MICHELE NORRIS, host:
For a better idea of how the bill Congress passes will translate at the local level, we decided to look at one of the many programs affected: food stamps. More than 25 million Americans depend on the program for assistance in buying food. The House bill may be changed in conference committee, and some of the numbers may change as all the details are worked out. For now we're considering what would happen under the bill that's just been passed. And we begin with Robert Greenstein, executive director of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities? in Washington, DC. He says it will affect the program in two ways.
Mr. ROBERT GREENSTEIN (Center for Budget and Policy Priorities): First, it eliminates food stamps, terminates them altogether, for more than 150,000 people overwhelmingly in low-income working families with children. It changes the eligibility formula in a way that means that these 150,000 people who were mainly people whose gross income is somewhat above the poverty line--but they have high costs for housing, child care or the likes or their disposal income ends up being below the poverty line. The second food stamp cut is actually more severe because the second cut overwhelmingly hits people who are well below the poverty line to start with, even before you take their expenses into account. These are legal immigrants, mostly working poor parents in legal immigrant families. Under current law, for the first five years they are in the United States, they are ineligible for food stamps even though they're here legally. The House bill says you're ineligible for food stamps for the first seven years you're in the United States. Seventy thousand of them will be terminated. Total effect about 220,000 low-income people will lose all food stamp assistance.
NORRIS: Robert Greenstein, thanks for helping us out.
Mr. GREENSTEIN: Thank you.
NORRIS: Robert Greenstein is the executive director of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.
One state that will feel the significant impact of this proposed legislation is Michigan. Joining us now is Marianne Udow. She's the director of the Michigan Department of Human Services.
Thank you so much for being with us.
Ms. MARIANNE UDOW (Michigan Department of Human Services): It's great to be here.
NORRIS: So tell us how this will affect the people of your state.
Ms. UDOW: Well, we're still analyzing what came out of the House bill last night, but our initial estimates from what was going in, and it's been modified a bit, were about 55,000 people in Michigan would lose their food assistance benefits as a result of this agreement.
NORRIS: When will you have to notify them of this?
Ms. UDOW: Our understanding is that this will take effect with this fiscal year. Many of them already knew this was a possibility. I have some of them incredibly heart-breaking letters here.
NORRIS: Do you have one of those letters with you?
Ms. UDOW: I do. I have a letter from a woman who is a substitute teacher in a small community in Michigan. She makes about $7,600 a year, and gets $149 a month in food assistance. She has mental illness, and if she loses her food assistance, she will, she feels, end up in severe disability.
NORRIS: Marianne Udow, thanks for your time.
Ms. UDOW: Thank you.
NORRIS: Marianne Udow is the director of the Michigan Department of Human Services.
On the East Side of Detroit, Michigan, Augie Fernandes is the president of Gleaners Community Food Bank of southeastern Michigan. He joins us now.
If this bill becomes law, Mr. Fernandes, how will it affect the people that you work with?
Mr. AUGIE FERNANDES (Gleaners Community Food Bank): First of all, it targets right on the working poor that we serve, and these are folks that are getting up every morning and going to work and trying to make ends meet, and they will have less access to more nutritional food that's sold out of our supermarkets because they're not going to have availability to food stamps.
NORRIS: So you're going to be seeing more of those people there at the food bank.
Mr. FERNANDES: We will be seeing our partners, if you will, our pantries who serve all of southeast Michigan, seeing more and more families coming to them because they're going to lose their qualifying for food stamps.
NORRIS: There are 55,000 people who are waiting to hear whether or not they're going to stay within the food stamp program. Are you trying to make any decisions right now to accommodate those families if that actually happens?
Mr. FERNANDES: Before this bill was put through, which I refer to as the food stamp massacre of 2005, we were already looking at the increase of utility costs, the job losses and the other economic factors here in Michigan, so it's like we're constantly in recovery mode here at the food bank as well as my partner food banks in Michigan. We look at the fact that with the hurricanes that have devastated the south of the nation, a lot of food resources and monitor resources went there, rightfully so, and we're still recovering from all of that. So yeah, these are challenging times for the folks that are out there serving, you know, hungry, food-insecure and our homeless populations.
NORRIS: Augie Fernandes, thanks so much.
Mr. FERNANDES: Certainly.
NORRIS: Augie Fernandes is the president of Gleaners Community Food Bank of southeastern Michigan.
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