Social and economic collapse in America

Demand for food stamps 

soars as cuts sink in and 

shelves empty

More working Americans are lining up at emergency food banks and going hungry, as cuts to those programmes take effect

the Guardian,

24 December, 2013

For Denise Acosta, it was being laid off for the first time. For Diana Martinez, it was the death of her mother, leaving her as the sole carer for her severely disabled younger brother. For Johnny Hill, it was having to take responsibility, a year away from retirement, for her two young granddaughters.

Each of these hard-working women from San Antonio, Texas, have fallen victim to circumstances that turned their lives upside down, robbing them of their full-time jobs, the paychecks they once enjoyed and, in Acosta's case, her home. Their stories vary, but they all belong to a growing group, America's working poor, for whom the journey from getting by to hunger can be brutally short.

Deep cuts to the US food stamps programme, designed to keep low-income Americans out of hunger in the aftermath of the economic recession, have forced increasing numbers of families such as theirs to rely on food banks and community organisations to stave off hunger.

An expansion of the programme, put in place when the recession was biting deepest, was allowed to expire in November, cutting benefits for an estimated 48 million people, including 22 million children, by an average of 7%. 

As these cuts begin to bite, even harsher reductions are in prospect.Republicans in the House of Representatives have proposed $38bn cuts over 10 years, in their latest version of a long-delayed farm bill that would also require new work requirements and drug tests for food stamp recipients.

The cuts have forced poor families to make tough choices. The Guardian spoke to beneficiaries of the food stamps scheme, known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programme (Snap), in San Antonio, Texas. As the second most populous US state after California, Texas suffered the second-biggest cut to its Snap programme, affecting 4 million recipients. 

At the San Antonio Food Bank, where she comes for help with her resume and to register for its work force program, Acosta, 36, a mother of four children aged 14 and under, described how being laid off from her job as a healthcare administrator seven months ago had caused an immediate family crisis. 

An $800 medical bill, no longer covered by insurance, meant Acosta quickly fell behind on the $1,200 monthly payments on her house, then the car. She lost both, and was forced to move in with her sister in Edinburg, Texas, 200 miles south, until her unemployment benefit came through. The strain of having her income slashed has taken its toll.

“For a while I had trouble sleeping. I would go to bed at three and four in the morning and I went through a depression. But I tell myself the children depend on me. I think 'Mind over matter'. People are worse off than me.”

In October, the family's Snap benefits were $113 a month, a sum that lasts them about a week and a half. A letter Acosta received warned her of a Snap cut of $11 for each family member in November. Acosta has learned to be creative: with the children's meals, with juggling bills, with trying to keep the kids from noticing the dwindling food on the table and in their schoolbags as her job search drags on. 

“They are always starving, the boys have a very high metabolism – I don't know where the food goes. I used to buy Lunchables [lunch packs] for snacks, now I get a big pack of ham and cheese and we make our own. They say: 'Why can't we have Lunchables?' I tell them, 'This way they get more.' I buy larger packs of cheaper meat and stretch it out. We buy the cheaper brands of cereal now.

Denise Acosta. Photograph: Karen McVeigh/The Guardian

“If I don't have enough food, the older ones are harder to please. The younger ones will have a tuna sandwich or Roma noodles, around 19 cents a pack. The older ones say 'This isn't even a meal.' I do my best to make sure they don't see a difference. I don't want it to affect them as much as it's affecting me.”

The soaring participation in Snap, which has almost doubled in seven years – from 25 million people in 2006 to almost 48 million today – has made it a prime target for large cuts by Republican lawmakers anxious to save money.

The House bill would deny Snap to 3.8 million low-income people in 2014, according to estimates by the Congressional Budget Office, and to an average of 3 million people a year for 10 years. Those who would find themselves no longer eligible include some of the nation's neediest individuals, working families, children and senior citizens. In addition, 200,000 families would lose access to subsidised school meals.

“That would make it really difficult for people who struggle to find work like me to get back on their feet,” Acosta said.

Even since the November cuts took effect, those involved in emergency food distribution reported higher demand and longer lines, with new clients they had not seen before. The San Antonio Food Bank says donations are up 16% But because of the cuts to Snap the supplies disappear faster.

Eric Cooper, the CEO, said: “For me, October, November and December is harvest season. Our community is at [its] best. There's a great spirit of the holidays and giving is at its peak. But when I go into the warehouse, there are a lot of empty shelves. It used to last longer. Demand is outpacing supply.”

