DA - Safety Net - Michigan 7 2023 BFHGR

Negative
SNAP 1nc
SNAP is working to reduce hunger now.
Cox ’23 (Ty Jones Cox, Vice President for Food Assistance at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. “SNAP Is and Remains Our Most Effective Tool to Combat Hunger” 02/14/23 https://www.cbpp.org/blog/snap-is-and-remains-our-most-effective-tool-to-combat-hunger), dani
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is our nation’s most effective tool for combating hunger. It plays a critical role in reducing poverty, improving health and economic outcomes, supporting people who are paid low wages, and serving as the first line of defense against hunger during economic downturns. Access to SNAP provides families with the money they need to purchase groceries, freeing up their limited resources to spend more on other basic needs such as housing, utilities, and medical and child care. As the Senate Agriculture Committee prepares to hold a hearing on nutrition programs in the 2023 farm bill, there are a few important points to consider. SNAP is highly effective at reducing hunger and is a powerful anti-poverty tool, especially during times of economic downturn. SNAP reduces hunger by as much as 30 percent and is even more effective among children. Studies have shown that hunger among children fell by roughly one-third after their families received SNAP benefits for six months. Hunger was poised to soar early in the COVID-19 pandemic, but SNAP’s structure and policy changes made it easier for families to access SNAP during this period. Hunger stayed level in 2020 — unlike during the Great Recession, when hunger surged from 11.1 percent to 14.7 percent. SNAP also narrowed racial disparities during the pandemic: from late December 2020 through December 2021, the share of people who didn’t have enough to eat fell 7.8 percentage points for Black adults and 6 percentage points for Hispanic adults, compared to 3.1 percentage points for non-Hispanic white adults. SNAP helps a broad range of people with low incomes, including children, older adults, people with disabilities, and veterans. Children: SNAP helps nearly 1 in 4 children in the United States afford an adequate diet. Nearly two-thirds of SNAP benefits go to families with children. Older adults: SNAP helps nearly 6 million low-income older adults — many of whom are on fixed incomes — afford food, which helps to stretch their budgets to better cover other household expenses like medication. People with disabilities: SNAP helps nearly 4 million non-elderly adults who either receive disability benefits or have work-limiting health conditions. Individuals with disabilities are at higher risk of food insecurity, making SNAP particularly important for them. Veterans: SNAP helps more than 1 million low-income veterans who may struggle to find work, may be employed in low-paid jobs, or may have disabilities or chronic health conditions. SNAP is linked to improved outcomes for education, economic security, and self-sufficiency. When children are hungry, their performance at school suffers. SNAP is linked to improved educational attainment and higher rates of school completion. One study found that test scores among students in SNAP households are highest for those receiving benefits two to three weeks before the test. This suggests that SNAP can help students learn and prepare for tests — and that when benefits run out and families are struggling to afford groceries, children’s ability to learn is diminished. Similarly, children who received SNAP benefits when they were younger have improved labor market outcomes in adulthood. SNAP is associated with improved health outcomes and lower medical costs. SNAP helps families with low incomes afford healthier foods and is linked to improved health outcomes over the long term. SNAP participants are more likely to report excellent or very good health than low-income people who don’t participate in SNAP. SNAP is also linked to lower medical costs; some studies show an association between SNAP participation and a reduction in health care costs by as much as $5,000 per person per year. SNAP is an important support for workers. Finally, and key in some of the conversations happening now, SNAP is an important support (not a hindrance) for workers who are paid low wages and for those looking for work. No one can work when they are hungry. SNAP helps fill the gaps for workers with low and inconsistent pay, and it helps people afford food for themselves and their families during periods when they are looking for work. Most SNAP participants who can work do so. But many of the jobs most common among SNAP participants, such as service or sales jobs, often pay low wages and don’t offer regular work hours or benefits like paid sick leave. This makes it difficult for workers to earn sufficient income to provide for their families and may contribute to volatility due to high job turnover. SNAP supplements these workers’ low pay, helps smooth out income fluctuations due to irregular hours, and helps workers when they temporarily lose employment, enabling them to buy food and use their limited resources on other necessities. For millions of working people, work does not itself guarantee steady or sufficient income to provide for their families. SNAP responds by providing workers and their families with supplementary income to buy food. While there are some areas where we should make improvements to SNAP, we must remember that it is critical to protect — not weaken — the program while looking for opportunities to strengthen it in a bipartisan bill.
