The House faces a vote over an estimated $40 billion package of food stamp cuts. U.S. households still going hungry

Despite the explosion in food stamp enrollment, the percentage of American households experiencing food shortages remains stubbornly high, with so-called “insecure” families having 26 percent less for food than a typical “secure” household of the same size.

The survey data — covering 2012 — was released Wednesday morning as part of the Agriculture Department’s annual report on household food security in the U.S. An estimated 14.5 percent of households were listed as food insecure — a number that’s consistent with findings since the economic downturn in 2008 but substantially higher than the decade beforehand.


From 1998 through 2007, for example, the same survey showed that the percentage of insecure households averaged about 11 percent. But with the recession, the number jumped to 14.6 percent in 2008 and has largely remained there since.

At the same time, federal expenditures for food stamps or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) have more than doubled, provoking a backlash in Congress that has stalled action on a new farm bill.

Indeed, Wednesday’s report comes as the House faces a showdown vote this month over an estimated $40 billion package of food stamp cuts promoted by Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.).

The reductions double the level of 10-year savings previously proposed by the House Agriculture Committee on a bipartisan vote in June. The great fear in the agriculture community is that Cantor is pushing the House so far to the right on the nutrition issue that he will kill any chance of enacting farm legislation before the current law runs out Sept. 30.

Nonetheless, the Virginia Republican has a powerful cast of backers behind his vision of what’s being dubbed “Welfare Reform 2.0.” The Heritage Foundation, with close ties to Cantor and his top staff, has lent support in the fight. And over the August recess, Fox News aired a sympathetic report entitled “The Great Food Stamp Binge” — videos of which are now being distributed by Fox staff to House members.

POLITICO inquiries to Fox News regarding the videos have gone unanswered since Saturday. But both Republican and Democratic offices confirmed that copies have been dropped off unsolicited in recent days, and the broadcast has already provided colorful fodder in promoting the Cantor package.

For example, Fox devoted a big portion of its report to a young, single California man who aspires to be a rock musician and has taken advantage of waivers allowed during the recession that permit unemployed able-bodied adults to get food stamps even when they have no dependents.

This is precisely the population Cantor is targeting and his proposed bill would end all such waivers for these beneficiaries — Able-Bodied Adults Without Dependents (ABAWD) — unless they begin working at least 20 hours a week.

Republican as well as Democratic governors have sought such ABAWD waivers for their states, and government data shows the ABAWD population includes some of the nation’s most destitute. But the young man featured in the Fox report is a political nightmare for food stamp advocates: long haired, collecting $200 a month in benefits, buying lobster for a backyard cookout, and bragging of his idle surfing days on the beach.

It’s an image so powerful that the GOP leadership eagerly speaks of him in the plural. “Newscasts tell stories of young surfers who aren’t working but cash their food stamps in for lobster,” read a recent alert sent out last week by Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) office last week.

For the Agriculture Department, which helps manage SNAP, it’s been an admitted embarrassment but also a distortion, officials say, of the program.

An Aug. 22 letter from Kevin Concannon, under secretary for food, nutrition and consumer services, to Will Lightbourne, director of the California Department of Social Services, captures this mood.

“Any individual that is capable of finding and keeping a job but chooses not to do so while simultaneously receiving taxpayer-funded benefits, should be of concern,” Concannon wrote. “A recent report of a jobless individual receiving SNAP benefits in Southern California, for example, paints an inaccurate picture of the vast majority of SNAP participants in California and across the United States — children, the elderly, the disabled and working families — that play by the rules and depend on SNAP as a critical, temporary safety net.”

“While such an individual is technically and legally able to access nutrition assistance, there can be no doubt that continued participation without a commensurate commitment to find employment is inconsistent with SNAP’s mission and purpose in providing a temporary safety net for those who truly need help.”

“Some 17.6 million households, with 49 million people, lacked access to adequate food at some point in 2012 because they didn’t have enough money or other resources to meet their basic food needs, according to today’s release from the Agriculture Department,” said Stacy Dean, a top nutrition analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington-based progressive non-profit.

“SNAP is an important part of a low-income household’s budget, providing benefits that recipients can used only to purchase food,” Dean said. “By ending or cutting food assistance for the most vulnerable Americans, the House Republican leadership proposal would inevitably mean more severe hardship across America.