A Crisis-in-a-Crisis Emerges

In our ongoing effort to save the world from almost certain financial meltdown, one of the most terrifying trends of a plunge in the global standard of living appears to be gaining legs: hunger. It’s sort of like a movie-within-a-movie or play-within-a-play but a hunger-crisis-within-a-financial-crisis is a little less quaint.

When folks get hungry and have nowhere else to go, they turn local community groups for food assistance, and oftentimes to the federal government’s food and nutrition programs, TEFAP & SNAP.

TEFAP (The Emergency Food Assistance Program) commodities are essential for food banks and their partner food pantries, soup kitchens, emergency shelters, and other critical feeding organizations. This immediate relief is particularly important as demand for nutrition programs has increased by an average of approximately 30% over the last year.

Though Congress is still hammering out the details, current proposals include $20 billion to provide nutrition assistance to modest-income families and to lift restrictions that limit the amount of time for which individuals can receive food stamps. For every dollar provided for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (or SNAP, the new name for food stamps), $1.73 is generated in economic growth. An analysis provided by the Economic Policy Institute to the Coalition on Human Needs shows that this would create or save about 185,000 because people will be purchasing more food. These represent long and short-term investments that will provide jobs, stimulate the economy and support our ongoing work in our communities.

Obviously none of these proposals will be much good if they only get approved in one part of the government and not the other: We need to make sure this is included in the Senate bill!