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FOOD STAMPS AFF/NEGFOOD STAMPS 1AC.................................................................................................................................................................................1FOOD STAMPS 1AC.................................................................................................................................................................................2FOOD STAMPS 1AC.................................................................................................................................................................................3FOOD STAMPS 1AC.................................................................................................................................................................................4FOOD STAMPS 1AC.................................................................................................................................................................................5FOOD STAMPS 1AC.................................................................................................................................................................................6FOOD STAMPS 1AC.................................................................................................................................................................................7FOOD STAMPS 1AC.................................................................................................................................................................................8FOOD STAMPS 1AC.................................................................................................................................................................................9FOOD STAMPS 1AC...............................................................................................................................................................................10FOOD STAMPS 1AC...............................................................................................................................................................................11FOOD STAMPS 1AC...............................................................................................................................................................................12FOOD STAMPS 1AC...............................................................................................................................................................................13FOOD STAMPS 1AC...............................................................................................................................................................................14FOOD STAMPS 1AC...............................................................................................................................................................................15FOOD STAMPS 1AC...............................................................................................................................................................................16INHERENCY............................................................................................................................................................................................17SOLVES HUNGER...................................................................................................................................................................................18HUNGER NOW........................................................................................................................................................................................19SOLVES ECONOMY...............................................................................................................................................................................20SOLVES ECONOMY...............................................................................................................................................................................21SOLVES EMPLOYMENT.......................................................................................................................................................................22SOLVES POVERTY.................................................................................................................................................................................23OBESITY NOW........................................................................................................................................................................................24OBESITY IMPACT—ECONOMY..........................................................................................................................................................25SOLVES OBESITY..................................................................................................................................................................................26T—STUFF.................................................................................................................................................................................................27A2: DOESN’T REACH PEOPLE.............................................................................................................................................................28A2: HUNGER AND OBESITY CONTRADICT.....................................................................................................................................29A2: RECTOR/HERITAGE FOUNDATION............................................................................................................................................30A2: ERRORS.............................................................................................................................................................................................31A2: ERRORS.............................................................................................................................................................................................32A2: IMMIGRATION.................................................................................................................................................................................33NEG—DEPENDENCE TURN.................................................................................................................................................................34NEG—DEPENDENCE TURN.................................................................................................................................................................35NEG—MARRIAGE TURN......................................................................................................................................................................36NEG—MARRIAGE TURN......................................................................................................................................................................37NEG—NO HUNGER IMPACT................................................................................................................................................................38NEG—NO HUNGER SOLVENCY.........................................................................................................................................................39NEG—EXTINCTION OUTWEIGHS HUNGER....................................................................................................................................40NEG—OBESITY TURN..........................................................................................................................................................................41NEG—NO SOLVENCY: OBESITY........................................................................................................................................................42NEG—NO SOLVENCY: OBESITY........................................................................................................................................................43NEG—STATUS QUO SOLVES OBESITY............................................................................................................................................44NEG—STATUS QUO SOLVES ECONOMY.........................................................................................................................................45NEG—NO IMPACT TO ECONOMY......................................................................................................................................................46NEG—ECONOMY TURN.......................................................................................................................................................................47

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OBSERVATION ONE: THE STATUS QUO

THE FOOD STAMP PROGRAM WAS EXPANDED IN FEBRUARY—UNFORTUNATELY, THIS INCREASE WAS TOO SMALL AND BENEFITS ARE NOT EQUITABLE

MURRAY 4-10-2009(Brittany, The New Hampshire, student newspaper for University of New Hampshire, http://media.www.tnhonline.com/media/storage/paper674/news/2009/04/10/News/Nationwide.Food.Stamp.Increase.Not.Enough.Say.Local.Experts-3705745-page2.shtml)

A dollar and sixty cents per meal, per person was the maximum amount of money allotted to food stamp recipients before the national increase earlier this month. "It's a supplemental program," said Terry Smith, director of family assistance for New Hampshire's Department of Health and Human Services. "[Recipients will] be getting a bigger supplement but it still won't meet all of their food needs." The increase, which is a part of the American Recovery and

Reinvestment Act, gives a household of four a maximum balance of $688 a month, or $1.85 per person, per meal. But according to Smith, the across-the-board approach to food stamps wasn't the most helpful way to reach those in need. "It doesn't matter if you're in Alaska where the cost of food is very high or if you're in Florida where shipping costs are almost nothing and food is a lot cheaper," said Smith, who finds food

costs in New Hampshire to be about average compared to other states. "The increase was the same for all states." Durham, which has a low assistance need when compared to other towns in the state, still has families that rely on the assistance they receive from the food stamp program. "There's no question that Durham doesn't have the same magnitude of need compared to other towns," said Larry Brickner-Wood, who serves as both the University of New Hampshire's campus minister as well as the executive director of the Cornucopia Food Pantry. "But people think that affluent towns don't have a need at all, and that's not the case." Like Durham, New Hampshire overall has a relatively low assistance need. But according to Smith, those needs are increasing. "We usually get about 8,300 applicants a month

[for family assistance]," said Smith. "But because of the economy we're up by about 17 percent." Durham's Cornucopia is also feeling the economic strain that families are under this year. The number of donations is down for the Spring Earth Day food baskets put out by the food pantry puts out every year around Easter. "We're way short on donations," said Brickner-Wood. "We've had gaps before but nothing like this." For Eileen Johnson, a junior sociology and justice studies major, any increase in assistance for families in need is a good thing. "I'm sure some families abuse [food stamps] and use it inappropriately, but for those who need it every little bit helps," said Johnson, who interned at the Massachusetts Department of Social Services. "I worked with families who relied on food stamps, and any increase helps make their lives a little easier." The increase averages out to be about $20 more per month, per person and still won't cover all food needs. "People are still going to have to supplement their food needs by other means," said Smith. "They're still going to have to make use of food pantries, town welfare and school lunch programs." The nationwide increase went into effect April 1 and the extra monthly allotment will be automatically added to recipients' electronic benefit transfer card.

LOW FEDERAL FUNDING PUTS PRESSURE ON STATE BUDGETS—THIS DECREASES THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE WHO CLAIM BENEFITS

GUARDIAN UNLIMITED 5-21-2009

Yet, before we pat ourselves too heartily on the back, let's examine what this means: the latest estimates are that about 32 million Americans (more than one in 10) are now receiving government food stamps. Texas alone has approximately three million people on food stamps. Nationally, however, the food stamp programme routinely misses about one-in-three of those who are poor enough to qualify - and in states like California that number's closer to one-in-two. People are afraid to apply, embarrassed to apply, can't take time off from work to go to aid offices during the week or don't know about the programme - a problem likely to worsen as funding for state outreach programmes takes a hit because of state budget crises. That means there are at least 10 million more people now poor enough for aid who don't receive it. And many of those who do access food stamps qualify for a humiliatingly small bare minimum in food aid - in many cases only $16 a month - because they still have some assets. In fact,

the maximum a person on food stamps can receive is about $50 per week, slightly more than $2 per meal. Trust me, while you can do it if you

spend an awful lot of time planning out meals and collecting sale-coupons, living on $50 a week for food, week in and week out, is mighty tight. You won't

starve, but you certainly won't eat well. For these people, securing enough food is a painful act, one of time-consuming drudgery.

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ADVANTAGE ONE: HUNGER

EXPANDING THE FEDERAL FOOD STAMP PROGRAM IS A MORAL OBLIGATION—WE MUST ATTEMPT TO ENSURE ACCESS TO FOOD FOR AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE

BOPP 2007(Linda, Executive Director, Nutrition Consortium of NYS, As Food Stamps Marks 30th Anniversary, “Groups CallUpon Congress to Strengthen Program,” Oct 16, http://www.fiscalpolicy.org/pressreleases2007/NutritionConsortiumFoodStampRelease_Oct07.pdf)

Due in large part to the Food Stamp Program, severe hunger and diseases related to malnutrition are rare in the United States. Yet, too many New York households struggle to put enough food on the table and more than two million turn to emergency feeding programs each year. Many are not eligible for food stamps

despite their low incomes due to restrictive program rules. Others do receive food stamps but the benefits are too small to allow them to meet all their food needs. Even more eligible New York households miss out on an estimated $1.5 billion in food stamp benefits because they do not participate in this nutrition assistance program. “Most of us have a friend or relative who is struggling to make ends meet, whether they work for low wages, are temporarily out of work, or are elderly or disabled. Food stamps help put food on the table for people facing difficult economic times,” said Trudi Renwick, Senior Economist with the Fiscal

Policy Institute. “Yet the value of the food stamp benefit has eroded over time, and at the current average of about $1 per person per meal, it’s just not enough.” The Nutrition Consortium of NYS, Child Care Coordinating Council of NYS, Empire Justice Center, Fiscal Policy Institute and FOCUS Churches of Albany along with dozens of other organizations, representing hundreds of community agencies across the state, called on our Senators to secure significant new investments for the Food Stamp Program in the 2007 Farm Bill. In their recommendation letter the coalition urged New York’s Senators to advocate to Senate leadership and Agriculture Committee members that the Senate Farm Bill must contain no less than an additional $4 billion to bolster the Food Stamp Program, as

provided by the House’s bill passed earlier this summer, and should build on the success of this vital nutrition assistance program to improve benefit levels and extend eligibility to more vulnerable households. “The overwhelming witness of Scriptures in the Jewish, Christian and Islamic traditions insists

that it is society’s responsibility to address and alleviate poverty. The sad reality is that no matter how hard the faith community has worked over the last three decades to help feed our hungry neighbors, the lines just keep getting longer. Charity cannot be an effective substitute for government action,” stated the Reverend Debra Jameson, who runs a food pantry and soup kitchen for FOCUS Churches in Albany. In the call to action, Linda

Bopp, Executive Director of the Nutrition Consortium of NYS, and host of the event stated, “It is unacceptable to allow our vulnerable community members to go without adequate food. We ask our Senators to guard against any amendments or efforts that do harm to food stamp households currently

eligible to participate in the program. We emphasize that resources in the nutrition title should be used to strengthen existing nutrition assistance programs. In particular, the Food Stamp Program is one of the most efficient federal programs, and if improved, would go far towards ending hunger in our nation.”

