The cost of the food stamp program, the premiere U.S. anti-hunger program, is falling in tandem with the enrollment, says the think tank Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. Enrollment fell to 44.7 million at latest count. That’s the smallest number of participants since the spring of 2011, says CBPP, and the cost of the food stamps in the first half of this fiscal year, at $37.1 billion, according to the Treasury Department, was the lowest since 2010 for the first six months of a fiscal year.
“The new figures undercut House Republicans’ justification for massive (food stamp) cuts,” wrote CBPP senior fellow Dottie Rosenbaum. The GOP-controlled Budget Committee has proposed a 20 percent cut in food stamp funding over the next decade, partly by converting the program to a block grant for states to run.
Enrollment in the food stamp program surged by more than 20 million people in the wake of the 2008-09 recession. At its peak, enrollment was 47.6 million people in fiscal 2013, costing $80 billion that year.