The food bank’s 535 partner agencies, food pantries and kitchens across 16 counties in southwest Texas, are ordering more food, Cooper said. “They are reporting longer lines and they are seeing people sooner in the month.”

Of the 58,000 clients fed by the SAFB every week, Cooper said, half are working families, many are underemployed, the rest are seniors and people who, through mental or physical disability, cannot work. There are a lot of veterans in Texas, some of whom have been disabled through military service. But on the whole, he said “Hunger is biased towards women and kids. A divorce, a separation can put a lot of women in poverty.”

From the San Antonio Food Bank it is a short drive to the Baptist Temple Church food pantry, one of its partners. It usually feeds between 220 and 240 needy families a day, representing around 900 individuals. When the Guardian visited, on an unseasonably cold night in December, scores of people stood shivering in line in the crowded car park across the road from the church, while others took refuge in cars.

Johnny Hill, 64, a divorced great-grandmother, is raising her daughter's children, aged five and three, and looks after another grandchild part time.

A former school cafeteria manager for 25 years, Hill now works in administration six days a month for the church, which pays her $600. Her Snap benefits fell rom $550 to $494 last month. She comes to the food pantry three times a month and shares what she has with her 85-year-old neighbour. “It doesn't matter about me,” she said. “I just need to look out for the kids. We eat a lot of salads. We manage. I'm dealing with it.”

She has a lot of “good church friends”, who help out, but admitted: “We'd be in trouble if we didn't have the food bank.”

Like Hill, Diana Martinez, 46, inherited the responsibility for another family member. Her mother's death, left her in sole charge of “baby brother” Michael, 41, who is severely mentally disabled, forcing her to give up her 18-year job as a head custodian for the school district.

“Michael has the mind of a two-year-old,” Martinez said. “He goes to day care, but when he's not feeling good, he acts up and he won't go for weeks. Who would give me a job and time off when he acts up?”

Now she earns minimum wage of $7.25 an hour from an agency for 24 hours a week of caring for him, a total of $754 a month. The rest of the time she does it for free. Martinez and her son, Sean, six, live with her brother in a handicapped apartment paid for by Michael's disability benefits and they get $288 in Snap, reduced from $308. It has meant less meat and a trip to the food bank once a month, usually to the Salvation Army site downtown.

“I got a chicken here today, so we'll have that and mashed potatoes and macaroni. Sean will like that. If it wasn't for the food bank, I would be hungry. It helps me a lot.”

Last month, the need for emergency food in this community soared to its highest level yet, according to Joe Guinn, a minister at the church. He shakes his head in disbelief as he recalls last month. “There were 260 families, that's almost 1,500 people,” said Guinn. “Our absolute highest ever.”

US government shutdown

Foodstamp Program Shutdown Imminent?

Zero Hedge,

15 October, 2013

When over the weekend, a Xerox "glitch" shut down the EBT system, better known as foodstamps, for nearly the entire day across 17 states leaving millions without "funding" to pay for food leading to dramatic examples of the basest human behavior possible, some of the more conspiratorial elements saw this merely as a dress rehearsal for what may be coming in the immediate future. While there was no basis to believe that is the case, a USDA (the currently shuttered agency that administers the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) memo obtained by the Crossroads Urban Center in Utah carries in it a very disturbing warning for the 46+ million Americans currently on foodstamps.

To wit: "understanding the operational issues and constraints that States face, and in the interest of preserving maximum flexibility, we are directing States to hold their November issuance files and delay transmission to State electronic benefit transfer (EBT) vendors until further notice." In other words, as Fox13News summarizes, "States across the country are being told to stop the supplemental nutrition assistance program for the month of November, pending further notice."

The full memo first posted on the Crossroads Facebook page is shown below:

More on this dramatic development which, if implemented, would will result in significant unpredictable outcomes across the nation:

“This is going to create a huge hardship for the people we serve here in our food pantry,” says Bill Tibbits who is the Associate Director at Crossroads Urban Center.

They posted a letter from the USDA on its Facebook page. It says in part, “in the interest of preserving maximum flexibility, we are directing states to hold their November issuance files and delay transmission to state electronic benefit transfer vendors until further notice.”

“What this means if there’s not a deal, if Congress doesn’t reach a deal to get federal government back up and running, in Utah about 100,000 families won’t get food stamp benefit,” says Tibbits.

In other words, tens of thousands of Utah families may not be able to feed their children come November.

...

“People out here are going to go without food,” says Loralee Smith whose been homeless since August and says the uncertainty is making her uneasy about where her next meal will come from. “I’m on food stamps, I don’t know if I’m going to get them, a lot of people are on food stamps and they don’t know if they’re going to get them.”

