[Mb-civic] White House Poised to Cut Food Aid for Seniors, Moms

Sat Feb 25 15:40:29 PST 2006

http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/2847
White House Poised to Cut Food Aid for 
Seniors, Moms
by Michelle Chen
The Bush administration’s 2007 budget proposal includes the total 
elimination of a program that helps some 500,000 impoverished 
Americans obtain enough food to make it through each month.

Feb. 22 – Dave Stogsdill's life has turned up a few surprises in recent 
years. The last big one was his knees giving out, forcing him to retire 
on Social Security disability income. These days, the 61-year-old 
former electrician looks forward to the occasional pleasant surprise in 
his monthly supplemental food package from the federal government, 
which periodically serves up his favorites: canned beef and canned 
tomatoes.

This year, the government may have another surprise in store for 
Stogsdill. Tucked into the Bush administration's 2007 budget plan is a 
proposal to eliminate the program that helps him and about half a 
million other Americans get enough to eat. Deemed redundant by the 
White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the 
Department of Agriculture's food program may be scrapped because it 
supposedly overlaps with larger, parallel programs like food stamps.

But supporters of the Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP) 
argue that countless low-income participants rely on it for crucial aid 
they cannot obtain anywhere else.

Despite the White House's claims, Stogsdill sees little redundancy in 
the resources he cobbles together to make ends meet. He cannot 
receive food stamps because his subsidized income has rendered him 
ineligible. As he and his wife struggle to stretch a monthly income of 
about $1,300 across healthcare expenses, bills and mortgage 
payments on their home in Greeley, Colorado, he finds that his 
monthly food package -– worth roughly $50 in retail value -– goes a 
long way.

"It's really nice to have," Stogsdill said. "Without it we would probably 
have to sacrifice something if we wanted to eat."

On average, according to the Department of Agriculture, the CSFP 
served more than 500,000 people per month in 2005, including over 
450,000 people over 60, and thousands of women and children not 
covered by other nutrition assistance. Based on canned and 
processed products mass-purchased from the farming industry, the 
program is not nutritionally complete, but rather is intended to sustain 
households that might otherwise go hungry. Operating in 32 states, the 
District of Columbia and two Indian Reservations, CSFP is smaller 
than the food-stamps program. Yet it still provides about 6.4 million 
food packages annually to low-income people, costing the government 
about $110 million, or less than $20 per package at bulk-purchase 
prices.

Beyond the hard numbers, those who have delivered these resources 
say that each food package offers a value not quantified in budget 
books -– the human interaction that fuels the program.

Through community distribution centers and direct deliveries to 
homebound participants, the volunteer-driven program is a vehicle for 
outreach to a typically isolated population. Service providers talk to 
elderly recipients about their lives and their health, and give them 
information about other assistance programs like food stamps and 
Medicaid.

Andrew Fox, program manager of Louisiana's CSFP -- which was the 
nation's largest before Hurricane Katrina -- said that for volunteers, 
there is "no such thing as just knock on the door, hand over the food 
box and leave." As a longtime food-delivery volunteer, he remarked, 
"After a few months, you kind of become a part of these people's 
lives."

With only a fraction of the budget of other federal assistance 
programs, advocates say the CSFP requires little, compared to what it 
ultimately provides communities. "These are mostly scrappy little 
programs," said Fox, "kind of operating on a shoestring, utilizing a 
huge amount of volunteer labor -- and, you know, generating an awful 
lot of good will and community cohesion."

Nevertheless, CSFP received a failing grade from the OMB in an 
auditing process known as the Program Assessment Rating Tool, 
which investigates various federal programs and evaluates 
performance based on preset criteria.

The main strike, according to the administration, is redundancy. The 
OMB estimated that a significant portion of the elderly CSFP 
participants were also eligible for food stamps. The assessment also 
questioned whether some participating families were illegally double-
dipping on benefits, accessing both the CSFP and the separate 
supplemental nutrition program for women, infants and children (WIC).

The OMB contended that since the program lacks a formal internal 
oversight process, it "cannot demonstrate whether it is helping meet 
the nutritional needs of program participants." The agency 
recommended eliminating CSFP and integrating the current enrollees 
into food stamps and WIC.

But advocates for CSFP say it should not be dismissed just for lacking 
official proof of its effectiveness. In their view, service providers, which 
include both state agencies and private charities, are essentially being 
punished for having not received enough funding from Congress to 
enable such internal assessment projects.

