Credit: Adobe Stock Photo
COLUMBUS, Ohio – As Ohioans prepare big holiday feasts, others brace for a possible hit to their food budgets. The Trump administration wants to cut Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits by $4.5 billion over five years by changing how states use household utility costs to determine SNAP benefit amounts.

Analysts say Ohio would be among the states to see the greatest impact. Kimberly LoVano, director of advocacy and public education for the Greater Cleveland Food Bank, said roughly 40% of the 1.3 million Ohioans who rely on SNAP could lose about $45 a month in food assistance. She said Ohio’s hunger-fighting network simply couldn’t make up for cuts of that magnitude.

“It really worries us,” she said. “We’re seeing more seniors coming to our partners; more folks who are working two jobs who just can’t make ends meet. We’re seeing folks struggling with disabilities coming our programs, and we’re seeing more families with children.”

She added that SNAP benefits already are modest, with the average person receiving about $125 a month for food. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is taking public comments on the proposal through Monday, and has said the plan is aimed at modernizing SNAP and reducing benefit discrepancies between states.

LoVano noted that SNAP is a powerful anti-poverty tool and provides nine meals for every one meal provided by a food bank. She said Ohioans need regular access to fresh, nutritious foods.

“People should be able to go to grocery stores to purchase their food, and we want to make sure that they’re able to do that,” she said. “We don’t want cuts like this to send people to food pantry and hot-meal lines instead of being in grocery-store lines.”

This is the third time this year SNAP has been targeted for cuts through rule-making. Joree Novotny, director of external affairs for the Ohio Association of Foodbanks, said it sets a dangerous precedent.

“A strong, bipartisan Farm Bill, passed last year by Congress, widely supported and strengthened and protected SNAP,” she said. “These attempts would really undermine Congress’ power to speak for what the people of Ohio, and Americans across the country, really want out of their government.”

Under current policy, SNAP allocations take into account differences in utility rates and costs among states. The proposed rule change would standardize the calculations across the country.

The proposed rule is online at regulations.gov.

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23 replies on “Ohio Could be Hit Hard by Plan to Cut Food Stamps”

  1. Walmart won’t like this. Walmart makes a ton of money off of food stamps. All they have to do is tell the Republicans not to do it and they will obey.

  2. What the dummy who wrote ‘good’ fails to realize is that most Americans are working, unemployment statistics, anyway, are at an all time low, but if you do a little research past your knee jerk, someone might be getting over on me oh no reaction, you’d realize that 44% of this country work jobs that pay less than 18k per year with limited or no benefits, meanwhile corporations and CEOs are raking in fucking billions while relying on the federal government to provide services so their underpaid, overworked employees can afford to feed, clothe and look after themselves mentally.

    Here’s a clue, dipshits, it’s not the poor that’s fucking America up beyond recognition, you people are just too dumb or too lazy to figure it out. Or you’re someone benefiting from this ridiculous system in which the top 1% controls over 50% of the money supply, after all, its hard to convince a man whose paycheck depends on his pretending not to understand what’s happening whilst gleefully chuckling all the way to the bank.

  3. Do I also need to point out what a disgusting, inhuman piece of shit you have to be to revel in the misery of others? I sincerely hope your wife/husband/blow up doll/favorite sheep dies in a horrible auto accident, and I hope I’m there when the cops pull your mangled but still alive and conscious body out of the flaming wreckage so I can run up on you like Nelson from the Simsons and say “HA HA! GOOD!” you bitter old scumbag.

  4. What the fudge? What does being a Boomer have to do with “GOOD” being a disgusting inhumane POS? Nothing. There are plenty of heartless Millennials out there, too, you ageist moron.

    If I happened to be a female or a person of color, would you sign your diatribe with “OK Bitch” or “OK N-word”??? Yet you throw around the word “old” so easily. Are you a racist and a sexist as well as an ageist? I bet not. Then why the big snarks at geezers? You’ll be one eventually…2060 will be here in the blink of an eye.

    As for “GOOD”–Listen up, doofus…unemployment is low, but here’s a little heads-up for your sorry ass: The jobs available out there in the so-called “job market” tend to be marginal, lacking benefits, lacking a future, and mostly shit-wage gigs that don’t often pay enough to keep full-timers, or even those working two or three part-time jobs, off food stamps.