Others say if SNAP shuts down, they’ll find a way to feed themselves.

One hopes such "alternative" feeding arrangements will be peaceful, although in the most heavily armed nation in the world, and arguably the one where a massive portion of the population is now fully reliant on the welfare state for virtually every daily need, it is easy to see cutting off daily bread to tens of millions has a less than happy ending.

As the report notes, for people out on the streets like Richard Phillips, "It could impact us and it’s going to cause problems because you’re going to come to find out that people are going to steal and do what they have to do to survive."

Such a realization could come as a very unpleasant wake up call for the millions of other Americans who still live in their Ivory Towers, focusing on the daily gyrations of the S&P500, and largely oblivious of how the rest of America lives.

The full report on what may be the most catalytic event in the history of the US welfare state is presented below.

Government shutdown bites

Food stamp debit cards not working in 17 states

People in 17 states found themselves unable to buy groceries with their food stamp debit-style cards Saturday after a routine check by vendor Xerox Corp. resulted in a system failure.

USA Today,

12 October, 2013

Xerox spokeswoman Karen Arena tells USA TODAY that some Electronic Benefits Transfer systems were experiencing connectivity issues after a routine test of a backup system at a location in the Midwest caused an outage at about 10 a.m. ET. The test was part of a regular maintenance schedule, Arena said.

Xerox started receiving calls soon afterward.

"I understand right now that the system is back up and running,'' Arena said early Saturday evening. "But some states may be experiencing connectivity" issues.

U.S. Department of Agriculture spokeswoman Courtney Rowe underscored that the outage is not related to the federal government shutdown. Xerox runs EBT card systems for 17 states. All were affected by the outage.

Ohio's cash and food assistance card payment systems went down at 11 a.m., said Benjamin Johnson, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. Ohio's cash system has been fixed, however he said that its electronic benefits transfer card system is still down.

Johnson said Xerox is notifying retailers to revert to the manual system, meaning SNAP customers can spend up to $50 until the system is back online. SNAP recipients should call the 800 number on the back of their card, and Xerox will guide them through the purchase process.

Shoppers left carts of groceries behind at a packed Market Basket grocery store in Biddeford, Maine, because they couldn't get their benefits, said fellow shopper Barbara Colman, of Saco, Maine. The manager put up a sign saying the EBT system was not in use. Colman, who receives the benefits, called an 800 telephone line for the program and it said the system was down due to maintenance, she said.

"That's a problem. There's a lot of families who are not going to be able to feed children because the system is being maintenanced," Colman said. "No one should put maintenance in during the daytime."

She planned to reach out to local officials.

"I'm trying to reach out to everybody because I'm not thinking of me an adult who can figure out things. I'm thinking of the simpler person in the world who is sitting there trying to just do basic shopping to feed their kids. You don't want children going hungry tonight because of stupidity," she said.

Colman said the store manager promised her that he would honor the day's store flyer discounts next week.

Illinois residents began reporting problems with their cards — known as LINK in that state — on Saturday morning, said Januari Smith, spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Human Services.

Smith said that typically when the cards aren't working retailers can call a backup phone number to find out how much money a customer has available in their account. But that information also was unavailable because of the outage, so customers weren't able to use their cards.

"It really is a bad situation but they are working to get it fixed as soon as possible," Smith said. "We hope it will be back up later today."

In Clarksdale, Miss. — one of the poorest parts of one of the poorest states in the nation — cashier Eliza Shook said dozens of customers at Corner Grocery had to put back groceries when the cards failed Saturday because they couldn't afford to pay for the food. After several hours, she put a sign on the front door to tell people about the problem.

"It's been terrible," Shook said in a phone interview. "It's just been some angry folks. That's what a lot of folks depend on."

Mississippi Department of Human Services director Rickey Berry confirmed that Xerox, the state's EBT vendor, had computer problems. He said he had been told by midafternoon that the problems were being fixed.

"I know there are a lot of mad people," Berry said.

Sheree Powell, a spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Department of Human Services, started receiving calls around 11:30 a.m. about problems with the state's card systems. More than 600,000 Oklahomans receive SNAP benefits, and money is dispersed to the cards on the first, fifth and 10th days of every month, so the disruption came at what is typically a high-use time for the cards.

Oklahoma also runs a separate debit card system for other state benefits like unemployment payments. Those cards can be used at ATMs to withdraw cash. Powell said Xerox administers both the EBT and debit card systems, and they both were down initially.

