Progress Illinois

This past winter, Democratic Rep. Dan Lipinski and a slew of congressional Republicans took pot shots at the Obama administration for including spending on social programs like food stamps in their federal stimulus bill. The critics whined that the package was supposed to promote jobs, ignoring data proving that food stamps are the most stimulative type of expenditure government can make.

Now, as big infrastructure projects funded by the stimulus are slow to start, it's the hike in food stamp benefits that is rippling through the economy. The Wall Street Journal has the story:

Money from the program -- officially known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program -- percolates quickly through the economy. The U.S. Department of Agriculture calculates that for every $5 of food-stamp spending, there is $9.20 of total economic activity, as grocers and farmers pay their employees and suppliers, who in turn shop and pay their bills.

While other stimulus money has been slow to circulate, the food-stamp boost is almost immediate, with 80% of the benefits being redeemed within two weeks of receipt and 97% within a month, the USDA says.

The increase is modest -- a family of four on food stamps receives an average of $80 more per month. But for some struggling Americans, that boost makes a huge difference. Take Chicagoan Angie Minix. A state home care aide whose hours have been recently cut, she told the Journal that the the extra allotment has allowed her some important flexibility:

Angie Minix rushes to her local Save-a-Lot grocery store on Chicago's South Side at the start of every month, when her new food-stamp allocation appears on her card. So do many of her neighbors. "You can't even get in the parking lot," she says.

On a recent shopping trip, she headed straight to the fresh produce section. Before her increase in April to $606 from $525, Ms. Minix said she would rarely even troll the fresh-food aisles. Now, she talks about how she has introduced her two sons to cauliflower, cabbage, lettuce and cucumbers.

That spending trickles out as well. Pali Capital Inc. estimates that food-stamp spending will increase between $10 billion and $12 billion this year from $34.6 billion in 2008. We've already seen the demand in Illinois jump dramatically. And that added food-stamp revenue is expected to offset losses grocers and farmers markets have sustained because of diminishing consumer demand. Just as economists predicted.