Biden Administration Approves Largest Permanent Increase in Food Stamps
Last edited Sun Aug 15, 2021, 04:28 PM - Edit history (1)
Source: New York Times
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration has revised the nutrition standards of the food stamp program and prompted the largest permanent increase to benefits in the program’s history, a move that will give poor people more power to fill their grocery carts but add billions of dollars to the cost of a program that feeds one in eight Americans.Under rules to be announced on Monday and put in place in October, average benefits will rise more than 25 percent from prepandemic levels. All 42 million people in the program will receive additional aid.
The move does not require congressional approval, and unlike the large pandemic-era expansions, which are starting to expire, the changes are intended to last. For at least a decade, critics of the benefits have said they were too low to provide an adequate diet. More than three-quarters of households exhaust their benefits in the first half of the monthly cycle, and researchers have linked subsequent food shortages to problems as diverse as increased hospital admissions, more school suspensions and lower SAT scores. Under the new rules, average monthly benefits, $121 per person before the pandemic, will rise by $36.
Although the increase may seem modest to middle-class families, proponents say it will reduce hunger, improve nutrition and lead to better health. In an interview last week, the agriculture secretary, Tom Vilsack, simultaneously described the work as a technical exercise in nutrition science and a reflection of the forces reshaping the politics of the safety net. In the middle of disease, hardship and racial disparities, he said, the $79 billion annual cost of the program helps “stabilize our democracy.” “We may have a Constitution and a Declaration of Independence, but if we had 42 million Americans who were going hungry, really hungry, they wouldn’t be happy and there would be political instability,” Mr. Vilsack said.
Coinciding with a large new child tax credit — which temporarily offers families with children an income guarantee — the growth food aid comes as part of an enormous pandemic-era expansion of government assistance. Critics say that the costs are unsustainable and that the aid erodes Americans’ willingness to work. The new plan will raise the program’s costs by about $20 billion a year from prepandemic levels. In technical terms, the Agriculture Department has revised the Thrifty Food Plan, a list of two dozen food groups the government uses to estimate the cost of an economical, nutritious diet. Its value was first set in 1962 and, other than being adjusted for inflation, had not grown since then, despite a revolution in what Americans eat.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/15/us/politics/biden-food-stamps.html
WaPo finally did their article -
By Laura Reiley
Today at 3:23 p.m. EDT
The Biden administration has approved the largest increase to food assistance benefits in the history of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), in a move that will substantially retool the program to provide the targeted assistance advocates have long said is desperately needed by poor families. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack will announce Monday morning that benefit amounts for the program, formerly known as food stamps, will rise an average of 25 percent above pre-pandemic levels.
The increases are based on an update to the Thrifty Food Plan, the formula used to calculate benefits, which surveys the changing costs of various categories of food.First reported by the New York Times and confirmed by a spokeswoman at the USDA, average monthly benefits, which were $121 per person before the pandemic, will rise by $36 under the new rules. Many anti-hunger advocates have long believed the Thrifty Food Plan’s metrics are out of date with the economic realities most struggling households face.
They say the plan, formulated in the 1960s, was designed when many American families still had only one working parent, giving the other parent more time for labor-intensive, but cheaper, cooking from scratch. In the past two decades, more working families are made up of two wage earners or a single-parent, leaving less time for soaking beans and simmering stews. The Biden administration has asked the USDA to revise the Thrifty Food Plan to better reflect the modern cost of a healthy basic diet.
(snip)
The changes to SNAP are permanent, aimed at addressing pandemic-related surge in hunger in America, when projections predicted 50 million people, including 17 million children, would be considered food insecure by the end of 2020. But, advocates say, the infusion of funding corrects benefits that fall far short of demonstrated need, a problem they say has existed for at least a decade.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/08/15/snap-food-assistance-benefit-boost/
= new reply since forum marked as read
because what they did was to revise and update the calculation for the cost of that program to determine the new benefits based on a 2018 GOP-passed law (am assuming they are talking about the renewed FARM Bill - https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/2)
In allowing the plan’s value to rise, officials argued they were following the 2018 law, which required new standards but did not specify whether costs should stay the same. “A majority of Republicans in the Senate and House voted for this,” Mr. Vilsack said. “They deserve credit.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/15/us/politics/biden-food-stamps.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimes
I.e., an apparent "loophole" because the directive in there apparently did not require the updates to be "revenue neutral". Of course now they are whining.
So wonderful to finally have a president looking out for those in need. 
at over $1 trillion spent over the past 20 years, had a cost that unsustainable! And most critically, Iraq, since they had nothing to do with 9/11.
Here is a good article on the farm grift - https://www.npr.org/2020/12/30/949329557/farmers-got-a-government-bailout-in-2020-even-those-who-didnt-need-it 
Pres Biden!
and the irony is that this was done to comply with a directive in the GOP-sponsored/passed FARM Bill done in 2018, telling USDA to update that program's cost based on current nutritional recommendations, and do it by 2022, with the expectation to keep it updated every 5 years afterwards, to correspond to the 5-year FARM Bill renewals. Previously it was only being adjusted for inflation, but the core eligible foods and their cost, was never updated.
Little did they know what that meant and how it would be implemented! Now they are whining about it. 
The magats need to be told to KEEP UP!
and they mentioned that USDA is finally changing from the standard that was based on how people cooked in the 1960s. 