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GIVING FOOD IS A MORAL RESPONSIBILITY—WE ARE OBLIGATED TO SHARE EVEN IN THE FACE OF HUMAN EXTINCTION

WATSON 77(Richard, Professor of Philosophy at Washington University, World Hunger and Moral Obligation, p. 118-119)

These arguments are morally spurious. That food sufficient for well-nourished survival is the equal right of every human individual or nation is a specification of the higher principle that everyone has equal right to the necessities of life. The moral stress of the principle of equity is primarily on equal sharing, and only secondarily on what is being shared. The higher moral principle is of human equity per se. Consequently, the moral action is to distribute all food equally, whatever the consequences . This is the hard line apparently drawn by such moralists as Immanuel Kant and Noam Chomsky—but then, morality is hard. The conclusion may be unreasonable (impractical and irrational in conventional terms), but it is obviously moral. Nor should anyone purport surprise; it

has always been understood that the claims of morality—if taken seriously—supersede those of conflicting reason. One may even have to sacrifice one’s life or one’s nation to be moral in situations where practical behavior would preserve it. For example, if a prisoner of war undergoing torture is to be a (perhaps dead) patriot even when reason tells him that collaboration will hurt no one, he remains silent. Similarly, if one is to be moral, one distributes available food in equal shares (even if everyone then dies). That an action is necessary to save one’s life is no excuse for behaving unpatriotically or immorally if one wishes to be a patriot or moral. No principle of morality absolves one of behaving immorally simply to save one’s life or nation. There is a strict analogy here between adhering to moral principles for the sake of being moral, and adhering to Christian principles for the sake of being Christian. The moral world contains pits and lions, but one looks always to the highest light. The ultimate test always harks to the highest principle—recant or die—and it is pathetic to profess morality if one quits when the going gets rough. I have put aside many questions of detail—such as the mechanical problems of distributing food—because detail does not alter the stark conclusion. If every human life is equal in value, then the equal distribution of the necessities of life is an extremely high, if not the highest, moral duty. It is at least high enough to

override the excuse that by doing it one would lose one’s life. But many people cannot accept the view that one must distribute equally even in f the nation

collapses or all people die. If everyone dies, then there will be no realm of morality. Practically speaking, sheer survival comes first. One can adhere to

the principle of equity only if one exists. So it is rational to suppose that the principle of survival is morally higher than the principle of equity. And though one might not be able to argue for unequal distribution of food to save a nation—for nations can come and go—one might well argue that unequal distribution is necessary for the survival of the human species. That is, some large group—say one-third of present world population—should be at least well-nourished for human survival. However, from an individual standpoint, the human species—like the nation—is of no moral relevance. From a naturalistic

standpoint, survival does come first; from a moralistic standpoint—as indicated above—survival may have to be sacrificed. In the milieu of morality, it is immaterial whether or not the human species survives as a result of individual behavior.

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THE ARGUMENT THAT SURVIVAL OUTWEIGHS SHARING FOOD RELIES ON A MISUNDERSTANDING OF MORAL AGENCY—THIS VIEW JUSTIFIES INFINITE ATROCITIES—BECAUSE NO SUCH AGENT AS “THE HUMAN SPECIES” EXISTS, THEN WE ARE RESPONSIBLE ONLY TO INDIVIDUALS WHO ARE STARVING

WATSON 77(Richard, Professor of Philosophy at Washington University, World Hunger and Moral Obligation, p. 121-123)

Given that the human species has rights as a fictional person on the analogy of corporate rights, it would seem to be rational to place the right of survival of the species above that of individuals. Unless the species survives, no individual will survive, and thus an individual’s right to life is subordinate to the species’ right to survival. If species survival depends on the unequal distribution of food to maintain a healthy breeding stock, then it is morally right for some people to have plenty while

others starve. Only if there is enough food to nourish everyone well does it follow that food should be shared equally. This might be true if corporate entities actually do have moral status and moral rights. But obviously, the legal status of corporate entities as fictional persons does not make them moral equals or superiors of actual human persons. Legislators might profess astonishment that anyone would think that a corporate person is a person as people are, let alone a moral person. However, because the legal rights of corporate entities are based on individual rights, and because corporate entities are treated so much like persons, the transition is often made. Few theorists today would argue that the state of the

human species is a personal agent. But all this means is that idealism is dead in theory. Unfortunately, its influence lives, so it is worth giving an argument to show that corporate entities are not real persons. Corporate entities are not persons as you and I are in the explicit sense that we are self-conscious agents and they are not. Corporate entities are not agents at all, let alone moral agents . This is a good reason for not treating corporate entities even as fictional persons. The distinction between people and other things, to generalize, is that people are self-conscious agents, whereas things are not. The possession of rights essentially depends on an entity’s being self-conscious, i.e., on its actually being a person. If it is self-conscious, then it has a right to life. Self-consciousness is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for an entity’s being a moral

equal of human beings; moral equality depends on the entity’s also being a responsible moral agent as most human beings are. A moral agent must have the capacity to be responsible, i.e., the capacity to choose and to act freely with respect to consequences that the agent does or can recognize and accept as its own choice and doing. Only a being who

knows himself as a person, and who can effect choices and accept consequences, is a responsible moral agent. On these grounds, moral equality rests on the actuality of moral agency based on reciprocal rights and responsibilities. One is responsible to something only if it can be responsible in return. Thus, we have responsibilities to other people, and they have reciprocal rights. If we care for things, it is because people have interests in them, not because things in themselves impose responsibilities on us. That is, as stated early in this essay, morality essentially has to do with relations among people, among persons. It is nonsense to talk of things that

cannot be moral agents as having responsibilities; consequently, it is nonsense to talk of whatever is not actually a person as having rights. It is deceptive even

to talk of legal rights of a corporate entity. Those rights (and reciprocal responsibilities) actually pertain to individual human beings who have an interest in the corporate entity. The State or the human species have no rights at all, let alone rights superior to those of individuals. The basic reason given for preserving a nation or the human species is that otherwise the milieu of morality would not exist. This is false so far as specific nations are concerned, but it is true that the existence of

individuals depends on the existence of the species. However, although moral behavior is required of each individual, no principle requires that the realm of morality itself be preserved. Thus, we are reduced to the position that people’s interest in preserving the human species is based primarily on the interest of each in individual survival. Having shown above that the principle of equity is morally superior to the principle of survival, we can conclude again that food should be shared equally even if this means the extinction of the human race. Is there no way to produce enough food to nourish everyone well? Besides cutting down to the minimum, people in the West might quit feeding such nonhuman animals as cats and dogs. However, some people (e.g., Peter Singer) argue that mere sentience—the capacity to suffer pain—means that an animal is the moral equal of human beings. I argue that because nonhuman animals are not moral agents, they do not share the rights of self-conscious responsible persons. And considering the profligacy of nature, it is rational to argue that if nonhuman animals have any rights at all, they include not the right to life, but merely the right to fight for life. In fact, if people in the West did not feed grain to cattle, sheep, and hogs, a considerable amount of food would be freed for human consumption. Even then, there might not be enough to nourish everyone. Let me remark that Stone and Singer attempt to break down the distinction between people on the one hand, and certain things (corporate entities) and nonhuman animals on the other, out of moral concern. However,, there is another, profoundly antihumanitarian

movement also attempting to break down the distinction. All over the world, heirs of Gobineau, Goebbels, and Hitler practice genocide and otherwise treat people as non-human animals and things in the name of the State. I am afraid that the consequences of treating entities such as corporations and nonhuman

animals—that are not moral agents—as persons with rights will not be that we will treat national parks and chickens the way we treat people, but that we will have provided support for those who would treat people the way we now treat nonhuman animals and things. The benefits of modern society depend in no small part on the institution of corporate law. Even if the majority of these benefits are to the good—of which I am by no means sure—the legal fiction of corporate personhood still

elevates corporate needs above the needs of people. In the present context, reverence for corporate entities leads to the spurious argument that the present world imbalance of food and resources is morally justified in the name of the higher rights of sovereign nations, or even of the human species, the survival of

which is said to be more important than the right of any individual to life. This conclusion is morally absurd. This is not, however, the fault of morality. We should share all food equally,

at least until everyone is well-nourished. Besides food, all the necessities of life should be shared, at least until everyone is adequately supplied with a humane minimum. The hard conclusion remains that we should share all food equally even if this means that everyone starves and the human species becomes extinct. But, of course, the human race would

survive even equal sharing, for after enough people died, the remained could be well-nourished on the food that remained. But this grisly prospect does not show that anything is wrong with the principle of equity. Instead, it shows that something is profoundly wrong with the social institutions in which sharing the necessities of life equally is “impractical” and “irrational.”

