By Mac William Bishop
Bryan R. Smith for The New York Times
Cutting Back on Food Stamps: After Congress cut monthly benefits for food stamp recipients, families in the Bronx must make hard choices with reduced food budgets.
CHARLESTON, S.C. — For many, a $10 or $20 cut in the monthly food budget would be absorbed with little notice.
But for millions of poor Americans who rely on food stamps, reductions that began this month present awful choices. One gallon of milk for the kids instead of two. No fresh broccoli for dinner or snacks to take to school. Weeks of grits and margarine for breakfast.
And for many, it will mean turning to a food pantry or a soup kitchen by the middle of the month.
"I don't need a whole lot to eat," said Leon Simmons, 63, who spends more than half of his monthly $832 Social Security income to rent a room in an East Charleston house. "But this month I know I'm not going to buy any meats."
Mr. Simmons's allotment from the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly called food stamps, has dropped $9. He has already spent the $33 he received for November.
The reduction in benefits has affected more than 47 million people like Mr. Simmons. It is the largest wholesale cut in the program since Congress passed the first Food Stamps Act in 1964 and touches about one in every seven Americans.
From the country kitchens of the South to the bodegas of New York, the pain is already being felt.
Christopher Bean, the executive director of a Bronx food pantry that is operated by a nonprofit organization called Part of the Solution, said that about 60 new families had visited the pantry in the past week because their food stamps had been cut.
They know they will be out of food well before the month is over. "People can do math," he said.
In 2009, people started getting as much as 13.6 percent more in food stamps as part of the federal economic stimulus package, but that increase has expired. The reduction will save the government about $5 billion next year.
Over all, the nation's food stamps program cost a record $78.4 billion in the 2012 fiscal year, according to the Agriculture Department. Although the amount given to each household — a figure that can vary widely depending on a complex formula of income and the number of mouths to feed — has been dropping by small amounts for the past few years, the roster of people seeking assistance grew steadily through the recession.
In the 2010 fiscal year, 40.3 million people were enrolled. Two years later, that number jumped by 16 percent. Just over 45 percent of those getting food stamps are children, according to the Agriculture Department.
Food stamps are likely to be cut more in the coming years if Congress can agree on a new farm bill, which House and Senate negotiators began tackling this week. The Republican-controlled House has approved cutting as much as $40 billion from the program over 10 years by making it harder to qualify. The Democratic-controlled Senate is suggesting a $4 billion cut by making administrative changes.
To poor families trying to stretch a couple hundred dollars into a month's worth of groceries, all the talk about stimulus packages, farm subsidies and congressional politics means little. It is all about daily survival at the grocery store.
"We'll be on our last $3 at the end of the month," said Rafaela Rivera, 34, a home health aide who earns $10 an hour.
Ms. Rivera's family of four saw their food stamps reduced by $36, to $420 a month. They pay rent and other expenses using her income and her husband's disability check, and they supplement food stamps with bags of fresh vegetables, chicken and other groceries from a food pantry.
"It's going to be hard," she said. "Our last week is going to be tight tight."
Ingrid Mock, 46, a former supermarket cashier who is disabled, was at the Bronx food pantry on Monday stocking up on canned green beans, pasta, ground beef and apples.
Ms. Mock, who has received food benefits for a decade and uses them to help feed her 12-year-old daughter, said her allotment had steadily decreased from as much as $309 about six years ago to a low of $250 this month, which reflected a new cut of $25.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: November 9, 2013
An article on Friday about recent reductions in food stamps that are causing families to make hard choices omitted the time frame of the almost $40 billion in cuts to food stamps that were approved by the Republican-controlled House. The cuts would be phased in over 10 years.
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