going and even lengthened the amount of time that workers could receive benefits. For a while workers could receive as many as 99 weeks in some states, the longest duration of jobless benefits on record.Those benefits have been pared back over the last year and a half, though, and are being cut more severely now as a result of the across-the-board spending cuts known as the sequester. A new report from the National Employment Law Project calculates exactly how much. . .”