    Food stamps can allow a recipient to pay rent and stay off the streets. Driving for Uber or slaving for Starbucks ain’t exactly the gravy train. But they might be scamming you if they use food stamps, right? Oh, yeah, right. Why don’t you step away from the keyboard and go pull the wings off a few flies, you sick bastard?

  5. Love how that got you all riled up but, unless you’re the absolute idiot who wrote Good, then it wasn’t aimed at you, so why take offense?

    Also, you can’t even be fucking serious that the N word and ok boomer are even remotely close in offensiveness or any other way for that matter, what the actual fuck are you talking about? Nobody is stringing boomers up from trees or planting drugs on them or calling the cops on them for simply living their lives, you dumb shit. Try again when there’s half a millenia of oppression behind the word boomer and then we’ll talk, you overly dramatic weirdo…

  6. I know what will solve everything… How about raising our property taxes even more!!!

    And apparently it’s no trouble at all to have us homeowners have the outrageously high burden of property tax payments to our corrupt county that funds all of these numerous, equally corrupt agencies!!!

    To add insult to injury, there will be yet ANOTHER ma$$ive property tax levy for the corrupt health and human services on the ballot again in March!!!

    It’s time to VOTE NO on all this nonsense and actually reduce our property taxes for once around this corruption-filled city and county!!!

  7. The jobs available out there in the so-called “job market” tend to be marginal, lacking benefits, lacking a future, and mostly shit-wage gigs that dont often pay enough to keep full-timers, or even those working two or three part-time jobs, off food stamps.

    Yes, those are called ‘entry level’ jobs. Should you chose to stay in those jobs by doing the bare minimum always, you wont have some of the better things in life, nor should you.

  8. “Also, you can’t even be fucking serious that the N word and ok boomer are even remotely close in offensiveness or any other way for that matter, what the actual fuck are you talking about? Nobody is stringing boomers up from trees or planting drugs on them or calling the cops on them for simply living their lives, you dumb shit. “

    Angry black dude or white guilt sufferer? Well, whatever it is you should think about seeking help

  9. Why in hell would the poster who denigrates food stamp recipients and then defends them be the SAME poster? That makes even less sense than you do, you little assclown. Pass that pipe over to me, bro…I want some of whatever it is you’re smoking.

    Discrimination is discrimination, you ignorant POS. It doesn’t always mean lynching or drugs or cops. It means prejudice…pre-judging…try a dictionary some time. Based on preconceived notions and dislikes about an individual. Based on criteria like gender, skintone, and yes, even the number of birthdays someone has had.

    You’re obviously some self-important and self-involved little pissant who’s never been mocked or ridiculed or denied opportunities to earn a living because he or she happens to be, say, past 40 or 50 or 60. Are you even thirty yet?

    Oppression? Wow…another two-dollar word you’re tossing around because you memorized the Bernie Bro playbook. Are you even a person of color? I doubt it. You sound like some shrill palefaced twentysomething who’s had everything their own way…up to now.

    And most importantly, thanks for handing the election to Agent Orange, you twittering twit. Betcha you can’t wait to do it again next year.

    In case you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m a Boomer geezer My time is short. You will have to live with the consequences of what you’ve done…and did not do…for the next fifty years. I’ll be long forgotten dust. I hope things get so bad for you that you envy the dead. OK, asshat Millennial…have a shitty day, and a shitty life. You deserve it.

  10. “Yes, those are called ‘entry level’ jobs. Should you chose to stay in those jobs by doing the bare minimum always, you wont have some of the better things in life, nor should you.”

    You really believe that horse puckey? Seriously? That entry level peons and minimum wage slaves “choose” to STAY in those miserable gigs…and that they are just “sliding by” and should not have “the better things in life”…really?

    Have you ever even held a job like that? I would guess NOT. You’re one of those bigoted bastards who thinks that if a busboy of color works hard enough, he will one day own the restaurant. Yeah, right.

    What you’ll end up with instead is a tired, angry, frustrated, demoralized busboy with a lot of baggage in his cabeza.