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COUNTERPLANS DON’T SOLVE OUR ADVANTAGE—EVEN IF ANOTHER AGENT COULD DO THE PLAN, THIS DOES NOT ABSOLVE THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OF ITS RESPONSIBILITY TO CONFRONT HUNGER

AITKEN 77(William, teaches philosophy at Chatham College, World Hunger and Moral Obligation, p 93-94)

Some have maintained that there is a fourth minimal condition which a potential helper of a person in need must satisfy in order to be obligated to act—the

condition of being the ‘last resort’. Richard Brandt suggests such a condition in his book, Ethical Theory. He specifies that it is only in cases where “we are the only one in a position to help” that we have a moral obligation to assist a person in dire need and that the person in need has a right to our

assistance. There is a danger in adopting this ‘last resort’ condition since it poses an additional epistemological difficulty, that is, the determination of whether or not I am the last resort. Beyond this, it is an undesirable condition because it will justify inaction where more than one person could act but where no one is acting. In most emergency situations there is more than one potential assistor. For instance, five persons may simultaneously come across a drowning child. Each would be obligated to act if he were the last resort, but since no single one is the last resort, then all five may refuse to act, claiming that it is not their duty to act any more than it is the duty of the other four and so each one would be justified in not acting. If this condition is placed on the right to be saved, the child could drown and none of the five spectators could be held morally accountable. But surely the presence of another person at an accident site does not automatically relieve me of a moral duty to assist the victim in need, any more than the presence of one police officer called to the scene of a bank

robbery relieves other officers in the area from attempting to apprehend the suspects. The condition of last resort is too strong; it is not a minimal condition for obligation.

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ADVANTAGE TWO: RECOVERY

STATE BUDGETS ARE COLLAPSING NOW AND CANNOT SUSTAIN FURTHER SPENDING—FEDERAL INTERVENTION IS CRITICAL TO PREVENT ECONOMIC RECESSION FROM DEEPENING

LAV AND McNICHOL 2009(Iris, senior advisor; Elizabeth, senior fellow; both specialize in state budgets and taxes at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “State Budget Troubles Worsen,” May 18, http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=711)

States are facing a great fiscal crisis. At least 47 states faced or are facing shortfalls in their budgets for this and/or the next year or two. Combined budget gaps for the remainder of this fiscal year and state fiscal years 2010 and 2011 are estimated to total more than $350 billion. This figure, however, does not account for recent state actions to close their 2009 budget gaps or their projected gaps for 2010 or 2011, or for the

$140 billion in fiscal relief that Congress provided for states in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. States are currently at the mid-point of fiscal year 2009 — which started July 1

in most states — and are in the process of preparing their budgets for the next year. Over half the states had already cut spending, used reserves, or raised revenues in order to adopt a balanced budget for the current fiscal year — which started July 1 in most states. Now, their budgets have fallen out of balance again. New gaps of $59 billion (some 9 percent of state budgets) have opened up in the budgets of at least 42 states plus the District of Columbia. These budget gaps are in addition to the $48 billion shortfalls that these and other states faced as they adopted their budgets for the current fiscal year, bringing total

gaps for the year to 16 percent of budgets. The states’ fiscal problems are continuing into the next two years. At least 46 states have looked ahead and anticipate deficits for fiscal year 2010 and beyond. These gaps total $133 billion — 19 percent of budgets — for the 45 states that have estimated the size of these gaps and are likely to grow as gaps are re-estimated in the next few months. The

deficit figures for FY2010 and FY2009 show the impact the economic downturn has had on state budgets. These figures are the total size of the shortfall identified by each state listed. In some cases all or part of this shortfall has already been closed through a combination of spending cuts, Figure 2 shows the size and duration of the deficits in the recession that occurred in the first part of this decade, and estimates of the likely deficits this time. This recession is more severe — deeper and longer — than the last recession, and thus state fiscal problems are likely to be worse. Unemployment, which peaked after the last recession at 6.3 percent, has already hit 8.9 percent, and many economists expect it to rise higher, which will reduce state income taxes and increase demand for Medicaid and other services. With

consumers’ reduced access to home equity loans and other sources of credit, sales taxes are also likely to fall more steeply than they did in the last recession. These factors

suggest that state budget gaps will be significantly larger than in the last recession. All but a handful of states face shortfalls in fiscal year 2010. Based on past experience and the depth of this recession these deficits will end up totaling about $145 billion. If, as is widely expected, the economy does not begin to significantly recover until the end of calendar year 2009, state deficits are likely to be even larger in state fiscal year 2011 (which begins in July 2010 in most states).[1] The deficits over the next two-and-a half years are likely to be in the $350 billion to $370 billion range. It may be particularly difficult for states to recover from the current fiscal situation. Housing markets may be slow to fully recover; the decline in housing markets has already depressed consumption and sales taxes as people refrain from buying furniture,

appliances, construction materials, and the like. Property tax revenues are also affected, and local governments will be looking to states to help address the squeeze on local and education budgets. And as the employment situation continues to deteriorate, income tax revenues will weaken further and there will be further downward pressure on sales tax revenues as consumers are reluctant or unable to spend. The vast majority of states cannot run a deficit or borrow to cover their operating expenditures. As a result, states have three primary actions they can take during a fiscal crisis: they can draw down available reserves, they can cut expenditures, or they can raise taxes. States already have begun drawing down reserves; the remaining reserves are not sufficient to allow states to weather a significant downturn or recession. The other alternatives — spending cuts and tax increases — can further slow a state’s economy during a downturn and contribute to the further slowing of the national economy, as well. Some states have not been affected by the economic downturn but the number is dwindling. There are a number of reasons why. Some mineral-rich states — such as New Mexico, Alaska, and Montana — saw revenue growth as a result of high oil prices. However, the recent decline in oil prices has begun to affect revenues in some of these states. The economies of a handful of other states have so far been less affected by the

national economic problems. In states facing budget gaps, the consequences sometimes are severe — for residents as well as the economy. Unlike the federal government, states cannot run deficits when the economy turns down; they must cut expenditures, raise taxes, or draw down reserve funds to balance their budgets. As the current fiscal year ends and states plan for next year, budget difficulties have led some 36 states to reduce services to their residents, including some of their most vulnerable families and individuals . [2] For example, at least 19 states have implemented cuts that will affect low-income children’s or families’ eligibility for health insurance or reduce their access to health care services. Programs for the elderly and disabled are also being cut. At least 21 states and the District of Columbia are cutting medical, rehabilitative, home care, or other services needed by low-income people who are elderly or have disabilities, or significantly increasing the cost of these services. At least 22 states are cutting

or proposing to cut K-12 and early education; several of them are also reducing access to child care and early education, and at least 30 states have implemented cuts to public colleges and universities. In addition, at least 39 states and the District of Columbia have made cuts affecting their state workforce. Workforce cuts often result in reduced access to services residents need. They also add to states’ woes by contracting the state economy. If revenue declines persist as expected in many states,

additional budget cuts are likely. Budget cuts often are more severe in the second year of a state fiscal crisis, after reserves have been largely depleted and thus are no longer an option for closing deficits. The experience of the last recession is instructive as to what kinds of actions states may take. Between 2002 and 2004 states reduced services significantly. For example, in the last recession, some 34 states cut eligibility for public health programs, causing well over 1 million people to lose health coverage, and at least 23 states cut eligibility for child care subsidies or otherwise limited access to child care. In addition, 34 states cut real per-pupil aid to school districts for K-12 education between 2002 and 2004, resulting in higher fees for textbooks and courses, shorter school days, fewer

personnel, and reduced transportation. Expenditure cuts and tax increases are problematic policies during an economic downturn because they reduce overall demand and can make the downturn deeper. When states cut spending, they lay off employees, cancel contracts with vendors, eliminate or lower payments to businesses and nonprofit organizations that provide direct services, and cut benefit payments to individuals. In all of these circumstances, the companies and organizations that would have received government payments have less money to spend on salaries and supplies, and individuals who would have received salaries or benefits have less money for consumption. This directly removes demand from the economy. Tax increases also remove demand from the economy by reducing the amount of money people have to spend. The federal government — which can run deficits — can provide assistance to states and localities to avert these “pro-cyclical” actions.