Like Ohio's Johnson, Powell said that Oklahoma's cash debit card system has since been restored, but the EBT cards for the SNAP program were still down. Powell said Oklahoma's Xerox representative told them that the problems stemmed from a power failure at a data center, and power had been restored quickly.

"It just takes a while to reboot these systems," she said, adding that she did not know where the data center was located.

Powell said that some grocery store cashiers had been speculating that the federal government's shutdown caused the problem, but state officials have been assured that that is not the case.

"We are hopeful it will be up this afternoon but we were not given a specific time frame," she said.

David Akerly, a spokesman for Michigan's Department of Human Services, also confirmed that residents in his state have reported problems using their cards.

‘FOLKS ABOUT TO RIOT’: TWITTER EXPLODES WITH OUTRAGE OVER ELECTRONIC FOOD STAMP SHUTDOWN

the Blaze,

12 October, 2013

Amid major problems reported Saturday all across America with the Electronic Benefits Transfer System (i.e., electronic food stamp debit cards), leaving consumers stuck with no way to pay at registers, many people took to Twitter to express concern.

(Warning: Some rough language ahead…)

Government Shutdown Has Left North Dakota's Indian Tribes in a State of Emergency

Native News Network,

12 October, 2013

WASHINGTON – US Senator Heidi Heitkamp, D–North Dakota, a member of the US Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, Friday spoke on the Senate floor about how the government shutdown is hurting struggling families across Indian country, and again called for an end to the political games in Congress.

During her floor speech, she offered many heart-wrenching examples of how the shutdown is putting too many North Dakota Native families in very difficult situations.

“The government shutdown has left North Dakota’s Indian tribes in a state of emergency,”

said Heitkamp.

US Senator Heitkamp speaking on the Senate floor about the impact

of the government shutdown on Indian country.

“The United States has treaty obligations to the Indian Tribes in this country. And this shutdown poses a threat to the basic services the federal government provides to Native Americans as part of its trust responsibility to tribal nations.”

“Because of the shutdown, BIA Law Enforcement at the Spirit Lake Nation is limited to one officer per shift, in charge of patrolling the 252,000 acre reservation. And because of the shutdown, when the Sisseton-Wahpeton community recently lost a three month old baby, the mother now has been turned away for burial assistance for her child.”

Because of the government shutdown, the vast majority of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) -- which provides services to more than 1.7 million American Indians and Alaska Natives from more than 500 recognized tribes -- is now shuttered. As a result, federal funding has been cut off for vital services, including foster care payments, nutrition programs, and financial assistance for struggling Native families.

Kathryn Ryan on Radio NZ asked why more people were not on the streets. The answer was that their were 'rainy day' funds which meant that people could be paid for a while. The moment of truth may be approaching, as soon as next week.

Veterans feel shutdown's sting

Benefits and support services may grind to a halt for more than 5 million vets and their families

al-Jazeera America,

12 October, 2013

The government shutdown is decimating federal services for military veterans and their families as it stretches on into a second week.

Many veterans rely on the wide range of benefits administered by the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, which is grinding to a halt as a result of the shutdown, removing a critical safety net. The VA was forced last week to send home 7,800 benefits administration workers (half of whom are veterans themselves) — and shut down public access to its 58 regional offices. The offices are still processing benefit claims behind the closed doors and away from the unanswered phones, but it’s slow going with limited resources. After seven months of steadily reducing its claims backlog, the department has seen a reversal in the past week, and the backlog is growing again.

“We’ve lost ground we fought hard to take,” VA Secretary Eric K. Shinseki recently told a House committee. “Roughly 1,400 veterans a day are now not receiving decisions on their disability compensation claims due to the end of overtime.”

Veterans returning from war face tremendous challenges. They often have long-term physical or mental disabilities, with 20 percent of military personnel returning from Iraq and Afghanistan suffering from serious mental-health issues, including depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety. The unemployment rate among vets is 11.7 percent, compared with 9.1 percent for nonveterans — and the gap would probably be even higher without the many services the government provides to help reintegrate vets into civilian society. Long-term outcomes can be even worse.

While some veterans are stuck in limbo, awaiting their benefits, others have lost access to necessary information and services, including the ability to speak face to face with VA representatives.

One veteran, for example, was turned away Wednesday at the door of the VA’s New York regional office by an armed guard. The veteran — who asked to remain anonymous for fear that if his name reached the press, the VA would take away what benefits he has — explained that he made an appointment two months ago but that when he arrived, there was no one who would speak with him. According to the vet, the VA never called him to cancel, and the hotline number he was given offered no support other than an announcement that, because of the government shutdown, there was no one available to take his call.

