{"id":39868,"date":"2014-02-17T15:15:17","date_gmt":"2014-02-17T20:15:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=39868"},"modified":"2014-02-17T15:15:17","modified_gmt":"2014-02-17T20:15:17","slug":"troops-on-food-stamps-stories-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=39868","title":{"rendered":"Troops on food stamps stories…again"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chief Tango sends us a link to the Daily Caller<\/a> which is all breathless about the rise in food stamp usage among the troops. I always doubt these stories because I was in the Army when pay was a lot worse than it is now and I never used food stamps to feed my family. <\/p>\n

When my youngest daughter was born and we became a family of five, I earned $8300 as an E-6. That was in 1981, using an inflation calculator, that’s $21,271 in today’s dollars. There wasn’t much money left over at the end of the month, but we didn’t get food stamps. What the Army Times<\/a> used for their revelation was the dollar amount spent at the Commissaries in food stamps;<\/p>\n

In fiscal 2013, commissary patrons redeemed $103.6 million worth of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, formerly known as food stamps. That\u2019s up 5 percent over fiscal 2012. The number of transactions rose by 2 percent, to 968,358.<\/p>\n

SNAP redemptions in commissaries began climbing in 2009 when eligibility rules were expanded due to the national economic stimulus programs. But the growth appears to be leveling off.<\/p>\n

Commissary officials track the number of transactions and the dollar amount, but they don\u2019t track the status of those using the benefit, so there is no way to compare usage among retirees with active-duty members, for example.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From the Daily Caller;<\/p>\n

Food stamp redemption at military grocery stores, or commissaries, has nearly doubled since the beginning of the \u201cGreat Recession,\u201d topping out at $103.6 million in fiscal 2013, from $31.1 million in 2008.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Commissaries only track the benefits used, not the status of the individual using them, like whether they are retired or active-duty.<\/p>\n

Pentagon officials told CNN that while the military does not track who is receiving assistance, the military members likely to be on food stamps are those at the bottom of the ranks with children, where base pay \u2014 not including housing or food \u2014 for a new soldier with a spouse and child is about $20,000. With housing and food allowances, an Army private with two years experience would make about $40,000.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don’t see a private having to get food stamps with a $3300 monthly pay check. Maybe what they need is financial advice instead of assistance. Or, maybe it’s not even privates using food stamps, since the commissaries don’t know who is spending that particular form of remuneration – it could be retirees and widows using the food stamps and not the troops at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chief Tango sends us a link to the Daily Caller which is all breathless about the … Troops on food stamps stories…again<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-military-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39868\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}