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ECONOMIC RECOVERY IS CRITICAL TO PREVENT WORLD WAR

GREEN AND SCHRAGE MARCH 26 2009(Michael J Green is Senior Advisor and Japan Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and Associate Professor at Georgetown University. Steven P Schrage is the CSIS Scholl Chair in International Business and a former senior official with the US Trade Representative's Office, State Department and Ways & Means Committee, Asia Times, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Asian_Economy/KC26Dk01.html)

Facing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, analysts at the World Bank and the US Central Intelligence Agency are just

beginning to contemplate the ramifications for international stability if there is not a recovery in the next year. For the most part, the focus

has been on fragile states such as some in Eastern Europe. However, the Great Depression taught us that a downward global economic spiral can even have jarring impacts on great powers. It is no mere coincidence that the last great global economic downturn was followed by the most destructive war in human history. In the 1930s, economic desperation helped fuel autocratic regimes and protectionism in a downward economic-security death spiral that engulfed the world in conflict . This spiral was aided by the preoccupation of the United States and other leading nations with economic troubles at home and insufficient attention to working with other powers to maintain stability abroad. Today's challenges are different, yet 1933's London Economic Conference, which failed to stop the drift toward deeper depression and

world war, should be a cautionary tale for leaders heading to next month's London Group of 20 (G-20) meeting. There is no question the US must urgently act to

address banking issues and to restart its economy. But the lessons of the past suggest that we will also have to keep an eye on those fragile threads in the international system that could begin to unravel if the financial crisis is not reversed early in the Barack Obama administration and

realize that economics and security are intertwined in most of the critical challenges we face. A disillusioned rising power? Four areas in Asia merit particular attention, although so far the current financial crisis has not changed Asia's fundamental strategic picture. China is not replacing the US as regional hegemon, since the leadership in Beijing is too nervous about the political implications of the financial crisis at home to actually play a leading role in solving it internationally. Predictions that the US will be brought to its knees because China is the leading holder of US debt often miss key points. China's currency controls and full employment/export-oriented growth strategy give Beijing few choices other than buying US Treasury bills or harming its own economy. Rather than creating new rules or institutions in international finance, or reorienting the Chinese economy to generate greater long-term consumer demand at home, Chinese leaders are desperately clinging to the status quo (though Beijing deserves credit for short-term efforts to stimulate economic growth). The greater danger with China is not an eclipsing of US

leadership, but instead the kind of shift in strategic orientation that happened to Japan after the Great Depression. Japan was arguably not a

revisionist power before 1932 and sought instead to converge with the global economy through open trade and adoption of the gold standard. The worldwide depression and protectionism of the 1930s devastated the newly exposed Japanese economy and contributed directly to militaristic and autarkic policies in Asia as the Japanese people reacted against what counted for globalization at the time. China today is similarly converging with the global

economy, and many experts believe China needs at least 8% annual growth to sustain social stability. Realistic growth predictions for 2009 are closer to 5%. Veteran China hands were watching closely when millions of migrant workers returned to work after the Lunar New Year holiday last month to find factories closed and jobs gone. There were pockets of protests, but nationwide unrest seems unlikely this year, and Chinese leaders are working around the clock to ensure that it does not happen next year either. However, the economic slowdown has only just begun and nobody is certain how it will impact the social contract in China between the ruling communist party and the 1.3 billion Chinese who have come to see President Hu Jintao's call for "harmonious

society" as inextricably linked to his promise of "peaceful development". If the Japanese example is any precedent, a sustained economic slowdown has the potential to open a dangerous path from economic nationalism to strategic revisionism in China too. Dangerous states It is noteworthy that

North Korea, Myanmar and Iran have all intensified their defiance in the wake of the financial crisis, which has distracted the world's leading nations, limited their moral authority and sown potential discord. With Beijing worried about the potential impact of North Korean belligerence or instability on Chinese internal stability, and leaders in Japan and South Korea under siege in parliament because of the collapse of their stock markets, leaders in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang have grown increasingly boisterous about their country's claims to great power status as a nuclear weapons state. The junta in Myanmar has chosen this moment to arrest hundreds of political dissidents and thumb its nose at fellow members of the 10-country Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Iran continues its nuclear program while exploiting differences between the US, UK and France (or the P-3 group) and China and Russia - differences that could become more pronounced if economic friction with Beijing or Russia crowds out cooperation or if Western European governments grow nervous about sanctions as a tool of policy. It is possible that the economic downturn will make these dangerous states more pliable because of falling fuel prices (Iran) and greater need for foreign aid (North Korea and Myanmar), but that may depend on the extent that authoritarian leaders care about the well-being of their people or face internal political pressures linked to the economy. So far, there is little evidence to suggest either and much evidence to suggest these dangerous states see an opportunity to advance their asymmetrical advantages against the international system. Challenges to the democratic model The trend in East Asia

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has been for developing economies to steadily embrace democracy and the rule of law in order to sustain their national success. But to thrive, new democracies also have to deliver basic economic growth. The economic crisis has hit democracies hard, with Japanese Prime Minister Aso Taro's approval

collapsing to single digits in the polls and South Korea's Lee Myung-bak and Taiwan's Ma Ying Jeou doing only a little better (and the collapse in Taiwan's exports - particularly to China - is sure to undermine Ma's argument that a more accommodating stance toward Beijing will bring economic benefits

to Taiwan). Thailand's new coalition government has an uncertain future after two years of post-coup drift and now economic crisis. The string of old and new democracies in East Asia has helped to anchor US relations with China and to maintain what former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice once

called a "balance of power that favors freedom". A reversal of the democratic expansion of the past two decades would not only impact the global balance of power but also increase the potential number of failed states, with all the attendant risk they bring from harboring terrorists to incubating pandemic diseases and trafficking in persons. It would also undermine the demonstration effect of liberal norms we are urging China to embrace at home. Protectionism The collapse of financial markets in 1929 was compounded by protectionist measures such as the Smoot-

Hawley tariff act in 1932. Suddenly, the economic collapse became a zero-sum race for autarkic trading blocs that became a key cause of war. Today, the globalization of finance, services and manufacturing networks and the World Trade Organization (WTO) make such a rapid move to trading blocs

unlikely. However, protectionism could still unravel the international system through other guises. Already, new spending packages around the world are providing support for certain industries that might be perceived by foreign competitors as unfair trade measures, potentially creating a "Smoot-Hawley 2.0" stimulus effect as governments race to prop up industries. "Buy American" conditionality in the US economic stimulus package earlier this year was watered down somewhat by the Obama administration, but it set a tempting precedent for other countries to put up barriers to close markets. Nations pushing the bounds of their trade commitments could overload the circuits of a system that can take two years to determine violations - more than enough time for a global meltdown. Climate change legislation is also likely to become a stalking horse for protectionism as legislatures enthusiastically embrace punitive tariffs against Chinese or Indian goods that are produced outside of the framework for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Finally, competitive devaluation - already being pursued by China in the view of some economists - could intensify international protectionism and friction. Global trade has already contracted for the first time in over two decades and governments have only just begun exploring unilateral measures that could cause further barriers. Meanwhile, trade liberalization has stalled in the Doha Round of the WTO and the Obama administration has come into office expressing strong reservations about major bilateral free trade agreements already negotiated with allies like South Korea and Columbia. Even if the clarion call of protectionism does not lead to the kind of autarkic blocs that contributed to war in the 1930s, it could still distract governments from collaboration on common threats and slow the prospects for more rapid recovery. Don't worry, but be smart These danger signs do not mean that the worst case scenarios are likely to happen even if the economic crisis extends beyond 2009, but history and contemporary trends both suggest that they could happen if we are not careful. Fortunately, we can learn from past failings. We know that it is important to fight protectionism, and the US and its key allies can lead in that effort at home and through the WTO, APEC [Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation grouping of nations], the Group of Seven [leading industrialized nations] and [the broader] the G-20, or through other new or strengthened alliances that might be built between committed partners. We know that offensive trade liberalization through renewed efforts at the WTO or with the South

Korea-US Free Trade Agreement would be the best defense of all against protectionism. We know that it is important to provide economic assistance to fragile states like Pakistan and through the World Bank and International Monetary Fund even amidst our own financial crises. We know that it would be foolhardy to slash defense spending or to replace deterrence and strong alliances with weak diplomatic arrangements as we did in the 1920s and 1930s. And we know that we need a global strategy for revitalizing economic growth and recognizing its interconnections to security rather than seeking relative gains through unilateral approaches.