    You’re the moronial, pal. Get your head out of your posterior orifice, wake up, and wise up.

  11. “Have you ever even held a job like that? I would guess NOT. “
    And you would guess wrong. I’ve worked and paid taxes since I was 16 and had paper routes years before that. Worked in some very less than glamorous jobs including fast food and construction labor.
    Doing more than was required while not perpetually complaining about my lot in life has worked out well for me.

    Keep talking as if you know something about me, I’ll keep laughing at you.

    And nice try with the race card!

  12. The bottom line is this, it’s either raise wages for those so called entry level jobs to levels commensurate with today’s costs of living since they aren’t even close and anyone who works full time deserves to be able to support themselves. It’s that or continue this state of corporate welfare, where even those who work full time dont earn a living wage and thus need to be subsidized by the federal government via our tax dollars, pick one.

    How the hell can anyone support themselves, much less a family on 18k per year with no benefits, its to the point now where people are working, say, even a job above minimum wage and they can’t even afford a two bedroom apartment, with or without food stamps, do you think that’s right?

    The thing that gets me about some of you boomers (mainly these pull yourself up by your bootstrap rethuglican idiots) is that you know damn well it wasn’t like that when you were growing up, you coukd be a waitress or work at a factory and not only support yourselves but also raise a family (I know plenty of you that did, not even close to as young as you think…) try doing that on 10$ an hour these days, its not happening.

    Also it’s hilarious how riled up some dipshits get over the word boomer, but its young people who are the poor little snowflakes who just can’t handle adversity, right? Laughable….

  13. Btw, most millenials probably will have shitty lives in the future, regardless of income level, because of the way boomers fucked this country and the world up its ass for years on end. Climate change will guarantee food and housing shortages, once sea level rise hits fully you’re going to see a refugee crisis in the US, way to do nothing boomers, can’t blame millenials for that one, that’s boomers and the so called greatest generation not doing shit since the 70s

    Can you just hurry up and be bones in a box like you keep threatening? It’s not that I want you to die, we’re just really gonna need the room. Sounds like some of you are about to weep yourselves to death anyway…

  14. You little shits all seem to be not much more than a gaggle of babbling idiot buffoons and a-holes…and I could sit here all day long and continue this no-win pissing contest, but I have a life and have things to do.

    Gotta get busy and oil my wheelchair. And adjust my walker. Also change my diaper. And count out my meds so I don’t OD and make all you little Boomer-hating whippersnappers happy.

    Why don’t you just put us all on ice chunks in Lake Erie or push us off a bridge? When you come for me, I’ll be waiting in my wheelchair, with a blanket over my lap and a shotgun underneath. I won’t go quietly and I’ll take a couple of you with me. Gotta go now. This convo is over.

  15. See? There ya go, lean into it, make some jokes, its not that serious. You don’t hear me crying about moronial, though if I was an overly sensitive turd I could cry about “discrimination” against the young. I wouldn’t do that because it’s not that serious, and I’m not really that young lol. So called “discrimination” without any real world counterpart to said discrimination isn’t worth crying about, It’s just someone making fun of you.

    “Never forget what you are, the world will never forget, wear it like armor and it can never be used to hurt you…”

    That being said I actually salute you for your progressive attitude as opposed to some of your fellow oldsters. I’d call you a cool boomer, but you might get offended, so I’ll just call you cool. Bye Felicia!

  16. “Btw, most millenials probably will have shitty lives in the future, regardless of income level, because of the way boomers fucked this country and the world up its ass for years on end. Climate change will guarantee food and housing shortages, once sea level rise hits fully you’re going to see a refugee crisis in the US, way to do nothing boomer….”

    Easy to see Kleenex and Puffs stock will be where the money is at in the future.

  17. Boomers come in all shapes and sizes and colors…and as for “progressive attitudes”…they run the whole spectrum…from Communist to Nazi…and back again from fascist to leftist. You can’t generalize about a generation of 76 million people…well, no…probably about 65 million by now, as a lot of Boomers have no dog in this fight, since they are already dead.

    Even families are seriously split. Brothers and sisters and cousins are polar (and polarized) opposites, snarking at each other at family gatherings from both sides of the fence. Or would that be a wall?

