Partisan House fight on Florida GOP plan to cut food stamps to children, seniors, disabled

[DonViejo]

Herald Tallahassee Bureau

Thursday, March 16, 2017 6:00 am

In a partisan clash, a key House committee voted Wednesday to deny food stamps to an estimated 229,000 Floridians, most of them children and including seniors, veterans and people with disabilities.

The House Appropriations Committee passed a bill (HB 581) by freshman Rep. Frank White, R-Pensacola, that would restore income eligibility for households for food stamps to 130 percent of the poverty level, the minimum level set by the federal government. The household income standard was raised to 200 percent of poverty following the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009, which expanded the population eligible for food stamps. Florida remains one of 43 states with that broader eligibility standard.

The panel's chairman, Rep. Carlos Trujillo, R-Miami, said the bill is needed to reduce food stamp fraud by verifying applicants' eligibility. He described seeing people in grocery stores in Miami with "a Mercedes key chain and their SNAP card."

Elaborating later with Capitol reporters, Trujillo said: "I'll never forget" seeing a woman shopper at a Sedano's Supermarket at S.W. 8 Street and S.W. 51 Avenue in Miami. "I'm not sure if she was buying food for her grandmother but it seemed to me like it was all her own stuff," Trujillo said. "I think there's a lot, a lot of abuse in South Florida."

Florida has consistently received bonuses from the U.S. government for having one of the lowest food stamp error rates of any state, according to a House analysis of White's bill. Through 2014, the state had received bonses for seven straight years, totaling $54 million.

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http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/the-buzz-florida-politics/partisan-clash-erupts-in-house-over-planned-food-stamp-cuts/2316715

[world wide wally]

1. Didn't seem like the grandmothers food?

And this is what it's based on?

Sounds like the Kelly Ann Conway School of Law and Logic.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

2. They are constantly making assumptions

about people and situations they actually know nothing about.

[TheBlackAdder]

3. They need someone to pick the strawberries and citrus, since they've booted the migrant workers.

.


You kid, put down that textbook and go out there in the fields. You can study after 8PM.

Granny, what's your excuse? Bad hip? Hop to it. Those strawberries won't pick themselves.

You, I don't want to hear it. You can crawl out there. Here's a dolly.




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