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EXPANDING FOOD STAMPS IS KEY TO STATE BUDGET REVENUE

MLRI 2009(Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, “Food Stamps/SNAP: A Fork-Ready Stimulus,” March, http://www.mcoaonline.com/content/pdf/ForkReadyStimulusMarch2009.pdf)

Increased food stamp/SNAP participation has an added beneficial impact on the state budget as well. By providing federal nutrition benefits to low income households, a significant portion of family income that would otherwise be spent on food would be spent on taxable items, thereby adding to sales tax revenue in Massachusetts. In 2004, the California Legislative Analyst’s Office developed the following premise to estimate

the impact of food stamp increases on the state budget: “Research shows that low-income individuals generally are not able to save money because their resources are spent on meeting their daily needs, such as shelter, food, and transportation. Therefore, for every dollar in food coupons that a low-income family receives, an additional dollar is available for the consumption of food or other items. Research done at the University of California and elsewhere indicates that individuals with income low enough to be eligible for food stamps would, on average, spend about 45 percent of their income on goods for which they would pay sales tax. The state (California) General Fund receives about 5 cents for every dollar that is spent on a taxable good. Local governments and special funds receive the remainder of the sales tax revenue (generally about 2.25 percent). Because additional food coupons would result in low-income families spending more of their other resources on taxable goods, the receipt of federal food coupons helps to generate revenue for the state and for local governments.” xv Massachusetts also receives about 5 cents for every dollar spent on a taxable good, although, unlike California, we do not tax clothing. However, there are many essential purchases made by low income households that are indeed taxable and generate state sales tax revenue. By increasing the Food Stamp/SNAP caseload by more than 110,000 in FY2010 to leverage an additional $340 million in federal revenue, Massachusetts has the potential to realize an additional $5 to $7 million in state sales tax revenue – not counting the sales tax generated by the ARRA 2009 SNAP benefits increase- which revenue may offset the state’s admin costs. ►THE BOTTOM LINE: Food stamp/SNAP benefits have a positive impact on families (increased food),

retailers and growers (increased demand for food-related products and services), local and state economies (“multiplier effect” of food stamp dollars) and state budgets (increased sales tax revenue). Massachusetts needs to leverage these dollars, now more than ever.

EXPANDING THE FOOD STAMP PROGRAM IS KEY TO ECONOMIC RECOVERY

PLAIN DEALER 5-30-2009

"Many economists have said [increasing food stamp benefits] is one of the most effective means of stimulus because people on food stamps spend the money very quickly," said Stacy Dean, director of food assistance policy at the Center for Budget Policy Priorities, a research organization in

Washington, D.C., focused on budget policy and poverty issues. USDA research has estimated that every $1 in food stamps disbursed generates $1.84 in economic activity. Not only does increasing food stamp benefits pump money into grocery stores, food companies and farms, but it can also free up other money that families can then spend to pay their bills or buy other products, Dean said.

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ADVANTAGE THREE: OBESITY

LACK OF INCOME FORCES PEOPLE TO BUY CHEAP, UNHEALTHY FOOD—THIS CAUSES OBESITY

HAWN 2007(Daniel, “Obesity and Poverty: Examining the Link,” Nov 20, http://www.docshop.com/2007/11/20/obesity-and-poverty-examining-the-link/)

Of all the aspects of America’s obesity epidemic, perhaps the most troubling is the prevalence of obesity among one of the most vulnerable

segments of our society: the poor. Statistics show that low-income individuals are significantly more likely to be overweight or obese than those who are financially well-to-do. While there is no shortage of theories as to why there is a connection between poverty and obesity, one clear and simple

possibility can be found in a visit to your local grocery store. Strolling down the aisles, you will notice that healthy, lean foods like fruits, vegetables, and fish are more expensive than foods loaded with fat and calories, such as cookies and frozen dinners. Given the low price of high-calorie foods, it is little wonder that those of limited means are more prone to obesity. So what can be done about the situation? The most obvious solution is to make healthy foods more affordable. And the best way to do this is to turn to good old Uncle Sam. Getting Heavy on the Cheap One of the reasons that many fatty foods cost less than fruits and vegetables has to do with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s crop subsidy program. Through this program, the government compensates farmers for growing certain kinds of crops, such as rice and cotton. The overwhelming majority of the government’s money goes toward subsidizing the production of soybeans and corn. Among other things, these crops are used to create soybean oil and high fructose corn syrup, two ingredients commonly found in fattening foods ranging from soft drinks to cheeseburgers and potato chips. As a result of the subsidy program, corn syrup and soybean oil have become abundant and inexpensive, lowering the cost of the foods they’re used to produce. In his research on agricultural subsidy programs, Dr. Adam Drewnowski of the University of Washington determined that foods produced from subsidized crops, such as French fries and soda, cost about five times less per calorie than unsubsidized foods, such as broccoli and fruit juices. Based on this price-calorie comparison, Dr. Drewnowski says that from a short-term financial perspective, it may make sense for a low-income person to choose high-fat and highly sweetened foods over healthier alternatives.

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OBESITY WILL KILL MILLIONS—OUTWEIGHS WAR AND DISEASE

LALASZ 2008(Robert, senior editor at Population Reference Bureau, “Will Rising Childhood Obesity Decrease U.S. Life Expectancy?” http://www.prb.org/Articles/2005/WillRisingChildhoodObesityDecreaseUSLifeExpectancy.aspx?p=1)

A new study contends that rising childhood obesity rates will cut average U.S. life expectancy from birth by two to five years in the coming decades—a magnitude of decline last seen in the United States during the Great Depression. The study, published in the March 18 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, contradicts recent government projections that U.S. life expectancy will reach at least the mid-80s by the year 2080.1 Such forecasts, write lead author S. Jay Olshansky and his nine co-authors, are a "simple but unrealistic extrapolation of past trends in life expectancy into the future." In turn, other demographers have characterized the Olshansky team's analysis as largely unsupported by evidence, and the article has spotlighted a long-standing debate about whether there are biological limits to an individual human lifespan—all amidst a recent flurry of contradictory research about how obesity effects morbidity and mortality rates. One new study from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) even argues that being overweight has a positive effect on life expectancy.2 But Olshansky, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Illinois-Chicago, remains convinced by his team's conclusions. "If anything, we're being conservative in our estimates," he says. "We're assuming no change in obesity levels from 2000 levels, and actually, they've gotten worse." Obesity and the Future of Medicine Projecting life expectancy is more than an academic exercise. Many U.S. government agencies—including the Social Security Administration, Congress, and the military—use such forecasts to guide policymaking on issues from tax rates to the solvency of age-based entitlement programs. And almost all these projections assume that U.S. life expectancy will continue to rise as steadily as it has since the 1930s, spurred by new medical approaches and technology as well as behavioral shifts towards healthier lifestyles. But Olshansky and his co-authors question whether medicine and public health interventions can counter the rapid increases in U.S. obesity rates over the last two decades, especially among children. The incidence of obesity—which

researchers have linked to an elevated risk of type-2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, cancer, and other health complications—rose approximately 50 percent in the United States in both the 1980s and 1990s. Two-thirds of all U.S. adults are now classified as overweight or obese, as are 20 percent to 30 percent of all children under age 15. And Olshansky argues that this rapid rise in obesity rates will cause a "pulse event" of mortality in the United States—akin to the large number of deaths caused by an influenza pandemic or a war, but spread out over the next four or five decades. "Any time there's an increase in early-age mortality [deaths before age 50], it has an effect on overall life expectancy," says Olshansky. "And when these children reach their 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s, they'll face a higher risk of death. It's roughly equivalent to discovering that a large segment of our young people who never smoked suddenly decided to smoke." The Surprising Impact of Obesity Today To demonstrate the future effects of rising obesity levels, Olshansky and his co-authors first calculated how current rates of adult obesity are diminishing overall U.S. life expectancy. Using studies that argue being obese reduces your life expectancy by nearly 13 years, the researchers estimated by how much overall rates of death would fall if every obese person in the United States lost enough weight to reach the optimal Body Mass Index (BMI) of 24. (Obesity is generally defined as having a BMI of 30 or above.) "In other words, to find out the effects of obesity, we statistically wiped out obesity," says Olshansky. They found that obesity now slices one-third to three-quarters of a year off overall life expectancy, depending on one's race and gender (see figure). These figures don't sound like much, says Olshansky, until you put them into context. "They are larger than the negative effect of all accidental deaths as well as homicides and suicides," he says. "If you wiped out cancer, that would only add 3.5 years to overall U.S. life expectancy." And the effect of obesity will only grow, write Olshansky and his co-authors, as its prevalence further rises and children and young adults "carry and express obesity-related risks for more of their lifetime than previous generations have done." Even eliminating a major disease such as cancer, they conclude, would not counter the negative consequences for life expectancy caused by this wave of deaths. "They will overwhelm the positive influences of technology," says Olshansky.