“It’s like constantly bumping into a brick wall,” he said, verging on tears,  “I’ve been looking forward to this for so long.”

He pulled himself together and decided to head up to the VA hospital on 23rd Street to look for answers there.

Missing checks

It remains unclear whether VA regional offices have ceased to honor scheduled appointments. Both Christine Pons, a spokeswoman at the New York regional office, and Randal Noller, a spokesman at the VA’s base in Washington, D.C., used the terms “evolving” and “fluid” to describe the situation and said there are no clear answers.

While the process evolves, money earmarked for service members seems to be disappearing.

Nothing in the VA’s official documentation mentions any change in education funding for October. But Al Dupont, who studies media and cultural studies at the University of California, Riverside, under the GI Bill, did not receive his basic allowance for housing or his book stipend for the month. To make ends meet, he had to rent books this semester instead of purchase them.

“I am concerned because school can only hold off so much for us military students,” he said. “They already extend deadlines normally, since they are aware of VA difficulties and payment times, but this might push things further.”

On the other hand, Calvin Wauchop, a veteran who studies political science at Pace University, got his housing allowance for October.

“I got lucky, I think,” he said.

The shutdown has introduced an element of unwanted surprise in the lives of veterans — and has highlighted the tenuousness with which they live, day in and day out. Wauchop is fortunate not to face immediate financial constraints, but he hasn’t escaped the shutdown unscathed. He’s in his last semester of school and is trying to plan for his postgraduate future.

“I’m trying to get some answers,” he said. “I tried calling this morning, but they’re shut down up in Buffalo. And the VA reps at our school — their regular liaison isn’t at the office. The whole pipeline is stopped.”

In lower Manhattan the veteran who was turned away at the regional office said he was seeking financial support for his electrical-engineering degree program at the TCI College of Technology. He had already paid for October’s classes out of his own pocket and had to miss two classes in order to get to his canceled appointment.

VA representatives did not respond to questions about the GI Bill, and in the department’s two-page “Veterans Field Guide to Government Shutdown,” education is barely mentioned, except to point out that education call centers would cease functioning.

Also striking was the news that over the weekend four troops were killed while on duty in Afghanistan, bringing the number who have died since the shutdown to 26. Typically, the family of a deceased service member is given a $100,000 one-time death benefit to help pay for the burial service and to tide them over until benefits kick in, as well a year’s worth of housing allowance. However, those service members’ families were allowed to collect their bodies but not the benefits.

“The Department of Defense does not currently have the authority to pay death gratuities and other key benefits for the survivors of service members killed in action,” said Carl Woog, a department spokesman.

On Wednesday the House of Representatives voted unanimously to finance death benefits during the shutdown. In the meantime, the Fisher House Foundation has stepped in and offered to advance the money needed to pay those benefits until the Pentagon can repay the loan.

Uncertain outcome

The good news is that health services for veterans remain open. Because of a law passed in 2009, Congress funds certain aspects of the VA a year in advance to ensure that even if a government shutdown does occur, health services will remain available for at least an additional year.

But VA hospitals don’t pay rent, and they don’t buy groceries. They can’t offer an education or help track down job interviews.

Now, on the 12th day of the partial government shutdown, 3.8 million veterans are in jeopardy of losing those promised benefits.

The numbers are not pretty: If the VA doesn’t get funding soon, 364,000 veterans and their families will lose essential financial support that helps keep them sheltered, clothed and fed. More than 1,200 children of veterans — including many with severe, service-related disabilities such as spina bifida and other birth defects — will lose their livelihoods. Pension payments for nearly 315,000 veterans and 202,000 surviving spouses and dependents will end. And the GI bill will no longer be able to provide the education benefits and living stipends that are currently allowing more than half a million former service members to earn degrees and get the training they need to reintegrate into society.

Some of these payments have already been cut off — Dupont’s missing October housing stipend, for example — but the situation is hit or miss, with some vets still getting the services they need. If the shutdown doesn’t end soon, every piece of financial assistance provided to vets will cease. November’s checks — totaling $6.25 billion and going to 5.18 million beneficiaries — won’t go out, and a staggering number of vets will be left with nowhere to turn.

While House Republicans continue to cherry-pick particular aspects of government programs they want to fund despite the shutdown, the Senate and the White House have made clear they will not accept any piecemeal funding bills, even for the sake of veterans.

Appealing to the House Committee on Veteran Affairs on Thursday, Shinseki said the shutdown is having serious consequences.

“There are,” he said, “veterans, service members, families and children counting on us.”