“Federal assistance in the United States” on The Daily Caller

Many American colleges and universities are steering their students toward a new source of “financial aid”: food stamps. (more)

I’m on food stamps. Last month, despite the fact that I’m middle class and have a job, the District of Columbia enrolled me in the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. For the next year, I’ll be getting $105 a month in assistance, no strings attached. (more)

SNAP, the federal food stamp program, is getting snapped up by Democrats these days, hungry for savings to placate deficit hawks and clear the way for legislation. (more)

The Senate is expected to hold a cloture vote Monday evening on a bill that includes enhanced federal Medicaid funding for states. (more)

It’s Saturday on a gorgeous summer day in America. (more)

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor invited Americans to vote on government programs they’d like cut. One week and 280,000 text messages and online votes later, the first results are in: an emergency welfare fund that in some cases has been used by poor families to buy iPods. (more)

The welfare reforms of 1996 replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) as the primary safety for the poor. But the Great Recession has exposed the failure of TANF as a safety net to catch American families as they experience hardship. (more)

About 20,000 people sign up for food stamps every day, and college students across the country are the newest demographic being encouraged to enlist. (more)

Think of it as the effect of a grinding recession crossed with the epicurean tastes of young people as obsessed with food as previous generations were with music and sex. Faced with lingering unemployment, 20- and 30-somethings with college degrees and foodie standards are shaking off old taboos about who should get government assistance and discovering that government benefits can indeed be used for just about anything edible, including wild-caught fish, organic asparagus and triple-crème cheese. (more)

Food stamp distribution has skyrocketed since the U.S. Department of Agriculture renamed the program Supplemental Nutrition and Assistance Program (SNAP) in 2008 and began pushing states to give federal food aid to people without verifying their finances. (more)