When Nancy Pelosi handed the gavel to John Boehner, food stamp benefit cuts became a near certainty.
The
abrupt drop in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits that will kick in on Nov. 1
wasn't supposed to be abrupt:
The plan had been to leave the increase in place until inflation caught up through annual adjustments to SNAP benefit levels, which had been expected to happen in 2015. But congressional Democrats essentially raided the cookie jar, using the future planned spending to offset the cost of priority legislation in 2010. They said at the time that they would put the money back before any decrease could take effect, but they have not kept their promise.
When Democrats pulled money out of SNAP to help states save public sector jobs and to provide afterschool meals for children, they didn't realize how big the 2010 Republican wave would be. Once it was Speaker John Boehner, not Nancy Pelosi, there wasn't an awful lot they could do to replace the money, what with House Republicans fighting to cut food stamps further, not replace missing funds. But that's the sort of thing you have to plan for. And the fact that SNAP benefits were one of the main places the money was taken from is to Democrats' shame. Now, the mistakes of 2010 are coming home to roost—again—and it's going to be people struggling to put food on the table who pay the price—again.