More than 2 million low-income individuals in Illinois rely on the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)
for food aid, but the program could face a big setback under U.S. House
Budget Committee Chairman U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R, WI-1) proposed budget released last week.
Ryan’s plan aims to block grant the flexible SNAP program, which has about 47 million participants.
Under
the plan, the federal government would give pots of cash to states to
run the program, leaving them to customize it to their recipients’ needs
and determine eligibility requirements.
“Like Medicaid,
SNAP suffers from a flawed structure,” the budget plan says. “States
receive more money if they enroll more people in the program — so their
incentive is to get people onto the rolls. They have little incentive to
help people get off the rolls and find work. In fact, these programs
make it harder to become independent.”
That’s not the right approach, said Beverly Henry, associate professor of nutrition and dietetics at Northern Illinois University’s College of Health and Human Sciences.
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Saying it willingly accepts “mindless” cuts of the sequester, the budget proposal from 
Obama’s negative defining of Romney early in the 2012 presidential campaign was a
key factor in the 2012 election, three top Obama and Romney TV ad
staffers said at a panel discussion held Tuesday night at the University of
Chicago’s Institute of Politics.
Freeport workers at the Bain Capital-owned Sensata Technologies rallied today as part of a national movement calling on politicians to focus on job creation, not cuts to social services and education. The workers say the outcome of the election, which saw Democrat Cheri Bustos beat incumbent, Tea Party-backed Republican Bobby Schilling in the 17th congressional district where the Sensata factory lies, shows that voters are ready to see their elected officials work for them, not against them. 
