Food Stamps: The $21 Question

Isaiah J. Poole

May 18, 2007

Isaiah J. Poole is executive editor of TomPaine.com.

Do you know how you could eat on just $21 a week?

This week, you may have heard about the four members of Congress who have decided to try living on the amount of food they could buy with $21, the average weekly Food Stamp program allotment. One of the members, Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., and his wife, Lisa, have maintained a blog about their experience. It’s a sobering read—not just the experiences of the normally well-fed politicians who are doing this for a week, but the comments of ordinary people who have had to do this, and worse, for weeks or months at a time. It makes you wonder how on earth a nation’s leaders can be so casual when spending public money on instruments of war, power and political advantage, and yet be so stingy when it comes to that most basic form of human compassion, making sure your neighbor has enough to eat.