Forty years ago--September 29,1977--President Carter signed into law the landmark 1977 Food Stamp Act, setting the framework for today’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The 1977 law and its bipartisan roots both were years in the making. Food stamps began as a pilot program in 1961 and was converted to permanent status in 1964, but it wasn’t yet a nationwide program and wasn’t doing enough to address hunger. Tens years later the program served the whole nation. When President Ford sought in 1975 to cut food stamp benefits sharply by regulation, Congress passed legislation to block the measure by bipartisan, veto-proof margins. The Food Stamp Act that Carter signed in 1977, which passed Congress with bipartisan support, included the most far-reaching improvements in the program’s history. It eliminated the “purchase requirement” — that recipients must pay cash to purchase their food stamps (for example, having to pay $90 to receive $200 in food stamps rather than just receiving the $110 difference). Until then, only about half of those eligible for benefits were receiving them, in large part because many potential beneficiaries could not come up with the lump sums of cash needed to buy food stamps every month. And it took important steps to simplify the program, reduce administrative costs, and combat fraud.
Source: Center for Budget & Policy Priorities, 9/26/17, Food Stamp History
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