    Thanks for starting and stirring up all this hoo-ha, folks…SCENE has gotten extremely quiet and dull lately…it’s time to raise a little hell!

  18. Come gather ’round people, wherever you roam
    And admit that the waters around you have grown
    And accept it that soon you’ll be drenched to the bone
    If your time to you is worth saving
    Then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone
    For the times they are a-changin’

    Come writers and critics, who prophesize with your pen
    And keep your eyes wide, the chance won’t come again
    And don’t speak too soon
    For the wheel’s still in spin
    And there’s no tellin’ who that it’s namin’
    For the loser now will be later to win
    For the times they are a-changin’

    Come senators, congressmen, please heed the call
    Don’t stand in the doorway, don’t block up the hall
    For he that gets hurt will be he who has stalled
    The battle outside ragin’
    Will soon shake your windows and rattle your walls
    For the times they are a-changin’

    Come mothers and fathers throughout the land
    And don’t criticize what you can’t understand
    Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command
    Your old road is rapidly aging
    Please get outta’ the new one if you can’t lend your hand
    For the times they are a-changin’

    The line it is drawn, the curse it is cast
    The slow one now will later be fast
    As the present now will later be past
    The order is rapidly fading
    And the first one now will later be last
    For the times they are a-changin’

    This is who the boomers used to be, now the vast majority of them sold their ethos long ago for BMW’s and 3 bedrooms with a two car garage. They got theirs and most of them don’t give a fuck if you ever get yours, and some of them hope you never get it. Remember that they once wrote and celebrated songs like this, but ultimately sold their souls and became the very thing they fought against and now, most will go far out of their way to preserve their shitty status quo.

    A cautionary tale, if there ever was one.

  19. I would not say the vast majority, Bobby…many started out in shit jobs in the Seventies, struggled in the Eighties, and were still poor in the Nineties, by which time many were fortysomethings and were already facing age discrimination in the workplace. Most did not drive Beemers and many never owned houses, let alone McMansions.

    No, Bobby, not all of them got theirs. As for not giving a fuck and hoping you never get yours, remember that there’s only so much pie to go around and they naturally want their piece of it and if someone else doesn’t get a slice, tough noogies.

    Yeah, plenty of Boomers became sellouts and yuppies, but many more became yuffies…young urban failures. Too many people, not enough pie. It’s always been true elsewhere and now it’s true for America.

    Plenty of old hippies are still around…a lot of them are the druggies and alkies and burnouts you see on corners begging for change.

    Cautionary tale? Nope…it’s just the way of the world,

  20. Right on the money, Pie. The earliest Boomers faced the Nixonian recession upon graduating college in the early Seventies. They drove cabs and worked in factories for $2.50 an hour. Then there was an even worse downturn in ’74-’75, biggest to that point since before WWII.

    And they facced another recession under Carter, and then the Reagan Recession, the deepest of all…the one when homelessness really took off.

    So a lot of Boomers got kicked in the ass and repeatedly knocked down when they tried to get on their feet. By the mid-Eighties and early Nineties, they were aging fast and had fallen far behind their more successful agemates.

    The longer you’re playing catch-up, the harder it is to succeed. Look at all the folks who fell through the cracks ten or so years ago. Most of them were over fifty and never recovered.

    Why are so many people so surprised that the suicide rate has skyrocketed in recent years, and that early Boomers have one of the highest rates of offing themselves among the various age cohorts?

    Not an economist…not a sociologist…not a historian. Just another shmuck on the street. But a shmuck who lived through the whole shebang, with the scars to prove it.

  21. Thank you There’s pie in the sky when you die? It’s a lie!. That’s the reality I lived through as a Boomer. This is not a generational war, this is a class war and it’s been going on for centuries. Sometimes we win some, most of the time we lose. We won a bit after the unions got strong and we had the post-WWII economic boom and that freaked out the wealthy. So they brought in Reaganomics and we all got screwed again. The wealthy now dominate the world more thoroughly than they have since the ’20s. They will do nothing to halt climate change and so we are doomed. Goodbye, Sweet Earth, I loved thee well in my short time on this beautiful planet.

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