When Gov. Kitzhaber yesterday announced he would accept provisions to the farm bill signed by Congress last month, he prevented automatic cuts in the Oregon food stamp program. Frankly, the cuts would not have applied to me. Only participants in the Heat and Eat program would have seen the $58 cuts, and my assistance extends only to the Eat bit.
One of the more frequent refrains I've heard from critics of any food program is that it should only cover healthy foods.
I actually tend to agree. I'm not supposed to be able to use my food stamps to buy energy drinks (it even says on the handy informational handout that most energy drinks aren't eligible) yet when I pulled out cash, expecting the register to exclude my Full Throttle (the name gives it away), I discovered that the informational sheet wasn't quite right.
According to the USDA food stamps cover all eligible foods, which includes "food or food product for home consumption [. . .]" That's an important distinction, since hot food, or food intended for on-premise consumption is not eligible. It makes sense in a way, since it's very name points out its stop-gap intention: Supplementary Nutrition Assistance. Like minimum wage, it was never intended to fill a pantry, simply supplement what you couldn't get on your own.
Energy drinks are eligible, it turns out, when they label themselves as having nutritional content, rather than as a nutritional supplement (like vitamins) which are ineligible.
So maybe the sheet they gave me was out of date, or perhaps they hoped I wouldn't even try. But you find out pretty quickly which items are eligible and which aren't. Everything in your basket goes onto the belt, and the register figures out how each item should be paid for. So if EBT covers something you weren't expecting? Great, you'll remember that next time.
And yesterday I bought junk.
But consider what I generally use my food benefits to buy: Rice, beans (in bulk), broth, deli meat, bread, canned vegetables, potatoes and onions, and fruit. Every two weeks I buy a jar of peanut butter and jelly. Once a month I buy a whole chicken, or stew beef to put in my Crock-Pot. This isn't gourmet fare, and I haven't quite figured out how to stretch salt, pepper and a bottle of dried oregano into anything approaching what a foodie would touch.
So while I do my best not to abuse my benefits, sometimes I need to break up the monotony of stew, soup, sandwich. If I'm feeling really bold, I might eat two sandwiches in a day. So while there are holes in the program, they're not glaring.
Certainly, it's no "public trough."
These simple, physical impediments preclude me from purchasing in bulk, and are a major factor in my decision-making process. A bag of oranges weighs two and a half pounds, and takes up a third of the bag by volume. Canned vegetables can weigh several pounds and are bulky. These are the costs I have to account for that extend beyond the actual dollar amount. (On the other hand, I don't buy soda because I don't want to carry it home.)
Farmers' Markets, hailed by the socially-conscious critic as an easy solution, present the same problems of distance (perhaps exacerbating the problem if it's out of the way) and my ability to carry everything home. Moreover, because they are offered infrequently, to maximize the trip (and time really does equal money, and I've already sunk a bit into this expedition) I have to purchase as much as I can at one time. I can easily imagine that a bedraggled housewife, an elderly woman, or a disabled man, simply cannot pay these types of intangible costs.
There are no easy solutions, but blaming me for my cookies, or essentially telling the impoverished to "stop being poor" does nothing to ease the very real pangs of hunger than millions of people suffer every night.
I might wish for a full soul, but in the meantime, but I'd settle for not having an empty stomach.