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OBESITY UNDERMINES THE MILITARY BY DECREASING THE POOL OF RECRUITS, DECREASING RETENTION, AND INCREASING HEALTH CARE SPENDING

ALMOND et al 2008 (LCDR Nathaniel Almond, MC USN, NEPMU Five, Naval Station San Diego; Leila Kahwati, MD MPH VA National Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention; Linda Kinsinger, MD MPH VA National Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention; Deborah Porterfield, MD MPH Department of Social Medicine, School of Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Military Medicine, July 15, http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/1478028/the_prevalence_of_overweight_and_obesity_among_us_military_veterans/)

Increases in the prevalence of overweight (body mass index [BMI] >/=25 kg/m^sup 2^) and obesity (BMI >/=30 kg/m^sup 2^) in the United States since 1960 are well known.1~3 Clinical examination data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) found the prevalence of overweight in U.S. adults increased from 45% in 1960 to 1962 to 66% in 2003 to 2004, while obesity prevalence increased from 13% in 1960 to 1962 to 32% in 2003 to 2004.1,4,5 Obesity and overweight are associated with increased morbidity and mortality as well as increased economic burden to society. The mortality attributed to obesity has been estimated to be between 111,919 and 365,000 deaths annually.6-9 Comorbid conditions associated with obesity include hypertension, dyslipidemia, stroke, gallbladder disease, diabetes, coronary heart disease, and osteoarthritis, as well as breast, prostate, colorectal, gall bladder, and endometrial cancer.10 The economic cost of obesity exceeds $90 billion dollars annually.11 The epidemic of obesity significantly aifects the military. First, the potential pool of recruits is decreased due to the increasing proportion of young adults who do not meet military entry standards for weight, estimated at 13 to 18% of U.S. men and 17 to 43% of U.S. women in the general population.12 Retention of active military personnel is also decreased secondary to the disease burden, with 1,419 personnel discharged in 2002 due to failing the body weight standard.13 Lastly, overweight and obesity add to health care costs for the Department of Defense, whose total health care budget is currently estimated at $36 billion with projected costs in 5 years to be $61 billion annually.14

THE IMPACT IS ENOUGH TO DISRUPT U.S. HARD POWER

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE 2003 (January 7)

An overweight America is killing itself with excess, and all that can save it is a major cultural transformation led by individuals and families, the U.S. surgeon general said Monday. Speaking to more than 1,000 educators, doctors and public health officials in San Diego at the largest-ever conference on childhood obesity, Dr. Richard Carmona called obesity the fastest growing cause of illness and death in the United States and said it deserved more attention than any other epidemic. "We need to lead a cultural transformation, and we can't let it be dwarfed by the other headlines of the day," he told the gathering. The health implications in a country where two out of three adults are obese or overweight and the number of overweight kids has jumped by 50 percent in the decade are severe enough to threaten national security, he said. "Our preparedness as a nation depends on our health as individuals," he said, noting that he had spent some of his first months in office working with military leaders concerned about obesity and lack of fitness among America's youth. "The military needs healthy recruits," he said. He was, in many ways, preaching to the choir. The experts gathered for the conference, sponsored by the California Department of Health Services and UC Berkeley's Center for Weight and Health, face the fallout of a fat nation on a daily basis. They have seen severe jumps in the frequency of stroke, heart disease and diabetes among adults and children.

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THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE TO AMERICAN POWER–THE DECLINE OF AMERICAN HEGEMONY WOULD RESULT IN ANARCHY, TERRORISM, DISEASE, AND REGIONAL NUCLEAR WARS AROUND THE PLANET

FERGUSON 2004 (Niall, Prof of History at NYU, Foreign Policy, July/August)

So what is left? Waning empires. Religious revivals. Incipient anarchy. A coming retreat into fortified cities. These are the Dark Age experiences that a world without a hyperpower might quickly find itself reliving. The trouble is, of course, that this Dark Age would be an altogether more dangerous one than the Dark Age of the ninth century. For the world is much more populous—roughly 20 times more—so friction between the world's disparate “tribes” is bound to be more frequent. Technology has transformed production; now human societies depend not merely on freshwater and the harvest but also on supplies of fossil fuels that are

known to be finite. Technology has upgraded destruction, too, so it is now possible not just to sack a city but to obliterate it. For more than two decades, globalization—the integration of world markets for commodities, labor, and capital—has raised living standards throughout the world, except where

countries have shut themselves off from the process through tyranny or civil war. The reversal of globalization—which a new Dark Age would produce—

would certainly lead to economic stagnation and even depression. As the United States sought to protect itself after a second September 11 devastates, say, Houston or Chicago, it would inevitably become a less open society, less hospitable for foreigners seeking to work, visit, or do business. Meanwhile, as Europe's Muslim enclaves grew, Islamist extremists' infiltration of the EU would become irreversible, increasing trans-Atlantic tensions over the Middle East to the breaking point. An economic meltdown in China would plunge the Communist system into crisis, unleashing the centrifugal forces that undermined previous Chinese empires. Western investors would lose out and conclude that lower returns at home are preferable to the risks of default abroad.

The worst effects of the new Dark Age would be felt on the edges of the waning great powers. The wealthiest ports of the global economy—from New York to Rotterdam to Shanghai—would become the targets of plunderers and pirates. With ease, terrorists could disrupt the freedom of the seas, targeting oil tankers, aircraft carriers, and cruise liners, while Western nations frantically concentrated on making their airports secure.

Meanwhile, limited nuclear wars could devastate numerous regions, beginning in the Korean peninsula and Kashmir, perhaps ending catastrophically in the Middle East. In Latin America, wretchedly poor citizens would seek solace in Evangelical Christianity imported by U.S. religious

orders. In Africa, the great plagues of AIDS and malaria would continue their deadly work. The few remaining solvent airlines would simply suspend

services to many cities in these continents; who would wish to leave their privately guarded safe havens to go there? For all these reasons, the prospect of an apolar world should frighten us today a great deal more than it frightened the heirs of Charlemagne. If the United States retreats from global hegemony—its fragile self-image dented by minor setbacks on the imperial frontier—its critics at home and abroad must not pretend that they are ushering in a new era of multipolar harmony, or even a return to the good old balance of power. Be careful what you wish for. The alternative to unipolarity would not be multipolarity at all. It would be apolarity—a global vacuum of power. And far more dangerous forces than rival great powers would benefit from such a not-so-new world disorder.

THE IMPACT IS GLOBAL NUCLEAR WAR

KHALILZAD 1995 (Zalmay, RAND analyst and now U.S. ambassador to Iraq, The Washington Quarterly)

Under the third option, the United States would seek to retain global leadership and to preclude the rise of a global rival or a return to multipolarity for the indefinite future. On balance, this is the best long-term guiding principle and vision. Such a vision is desirable not as an end in itself, but because a world in which the United States exercises leadership would have tremendous advantages. First, the global environment would be more open and more receptive to American

values -- democracy, free markets, and the rule of law. Second, such a world would have a better chance of dealing cooperatively with the world's major problems, such as nuclear proliferation, threats of regional hegemony by renegade states, and low-level conflicts. Finally, U.S. leadership would help preclude the rise of another hostile global rival, enabling the United States and the world to avoid another global cold or hot war and all the attendant dangers, including a global nuclear exchange. U.S. leadership would therefore be more conducive to global stability than a bipolar or a multipolar balance of power system.

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EXPANDING FOOD STAMPS ENCOURAGES BETTER NUTRITION AND PRIVATE GARDENING WHICH SOLVES OBESITY

THE ADVOCATE 5-10-2009

The CDC's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System also shows that the percentage of obese people increases as incomes decrease. Obesity raises the risk of diabetes, heart disease, certain cancers, high blood pressure, stroke and depression, the Louisiana Healthy Food Retail Study Group said in its report. "Louisiana spends an estimated $1.3 billion annually on direct medical costs related to obesity; indirect economic costs are nearly as high," the report says. Carol E. O'Neil, a professor of human ecology at LSU, said she and other professors researched the diets of a group of lower-income women. She called the results "appalling." "They're setting themselves up for some sort of dietary failure," O'Neil said. "Foods that are recommended as being healthy, like fish, are expensive. It takes

a fair amount of skill to put together a balanced diet with not a lot of money." It is almost impossible for the average food stamp recipient, who gets

