WASHINGTON — Nearly 2 million New Yorkers who rely on food stamps will have less to spend at the supermarket starting Friday — and it may only be the beginning.
The average family of four on food stamps is expected to lose $36 each month, according to the Department of Agriculture, because funding added to the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program in 2009 under the federal stimulus program ran out Thursday.
And both parties in Congress want to cut the program more.
Triada Stampas, head of government relations for the Food Bank For New York, said that the lost funding will total $225 million a year for New Yorkers, or enough for 76 million meals.
The cuts “could have a devastating impact” in the city, where the slow economic recovery has not reached those in need, said Nancy Rankin, vice president of policy at the Community Service Society.
In the group’s annual survey of “The Unheard Third,” 30% of respondents reported experiencing hunger, up 7% from last year, Rankin said.
The Department of Agriculture has issued shopping tips to help beneficiaries make up for the $36 they’ve lost, but Joel Berg, executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, said it’s not possible.
“The idea that people can make up for this by shopping differently just isn’t realistic,” he said. “They can’t and they won’t. They’ll go hungry and have less food.”
The cut will have a wider economic effect, Rankin added — each dollar in food-stamp spending has a $1.70 impact on the local economy, felt mostly by grocers.
Congress is considering food-stamp reform, with the Republican-led House and the Democrat-majority Senate both proposing reductions — but differing widely over how much to slice off the program, which has doubled in size since the recession started in 2007.
House legislation would cut SNAP by $40 billion over a decade, the Senate alternative by $4 billion.
The House bill would further require that recipients work or take work training 20 hours a week and would allow states to subject beneficiaries to drug testing.
Rep. Jose Serrano (D-Bronx), Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and colleagues drafted letters this week urging colleagues to eliminate cuts to food-stamp funding, which Serrano said “will only increase hunger and suffering.”