LINK
SNAP has a unique multiplier effect – continued in kind benefits are vital to sustaining small farms
Nebeker ’20 (Ryan Nebeker, Research and Policy Analyst for FoodPrint. “How Nutrition Assistance Programs Help Keep Farms Afloat” 04/02/20 https://foodprint.org/blog/nutrition-assistance-programs/), dani
The country’s two largest nutrition assistance programs are the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as Food Stamps) and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). Under normal conditions, SNAP provides low-income people with a monthly “benefit” that they can only spend on food. The requirements vary from state to state but typically, people need to be near the federal poverty line to qualify. The amount of the benefit varies based on income and household size. WIC works a little differently, and provides pregnant women and mothers with young children vouchers to purchase specific eligible foods, mostly healthy staples like dairy, fruit, vegetables, and infant formula.
In an economic downturn, nutrition assistance programs play an obvious role in feeding the hungry: more unemployed people means that more people qualify for government assistance. However, SNAP and WIC are also an opportunity to help stimulate the economy, and lawmakers can tweak the programs to encourage this. Doing things like increasing the amount of money people can receive every month can have big impacts. First, people who recieve more money specifically for food can spend more of their own money on other things, which helps stimulate the rest of the economy. Second, the increased amount of money that recipients spend on food helps farmers and food retailers keep their sales up and stay in business.
EVEN BIGGER BOOSTS FROM DOUBLE UP FOOD BUCKS
This is especially true when increases are paired with programs like Double Up Food Bucks that match funds for purchases at farmers’ markets. This means consumers can get twice as much food out of their SNAP benefits, and gives farmers a big boost in sales. Increasing the amount of money that SNAP participants received was a critical part of the stimulus package passed during the 2008 recession, and subsequent research showed it was one of the most effective parts of the legislation: every dollar spent generated about $1.70 for the economy.
In responding to the current crisis, lawmakers laid out over a billion dollars for extra food aid in their first relief bill, including an additional $500 million for WIC. Congress also authorized a shift in funds from the School Lunch Program to SNAP, allowing families who normally rely on free school lunch to get extra SNAP money while their kids can’t go to school. The Senate’s latest agreement on the larger stimulus includes a 15% increase in the total SNAP budget, which will fuel further expansion of the program and keep food demand high.
Commodity Buyups
In addition to programs like SNAP and WIC that give recipients money or vouchers to buy food, the USDA has another strategy to help both hungry consumers and farmers: purchasing food directly and using it for government-distributed assistance. Since the Great Depression, the government has bought up extra commodities (most famously cheese) and either kept them in storage or used them in government institutions and assistance programs. While these seem like a convenient way to feed hungry people, these programs were mainly designed to ensure that farmers could sell their products even when prices are low. These “extra” commodities are used in a variety of institutions, including the National School Lunch Program.
With schools closed, however, those commodities are being used elsewhere. The initial relief package allocated an extra $400 million for the Emergency Food Assistance Program, which allows the USDA to purchase food and send it to food banks and other emergency distribution centers. While we tend to think of food pantries as mainly canned foods, the Emergency Food Assistance Program specifically includes fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables. Given that fruit and vegetable farmers are already feeling the effects of lost business, this could become a way for them to sell their goods even as restaurants and farmers’ markets become unreliable.
