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Food stamps are presently known as SNAP- The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. SNAP is a government sponsored initiative in the United States that helps people to purchase food and attain a healthy level of dietary nutrition. The program is available for anyone who meets the eligibility requirements, and works by giving participants a Electronic Benefits Transfer card, or EBT. The EBT can be used at various stores that sell food, helping recipients of the benefits to save money and still eat a healthy diet. ^[1]

Food stamp programs began showing up in the United States in the late 1930s and early 1940s as a means to encourage increased agricultural production from farmers. The initiative was headed by the US Department of Agriculture and involved the government purchasing and distributing farmer's extra crops and then distributing them. After the conclusion of World War II, the program was expanded to allow the surplus crops to be sold to areas in need of more food. The first formal food stamps program was pioneered by congresswoman Leonor Sullivan of Missouri throughout the 1950s. She lead the effort and took part in getting an amendment for a food stamp program added to a bill extending Public Law 480 in 1959. A food stamp program was not implemented until 1961 when President John F. Kennedy authorized an initial program that brought food stamps to eight states. Kennedy's plan removed the relation of farmer's surpluses and food stamps, allowing the stamps to be spent on any food item. After experimenting with the program in eight states, Kennedy requested that Congress pass legislation to roll food stamps out nationally. A bill to make a nationwide food stamps program was passed in 1964 with the support of President Lyndon B. Johnson and kept largely the same until 1970. From there, the program was taken out of a larger agricultural bill and revamped with provisions that included made it necessary to be in the workforce to get food stamps, and the free distribution of food stamps to the poorest people in the country. The requirement of having to purchase food stamps was removed in another permutation of the food stamp bill, passed in 1979. This was done in order to gear the program more toward the lowest income people in the country, those who could not afford to pay for food stamps.^[2] The program stayed largely the same until the 1990s when EBT was introduced to and utilized to distribute food stamps on a large scale. This made food stamps much more efficient and easy to use, as well as helping to avoid the fraudulent use or abuse of the program. EBT in the food stamps program became required for all states through The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act in 1996. The name of the program was changed from food stamps to SNAP through The Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 in order to separate it from the negative associations people had with the term "food stamps".^[3]

In 2018 an average of 40,324,000 people were enrolled in SNAP, with the average participant receiving $125.25 in benefits each month. The program in total gave out over $60 billion in benefits to its participants, coupled with over $4 billion in other costs. The aggregate cost incurred by the program totaled just over $65 billion dollars.^[4]

User:Nevinale/sandbox

Food Stamps and Minimum Wage as Poverty Solutions

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