Food stamps - and that's it

I've been impressed with the New York Times' coverage of the recession's impact across a wide swath of the population. Last month, it was an article about food stamp usage jumping to record levels. The latest article highlights the growing number of food-stamp recipients reporting zero cash income.

The choice to report from Lee County, Florida, was appropriate. Thanks to the run-up in home prices, Lee County, home to Fort Myers and Cape Coral, enjoyed the fruits of the accompanying economic boom. Homes couldn't be built fast enough. Between 2000 and 2008, the population jumped 34.5 percent, placing it among the 100 fastest-growing counties in the country. With the collapse of housing bubble, however, the county now consistently ranks among those with the highest foreclosure rates nationwide. The unemployment rate in November was 13.9 percent.

(On a personal note, my sister and her boyfriend lived in Fort Myers for about a year. She found a job; he was unemployed. They moved back to Delaware in 2008.)

What the Times' article does a good job portraying is affected families cannot simply be categorized in a one-size-fits-all manner. Just like poverty looks different on the Rosebud Indian Reservation compared to Detroit, folks qualify and enroll for food-stamp benefits for a myriad of reasons. Evidently, someone needs to get this message across to U.S. Representative John Linder of Georgia.

Now, I'm a compliant non-partisan VISTA just like the rest of us. However, Mr. Linder saying, "You don’t improve the economy by paying people to sit around and not work," is downright ignorant. Obviously (to me, at least) not all food-stamp recipients sit at home waiting for a government handout.

More to the point of this article, there are people now receiving food stamps who had until recently been working. That means, they were paying income taxes - taxes that go toward funding the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps. So, they're now utilizing a benefit into which they have already paid, like unemployment insurance.

I'll jump off my soapbox now.