about $270 a month, to eat according to dietary recommendations, O'Neil said. Methods of stretching dollars, like shopping at a variety of stores for sales, often are not an option for families with limited transportation, she said. The University of Washington Center for Public Health Nutrition notes in a health brief that as incomes drop and family budgets shrink, people shift toward cheaper, less healthy food. "Energy-rich starches, sweets, and fats, many of them nutrient-poor, frequently offer the cheapest way to fill hungry stomachs," the center said. The Healthy Food Retail Study Group's report, released in February, recommends a financing program to foster the creation of grocery stores that provide fresh fruits and vegetables in low-income and rural communities. Duplessis, D-New Orleans, is proposing Senate Bill 299 in this year's legislative session to create the financing program. She is asking the state for $5 million to start the program, which mirrors a financing incentive program in Pennsylvania. "Five million is nothing in the whole scheme of things and the impact it can have," Duplessis said. A study by the Rural Sociological Society, an association housed at the University of Missouri, identified 17 parishes in Louisiana as "low-access" areas where at least half the population lives more than 10 miles from a supermarket. People without access to cars and other transportation - or who can't afford the gas for frequent, long trips - may do most of their food shopping at smaller groceries and convenience stores near their homes, the report states. "However, fresh produce is much less available in smaller food stores as compared to supermarkets. Supermarkets also received higher overall ratings for food quality," the report says. The state funding sought by Duplessis would be matched with $5 million from private partners to create the Healthy Food Retail Financing Program. The program would fund 20 supermarket and grocery store projects, including improvements to existing stores. Assumption Parish is one of the "low access" communities being targeted. In the heart of the state's Sugar Bowl, the southeast parish produces more sugar, in proportion to its area, than any parish of Louisiana, according to the LSU Agricultural Center. On the parish line, in Labadieville, sits the New Morning Star Baptist Church, where Davis and others get monthly food boxes. "The only thing they have out here is sugar cane," said the Rev. McCullen Williams. The boxes are loaded with the same things found in many food banks and pantries - canned vegetables, pasta, cereal, rice cakes, juice, water and snack food. Some food pantries have limited space, particularly refrigerated areas, to keep fresh fruits and vegetables. Loretta Foreman, administrator of Southeast Ministries in Baton Rouge, said her organization purchases about $2,000 of food a week to supplement what they get from the food bank. But fresh fruit and vegetables are costly, she said. Our Father's Garden, a 6-acre garden created by the Episcopal Church of the Holy Spirit in Baton Rouge, provides fresh fruit, herbs and vegetables to families who seek assistance from Southeast Ministries. This spring, the garden is producing beans, carrots, tomatoes and a few lingering winter cabbages. The garden also has citrus, fig and plum trees and berry bushes, along with beehives to pollinate the garden and provide honey. Low-income families "are forced by their situation to rely on bulk and cheap nutrition," said Father Howard "Flip" Bushey, the church's interim rector. "Watch the eyes of mothers when they get fresh food," he said. "You can tell it's an important thing to them." Annrose Guarino, professor of nutrition and food at the LSU AgCenter, teaches food stamp recipients about proper nutrition, physical activity and stretching food dollars. But knowledge alone is not enough to change behavior, Guarino said. "Environmental nudges" are a good way to encourage healthy eating,

she said. That means making fruits and vegetables available for snacking instead of chips and cookies. "You saturate the environment as much as you can," Guarino said. Aside from groceries, food stamps can be used to purchase seeds and seedlings, Guarino said. A significant increase in seed sales nationwide indicates a growing interest in gardening, said Bobby Fletcher Jr., assistant director of the Louisiana Cooperative Extension Service. AgCenter staff and "master gardeners" are available around the state to help people start gardens by showing them how to prepare a bed and care for gardens and by teaching them what produce will flourish in their area. The AgCenter is also teaming up with 4H programs to create community gardens at schools. Fletcher said students are more likely to eat what they grow. "If we can start that at a younger age, over time, we can have a positive impact on childhood obesity and adult obesity," Fletcher said. "Personally, I think school and community gardens are going to be to this generation what Victory Gardens were to World War II."

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PLAN: THE UNITED STATES FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SHOULD SUBSTANTIALLY INCREASE BENEFITS FOR THE SUPPLEMENTAL NUTRITIONAL ASSISTANCE PROGRAM.

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OBSERVATION TWO: SOLVENCY

THE FOOD STAMP PROGRAM MUST BE EXPANDED—IT IS THE MOST EFFICIENT OPTION AND ONLY NEEDS MORE FUNDING

RESULTS 2009(RESULTS is a nonprofit grassroots advocacy organization focusing on hunger and poverty, “Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP),” Date is Last Modified, June 4, http://www.results.org/website/article.asp?id=358)

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (H.R.1), passed by Congress in February 2009, includes $20 billion to temporarily increase SNAP benefits by 14 percent. Does SNAP Cause Obesity? On March 12, responding to criticism, USDA representatives and academics said that food stamps, school lunch and other public nutrition programs do not contribute to an obesity epidemic affecting millions of children and adults. Kelly Brownell, a professor at Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, said he did not believe there was sufficient evidence to show USDA’s programs were leading to more obese Americans. “I believe it comes up in the context of critics of these programs using this as an excuse for wanting to cut back,” he said. Modern Program Is Over Thirty Years Old Although food stamps have been around since the Great Depression of the 1930s, the modern program began with the Food Stamp Reform Act of 1977. Before that, needy people had to pay for food stamps. A video narrated by Jeff Bridges shows how a 1968 CBS documentary on hunger shocked many viewers. Senators Bob Dole (R-KS) and George McGovern (D-SD) co-chaired a Senate select committee and pushed for reform.

The 1977 act eliminated the need to pay for food stamps. Benefits, Eligibility and Participant Profiles According to the USDA, the current SNAP benefit averages about $1 per meal per individual. Benefits may be used to buy only food items generally for consumption in the home; alcohol, tobacco and non-food household items are excluded. Eligibility for SNAP is determined by household. In order to qualify, households, with a few exceptions, must have a gross income below 130 percent of the federal poverty line. They also cannot possess more than

$2,000 in assets ($3,000 for households with a disabled or elderly member). Most SNAP households have income below the poverty line ($20,650 for a family of four in 2007) and more than one-third of Food Stamp households have income below half of the poverty line, according to The Food Research and Action Center (FRAC). Over half of all food stamp recipients are children. Seventy-one percent of those participating in the program receive food stamps for two years or less. Half of all new recipients stay on the program no more than

six months, and 57 percent end participation within one year. Receiving food stamps increases the nutritional value of a low-income household’s home food supplies by 20 to 40 percent. SNAP households participating in the program on average spend more on food and acquire more food than low-income non-participating households, according to the Food Research and Action Center. Program Responsiveness and Effectiveness No other federal program except unemployment insurance responds better to changing economic conditions than SNAP. This was especially evident in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In the weeks following the disaster, the program gave over $500 million in food assistance to more than 1.2 million Katrina survivors, without the need for congressional action. Overall, the program was able to accommodate the 4+ million increase in participants between August and November 2005. SNAP is seen as one of the few successes in federal responsiveness during the 2005 hurricanes. Furthermore, a March 2005 report from USDA, Impact of

Food Stamp Payment Errors on Household Purchasing Power, shows that SNAP has the lowest error rate in its history, and that most overpayments of SNAP benefits to eligible households are small. Therefore, even when SNAP households receive overpayments, most remain poor. The study focused on the impact that payment errors of SNAP benefits have on households. The report also found that virtually all households that receive SNAP are eligible. Therefore, the problem of erroneous payments is not so much one of determining eligibility, but rather one of attempting to target benefits to the changing circumstances of low-income households. Furthermore, the advent of electronic benefit transfer cards has helped in the fight against benefit fraud. These cards, much like bank debit cards, allow beneficiaries to purchase food items electronically, thus making fraud easier to detect. Recent Program Changes With the 2002 reauthorization of the Food Stamp Program, benefits were reinstated for legal immigrants who have lived in the United States for at least five years — a major victory! Benefits were also restored to legal immigrant children and disabled individuals without minimum residency requirements. Undocumented immigrants are not able to receive food stamps. In December 2003, the National Anti-Hunger Organizations, including RESULTS, issued a Millennium Declaration to End Hunger in America, calling on “the president, Congress, and other elected leaders in states and cities to provide decisive leadership to end hunger in America.” Following this, on June 3, 2004, RESULTS and other NAHO organizations issued The Blueprint to End Hunger; read our press release for more details. The Farm Bill passed in 2008 included a strong nutrition title that improved the program and increased funding over the next ten years. RESULTS Advocated for a Strong Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Reauthorization of SNAP is included in the new Farm Bill. See our recent developments page on latest on this legislation. All programs in the jurisdiction of the Agriculture Committees, including nutrition programs, are due for reauthorization. RESULTS activists urged a strong nutrition title in the Farm Bill. Specific goals were: Increase Benefits As

mentioned above, the current benefit amount for an individual in SNAP before passage of the Farm Bill was about $1 per meal. Benefit amounts are based on the USDA’s “Thrifty Food Plan” (TFP), a theoretical diet created in the 1930s to provide a minimally adequate diet at a low cost. The TFP was last updated in 2003. Current SNAP benefit amounts are still inadequate to support a healthy diet for food stamp recipients. Fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, necessities for a healthy diet, are generally more expensive than less healthy foods like sugars and starches. Lack of purchasing power for or access to healthier foods can result in malnutrition and even hospitalization for low-income households. Furthermore, SNAP households are finding that their benefits purchase less food each year. According to an analysis by Bread

for the World, SNAP households spend 80 percent of their benefits by the 14th of each month. In addition, a study by the Center on Budget and

Policy Priorities has found that “by 2017 a typical working parent of two will, over the course of a year, miss out on more than one and a half months’-worth of SNAP benefits, compared to the amount of benefits she or he would have received” prior to 1996. A chart in this report

shows that shows a typical working family of three now gets about $35 less per month (in 2008 dollars) than in 1995. While SNAP has served as a vital defense against hunger in the United States for decades, ensuring that recipients have the resources to purchase more nutritious foods should be of paramount importance. Studies show that malnutrition can significantly affect cognitive development in children.

