NYC mayor says ‘no’ to food stamp increases

Why is billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg so disliked by the workers and poor people who live here? Let us count the ways.

In addition to planning cutbacks in city social programs for the elderly, disabled and children, and layoffs of city workers and decreases in their benefits, now the mayor refuses to expand food stamp eligibility for some adults, even though the newly enacted federal “stimulus package” would fund their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits.

A “stimulus plan” section overrides a rule in the so-called Welfare Reform Act of 1996, signed by then-president Bill Clinton, which limited adults with no dependents to a three-month maximum of food stamps over three years, no matter the disastrous economic circumstances they often face. This is often the only government assistance that many low-income adults can obtain.

Even though federal funds would pay for the SNAP benefits for the thousands of people who desperately need it, the anti-poor Bloomberg administration says it does not have to offer food stamp benefits to any adult who is not in the Work Experience Program. This “workfare” system imposes many hours of mandatory “make-work” jobs in often horrific conditions for—in this case—the meager sum of $176 per month, at most, for food stamps.

That the administration, during a recession, would callously deny food benefits for people who desperately need them, even though they are entitled to them and the federal government would pay for them, is an outrage.

Two-thirds of New York City’s jobless do not even receive unemployment insurance benefits. (fiscalpolicy.org) The city’s “official” jobless figure is now 7.4 percent, although the real number of unemployed is much higher. With more job losses expected here in the hundreds of thousands as the recession deepens, and with real wages falling and food prices skyrocketing, more food benefits are vitally needed.

High costs of rent, utility bills, transportation, medical care and everything else, on top of food costs, are causing enormous hardships. Many people have lost their savings, while homelessness is at a peak.

More than 1.3 million city residents are turning to food pantries and soup kitchens for help. But due to decreased funding, 69 percent of facilities are strapped and don’t get enough food for everyone who needs it; some turn people away.

If this were a humane system, food would be given away to all who need it and no one would go hungry. But profits come first under capitalism, no matter how dire the economic situation, deprivation and suffering.

Yet what help does the city administration offer?

The day after the pro-Wall Street mayor said “no” to expanding food stamp coverage to many who need it, Bloomberg declared his preferred beneficiaries of city assistance: $45 million would be used to “retrain investment bankers, traders and others who have lost jobs on Wall Street” and to provide “seed capital and office space for new businesses these laid-off bankers might create.” (New York Times, Feb. 18)

Anger is growing at the mayor’s office for its callous mistreatment of those in low-income communities who need social benefits the most, while rewarding—with working people’s tax dollars—the privileged financial wheelers and dealers who contributed to the unfolding economic catastrophe.

This is another reason to join in the national march on Wall Street on April 3-4 to demand, “Bail Out the People, not the Banks!”