Still, there are possible issues: the list of foods USDA usually provides participants doesn’t currently include the more specialized produce farmers grow for restaurants, much of which has already been planted for the season. There’s also no premium for organic growers, who might not be fairly recouped for their higher expenses. However, because this program is intended to help producers and varies based on the market, it’s likely that the foods USDA purchases will be more flexible than under normal conditions.
Food Aid is a Vital Lifeline
Farmers are still struggling to address many aspects of the COVID-19 crisis, like ongoing concerns about farmworker safety and the loss of major buyers. While debates about whether or not the stimulus goes far enough to protect small farms are ongoing, the approved expansion of nutrition assistance is a bright spot. By both keeping demand for food high and offering different ways for farmers to get their food to market, food aid is a vital lifeline to keep farms in business during what will likely be a long economic recovery.
Small farms contribution to agro-bioD prevents extinction
Houngbo ’20 (Gilbert Fossoun Houngbo, current Director-General of the International Labor Organization, former Prime Minister of Togo. ”Why small farms are key to the future of food - and how we can support them” 11/23/20 https://www.ifad.org/en/web/latest/-/blog/why-small-farms-are-key-to-the-future-of-food-and-how-we-can-support-them), dani
Today’s food systems must feed 7.8 billion people without compromising future productivity or the health of our planet. Yet they must also fairly reward and recognize the work of the millions of people at their base, in particular small-scale producers. What is the urgency? Hunger is both a result of conflict and a cause. It is bad for human health, economic growth, peace and development. Last year, 690 million people went hungry. Under-nutrition stunted the growth and future prospects of 144 million children. Climate change has affected our rivers and oceans and helped agricultural pests and disease multiply. This was before the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which may push another 132 million people into hunger. Small-scale farmers and other rural people are disproportionately represented among the numbers of the poor and hungry. Demand for less variety and more processed foods are shaping Global food systems. There has been a 75% loss of plant genetic diversity on farms in the past 100 years. Just four crops - wheat, rice, maize and soybean - provide two-thirds of human caloric intake. With fewer species and varieties, our food systems are more vulnerable to pests and disease. Meanwhile, our current system of food production uses about 75% of the world’s accessible freshwater. It is responsible for 20% to 30% of all greenhouse gases. It is a primary contributor to biodiversity loss. And one million species are threatened with extinction – including pollinators, without which humans would be extinct. Emissions will take Earth’s temperature past a 1.5°C rise in the 2060s, unless we transform our food systems. © Science Magazine Why should we care about small farms? Small-scale farming systems already grow 50% of our food calories on 30% of the agricultural land. When access to inputs and conditions are equal, smaller farms tend to be more productive per hectare than much larger farms. Family farmers have a vested interest in protecting the fertility of their soil and the long-term productivity of their land. They are also more likely than larger farms to grow a wide variety of crops, contributing to agro-biodiversity. IFAD’s experience shows that when given the opportunity, small-scale food producers are quick to invest and grow their business. Even in situations as complex as the Sahel, these investments yield results. Last year, on a visit to Mali, I met a young farmer and entrepreneur named Nouhoum Sidibé. Nouhoum had been saving his money to migrate to Europe when he heard about an IFAD-supported project aimed at empowering young women and men in rural areas. With a loan and training, Nouhoum was able to start a poultry business. He began with just 10 chickens. Today he is raising 3,500 chicks five or six times a year and employs seven people. In a country where average salaries are $1,500, his annual income is more than $12,000. He is investing in his business and community instead of saving up to leave. Every year, IFAD-supported projects raise the production of 15 million small-scale producers and increase the value of sales of another 16 million, significantly raising the income of 20 million rural people. Creating a virtuous circle Rural and urban societies and economies alike benefit from prosperous and productive small farms. This creates jobs and wealth for their communities, reduces pressure on young people to migrate, and contributes to more stable and peaceful societies. When small-scale farmers earn more, they inject their incomes directly into the rural economy, creating growth and diversification. Almost every example of large-scale national poverty reduction was kick-started by rising incomes among small-scale farmers.
