SNAP in the Farm Bill

In today’s Philadelphia Inquirer, there was an article about how a recent farm bill is cutting off small businesses from providing food stamps to poor families. The goal is for the government to save money (154 million over a decade) but puts many everyday people in trouble. What’s going on is that the government does not want to pay for the EBT machines that allow food stamps to be processed, meaning that these mom and pop stores will have to pay $1000 a year for them, and then they barely make profit as is off these customers. This means that small grocery stores will either stop accommodating for SNAP or will go bankrupt more quickly. Either way, it’s a bad path for small business and the country’s poor.

What I find interesting is how interconnected everything is, since a farm bill is connected to a machine that connects to the downfall of small business and the increase in the wealth gap. It’s unbelievable how almost inhumane policy is, when it is supposed to be written for the people.