In the movie theaters, Katniss Everdeen is trapped in the Hunger Games, negotiating a love triangle and fighting against the Capitol. Closer to home, many Wisconsin residents are facing a different version of the Hunger Games, one that involves making choices between paying the rent and buying food for their families.
If parts of the budget passed by the U.S. House of Representatives come to pass, those families could have a harder time making ends meet.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities sums up the effect the budget plan could have:
“[The] plan includes cuts in SNAP (formerly known as the Food Stamp Program) of $133.5 billion — more than 17 percent — over the next ten years (2013-2022), which would necessitate ending assistance for millions of low-income families, cutting benefits for millions of such households, or some combination of the two.”
The budget plan would also give significant tax cuts to the highest-earning taxpayers.In Wisconsin, one out of every seven residents depends on food stamps to get by, including one out of every four children. The typical family receives $244 in monthly assistance. Assistance rates are highest in rural northwest Wisconsin and the urban southeast part of the state, as shown in the map below.
Proposed cuts to food stamps could have significant detrimental effects for the 830,000 Wisconsin residents who receive help with their grocery bills. Instead of making it harder for families to make ends meet, we should be working to keep the Hunger Games on the silver screen and out of the lives of families in Wisconsin.
Tamarine Cornelius