Service organizations have, however, conducted their own research on 
the impact of the program. The National Commodity Supplemental 
Food Program Association (NCSFPA), a network of nonprofit and 
state-program administrators, conducted a national survey of elderly 
CSFP participants, finding that although the food packages provide a 
much-needed resource, many gaps remain. Over half of respondents 
reported that even with the supplement, they ran out of food during the 
month, and the majority said they were overall not in good health.

"We're not serving a population that is squandering what they're 
receiving," remarked Leona Martens, who worked on the survey 
project and directs the Weld Food Bank of Colorado where Stogsdill 
receives his food package.

Like other food banks across the country, Weld serves elderly 
participants with incomes up to 130 percent of the poverty line, or 
about $12,400 a year for an individual, and women with young children 
up to 185 percent of the poverty line. Of the roughly 5,000 CSFP 
participants the food bank serves monthly, about 35 percent are 
seniors; women, infants and children make up the rest.

Though the contents of each package vary according to the client 
group's nutritional needs, a typical package includes powdered milk, 
canned tuna, canned vegetables and cereal.

In 2004, according to federal data, nearly one in five low-income 
elderly households faced "food insecurity," or difficulty obtaining 
enough to eat.

Marten warned that in defunding the CSFP, "We're taking that 
resource away, but we're not taking away the need."

Though the administration's budget proposal provides for limited funds 
to help elderly participants transition onto food-stamp benefits, critics 
cite a number of structural hurdles that could shunt needy people into 
bureaucratic gaps or push them further towards hunger.

According to the NCSFPA's research, roughly one in four seniors on 
the program were simultaneously accessing food stamps. Antipoverty 
advocates say the seniors currently participating in both programs are 
doing so precisely because food-stamp benefits alone -– which can be 
as low as $10 per month –- are not enough.

"We feel that our seniors need... all of these programs to survive," said 
Barb Packett, public policy chair of the NCSFPA and director of 
Nebraska's CSFP. "One is not going to take the place of the other."

It is also unclear how many of those not currently receiving food 
stamps would transition to food stamps if Washington cuts off their 
food packages. Service providers warn that long lines and a tedious, 
confusing application process deter many qualified seniors from 
applying, especially when the potential benefits are so low.

Moreover, according to an analysis by the progressive Center on 
Budget and Policy Priorities, an unknown number of elderly CSFP 
participants would be categorically ineligible under the food-stamp 
program's stricter thresholds. For instance, since food-stamp 
participants cannot have more than $3,000 in assets, the modest 
savings of some seniors could disqualify them.

Some women and children may also be left in the lurch if the CSFP 
shuts down. WIC's eligibility structure covers mothers only up to six 
months following birth, and children only up to the age of five. 
Historically, the CSFP has helped plug this gap by covering mothers 
up to a year post-partum and children up to six.

The Center's analysis reports that the White House budget projections 
actually anticipate that 23,000 women and children who do not fit within 
the more narrow WIC eligibility parameters would simply lose 
nutritional aid altogether under the new policy.

Antipoverty organizations see nutrition assistance programs as a tool 
to stave off food insecurity in the short-run, asserting that long-term 
solutions require building more sustainable, nutritious and equitable 
food-supply systems. Still, groups are pushing to preserve 
commodities supplements as a surface-level salve for the deeper ills of 
poverty and hunger.

Ellen Vollinger, legal director of the anti-hunger group Food Research 
and Action Center, said that instead of trying to minimize the cost of 
feeding the poor, the administration should be expanding access to 
nutrition assistance programs, by "looking for ways to make the 
combination of CSFP and food stamps a more adequate source of 
nutrition for that population."

----

-- 
You are currently on Mha Atma's Earth Action Network email list, 
option D (up to 3 emails/day).  To be removed, or to switch options 
(option A - 1x/week, option B - 3/wk, option C - up to 1x/day, option D - 
up to 3x/day) please reply and let us know!  If someone forwarded you 
this email and you want to be on our list, send an email to 
ean at sbcglobal.net and tell us which option you'd like.

"A war of aggression is the supreme international crime." -- Robert Jackson,
 former U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice and Nuremberg prosecutor

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20060225/43b3765b/attachment.htm 