PRESS TV
09/05/2012
A record number of 46.7 million Americans receive food stamps, marking a two-fold increase in the government’s expenditure on food aid during the past four years.
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Americans will soon be eating like this |
Food-stamp spending, which has more than doubled in the past four years to the record amount of USD 75.7 billion in the fiscal year that ended on September 30, 2011, is the US Department of Agriculture’s biggest annual expense.
“Too many middle-class families who have fallen on hard times are still struggling,” said US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack in an e-mailed statement.
The newly published data come as US government's debt is announced to have exceeded USD 16 trillion for the first time and that the manufacturing activity in the country has declined for a third straight month.
Meanwhile, the US Democratic Party kicked off their national convention on Tuesday in preparation of nominating President Barack Obama for a second term in office with the country’s troubled economy as the key issue in the election campaign.
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The US presidential, congressional and numerous local government elections are due to be held on November 6.
The two most populous US states, California and Texas, had the highest number of food stamp recipients. California topped the list with 4.012 million, showing a 0.8 percent rise from the previous month and 7.3 percent from the previous year. Texas came in second, with a 0.4 percent reduction from previous month and 1.4 percent from a year earlier.
The American government spending on what is officially referred to as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program totaled USD 6.21 billion in June, an amount 0.4 percent higher than the preceding month and 2.8 percent than the previous year.
Nearly 47 percent of the food-stamp recipients in the US are children, and about 8 percent are the elderly, according to the USDA. Almost half of all new recipients reportedly leave the program within 10 months.
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