Medicaid 1nc
Medicaid is funded federally now---program cuts create budget volatility and push the states into a billion dollar hole of debt
Peter G. Peterson Foundation 23 [the Peter G. Peterson Foundation is a nonpartisan organization dedicated to increasing awareness and accelerating action on America’s long-term fiscal challenges, 6/2/23, “HOW DO STATES PAY FOR MEDICAID?,” https://www.pgpf.org/budget-basics/budget-explainer-how-do-states-pay-for-medicaid] //mh
Medicaid is a joint federal-state program that provides health insurance targeted to lower-income recipients. The program plays a significant role in the U.S. health system, providing medical care for about 26 percent of the population. As a key part of the safety net, Medicaid is designed to be countercyclical, meaning that it expands to meet rising needs during economic downturns when people lose their jobs and job-based health coverage. It also represents a major source of both revenues and expenditures in state budgets, since states receive a portion of funding for the program from the federal government. OVERVIEW OF MEDICAID FINANCING Each state’s Medicaid expenditures for healthcare services are matched by federal funds according to various formulas. The formula that governs the majority of government funding takes into account differences in per capita income among the states and is called the federal medical assistance percentages (FMAP). For 2023, the FMAP ranges from a minimum of 50 percent in wealthier states such as California to 77 percent in Mississippi. The matching structure provides states with resources that automatically adjust for demographic and economic shifts, healthcare costs, public health emergencies, and natural disasters. States receive varying levels of assistance from the federal government for Medicaid In addition to funds governed by the FMAP, the federal government provides enhanced matching rates for select services, providers, or groups of beneficiaries. The most prominent example stems from the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which expanded the Medicaid program to cover individuals with incomes up to 138 percent of the poverty level; the federal government covers nearly all the cost of coverage for the expansion population. Remaining Medicaid expenditures are referred to as the nonfederal share, and federal law requires that states finance at least 40 percent of their share of total Medicaid expenditures through state funds. The remaining 60 percent of the nonfederal share can come from “other state funds” including funding transferred from local governments or revenue collected from provider taxes and fees. However, in practice this is not the case. According to the National Association of State Budget Officers, in fiscal year 2022 (which for most states is July 1–June 30) the program cost a total of $789 billion, about $249 billion of which was the nonfederal share. A majority of Medicaid funding comes from the federal government HOW DOES MEDICAID AFFECT STATE BUDGETS? Medicaid’s role in state budgets is unique, since the program acts as both an expenditure and the largest source of federal support in state budgets. In 2022, total Medicaid expenditures (including federal matching funds) made up 28 percent of state budgets, on average, making it the largest category of spending. When considering only nonfederal funds, it comprised 17 percent of general fund expenditures, making it the second largest category of state spending after primary and secondary education. Medicaid is typically the largest expenditure in state budgets Medicaid expenditures rose steadily from 2008 to 2018 as a percentage of total state spending, growing from 20.5 percent of state budgets to 29.3 percent. That growth reflects broader health spending trends and includes the effect of the ACA expansion in 2014. Nevertheless, Medicaid expenditures grew more slowly than other elements of state budgets — including education. Medicaid expenditures have increased as a percentage of state budgets States finance the nonfederal share of their Medicaid expenditures in large part through general revenues, which consist of revenue from sources including personal and corporate income taxes and sales taxes. States can also use funds raised from local governments and through taxes on healthcare providers to finance the nonfederal share of their Medicaid payments. Those sources of Medicaid funding have received increased attention because states have used them to create complex financing mechanisms designed to maximize the amount of federal Medicaid funds coming to the states, thereby drawing down federal Medicaid funds without expending much, if any, state general funds.
LINK
Volatile budgets and state debt from increased Medicaid expenses wreck fiscal federalism---that prevents effective state governance
Kirk J. Stark 10 [Professor of Tax Law and Policy, UCLA School of Law, 2010, “THE FEDERA

Preview shortened. Download the file for the full document.