Increasing benefit amounts will go along way in helping alleviate these immeasurable costs to millions of American families.

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INHERENCY

STATUS QUO INCREASES ARE NOT ENOUGH—FOOD STAMPS NEED MORE FUNDING

FRANK 2009(Deborah A. Frank Founder and Principal Investigator Children's Sentinel Nutrition Assessment Program (C-SNAP), Committee on House Budget, CQ Congressional Testimony, February 12)

The most recent preliminary data we have from the soon-to-be- named Children's HealthWatch database shows that rates of food insecurity among families with very young children increased by 38% in the first half of 2008 compared to the same period in 2007. While these findings require further analysis, they are not hard to explain in light of the economic downturn. Even though there was an October cost of living adjustment in SNAP, benefits have not kept pace with food cost inflation. I have often spoken of SNAP benefits as 'subtherapeutic' - like not giving enough antibiotics. They are an essential medicine but not enough to cure the illness. As you know, SNAP benefits are based on the Thrifty Food Plan, but the quality and quantity of medicine that people can realistically purchase is usually insufficient for the need. We have been forced in our hospital to establish a food pharmacy that dispenses food on prescription from medical providers because so many of our patients, of all ages, were unable to meet medical recommendations for their diets. Over and over we hear that by the middle of the month, no matter how carefully families try to budget, their SNAP benefits have run out. Despite this, SNAP is not only an effective and efficient program but also essential to low-income's children's good health. Children's HealthWatch has found that young children and families who receive SNAP benefits are 25% less likely to be food insecure than those whose families do not receive them. Food insecure young children are 90% more like than other poor children to be in poor health and 31% more like to have been hospitalized in early life. From research my colleagues Drs. Cook and Chilton conducted in Boston and Philadelphia families' challenges with affording food have a very simple explanation outlined in detail in the report entitled "Coming Up Short," which I submit for the record. As this graph shows, even if a family of two parents and two children receives the maximum SNAP benefit of $608/month, they are not able to purchase the Thrifty Food Plan in either city. The problem is compounded by recent runaway food costs. The proposed increase in SNAP benefits in the House stimulus bill is a key step in the right direction toward closing the gap and we strongly support the House's proposed investment of an additional $20 billion in the program. However, at some point we must recognize that even these excellent improvements leave families in these cities more than $150 short each month in the amount needed to purchase what the government considers a 'minimally adequate diet' in line with the most recent nutritional science

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SOLVES HUNGER

FOOD STAMPS EFFICIENTLY SOLVE HUNGER

CENTER ON BUDGET AND POLICY PRIORITIES 2009(“Policy Basics: Introduction to the Food Stamp Program,” April 3, http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=2226)

Food stamps and other nutrition programs have contributed to making severe hunger in America rare. Before the late 1960s, when the federal government began providing nutrition assistance, hunger and severe malnutrition could be found in many low-income communities in the United States. Today, in large part because of these programs, such severe conditions are no longer found in large numbers. To promote efficiency, the Food Stamp Program has one of the most rigorous quality control systems of any public benefit program, and has achieved its lowest error rates on record in recent years. USDA reports that fewer than 2 percent of food stamp benefits are issued to households that do not meet all of the program’s eligibility requirements.

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HUNGER NOW

36 MILLION PEOPLE IN THE U.S. EXPERIENCE HUNGER

FRAC 2005(Food Research and Action Center, “Why Food Stamps Matter: Talking Points,” May 20, http://www.frac.org/Press_Release/05.20.05.html)

There are millions of hungry Americans. * In 2003, the last year for which there are official USDA data, 36.2 million (or 11.2% of) Americans lived in households unable to purchase adequate food, up from 34.9 million hungry Americans in 2002. * Over one-third of those in hungry and food insecure households (13.3 million in 2003) are children. This is almost one-fifth of all American children. * Hunger has adverse consequences for all Americans, but particularly for children and mothers. It impedes growth and development, is a significant predictor of adverse health conditions, and is associated with behavior problems among preschoolers and school-age children.

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SOLVES ECONOMY

FEDERAL FOOD STAMPS ARE KEY TO ECONOMIC RECOVERY

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH 5-23-2009

Food stamps exist to help struggling families get enough to eat. But advocates for the poor aren't shy about touting the growing number of people getting the aid as a near-perfect stimulus program, too. "Nobody holds onto food stamps," said Matt Habash, president of the Mid-Ohio Foodbank. "They spend it right away." The virtues of food stamps as a stimulus are being championed by many economists, including Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Mark Zandi of Moody's Economy.com, who says that every $1 spent on the national food-stamp program pumps $1.73 into local economies. That's a better, faster return than other programs designed to jump-start activity, supporters say. Although some critics warn of costs down the road, quick effects are part of the reason the federal stimulus plan is giving states billions in new food-stamp money. The increases began arriving last month and will give each recipient almost 14 percent more, or about $20 to $24 each month. "We'll see impact, and it's almost instantaneous," said Tom Jackson, president of the Ohio Grocers Association. "If someone comes in and spends $100 today with food stamps, we're going to re-spend that within a week." Habash said he is spreading the economic message in the business community, sometimes to quizzical looks. The benefits to recipients, overwhelmed food pantries and businesses are so great that Mid-Ohio recently hired three food-stamp outreach workers, with a fourth on the way, he said. "We're trying to locate those who qualify but who are not signed up," said Mary Elizabeth Courtney, a Mid-Ohio outreach employee who set up shop yesterday at a Short North-area food pantry. In Franklin County, that gap is estimated at about 30,000 people. Statewide, more than 440,000 eligible people are not receiving food-stamp benefits, according to the Ohio Association of Second Harvest Foodbanks. The association says that means Ohio is missing out on $1.2 billion in economic benefits and growth, including 10,800 new jobs. "This program is unlike any others," said Lisa Hamler-Fugitt, the association's executive director. "It's 100 percent federally funded. It's not like Medicaid, where the state has to come up with a share." Still, not everyone is convinced of the value. "I'm skeptical," said Richard Vedder, an economics professor at Ohio University. The program's growth might make sense for humanitarian reasons, but taxpayers should not assume it won't eventually exact a price, perhaps through taxes, he said. "It's got to be financed somehow, and we always ignore that. The economist's perennial point is, there is no free lunch, ever," Vedder said. "We might not see the effect right away, but it will come." Others say food-assistance benefits are stabilizers -- both for families and for the economy -- that always will be crucial to recovering from a recession. And at this point, Jackson said, stable sounds pretty good.

FOOD STAMPS HELP THE ECONOMY

FRAC 2005(Food Research and Action Center, “Why Food Stamps Matter: Talking Points,” May 20, http://www.frac.org/Press_Release/05.20.05.html)

Food Stamps benefit farmers, the food industry, and the economy. * USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS) estimates that each $1 billion of retail demand by food stamps generates $340 million in farm production, $110 million in farm value-added, and 3,300 farm jobs; and each $5 of food stamps generates almost $10 in total economic activity. * Changes in food stamp policy have significant impacts on economic activity and household income across the economy, according to an ERS study finding that hypothetical cuts in food stamp benefits reduce food demand and farm production. * Food stamp participation closely follows the economic cycle. With few exceptions (notably 1981-1983 following substantial program cutbacks) food stamp caseloads have closely tracked the unemployment rate, rising as unemployment rises, and falling when it declines. * Paired with unemployment insurance, food stamps are a vital part of America’s front-line defense against recession. They help to prevent hunger in families with laid-off workers that fall into poverty, provide temporary support until these families can get back on their feet, and quickly get federal support into local communities when times are tough.

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SOLVES ECONOMY

FOOD STAMPS ACCELERATE ECONOMIC RECOVERY

CENTER ON BUDGET AND POLICY PRIORITIES 2009(“Policy Basics: Introduction to the Food Stamp Program,” April 3, http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=2226)

Food stamps also help protect the economy as a whole by helping maintain overall demand for food during slow economic periods. In fact, food stamps are one of the fastest, most effective forms of economic stimulus because they get money into the economy quickly. From November 2007 to November 2008, during the current recession, the number of people receiving food stamps increased by almost 4 million (or about 14 percent). In some of the states that have been hit hardest by the economic downturn, food stamp caseloads have increased by 20 percent or more.

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SOLVES EMPLOYMENT

FOOD STAMPS KEEP PEOPLE EMPLOYED AND OFF WELFARE

NYCCAH 2007(New York City Coalition Against Hunger, “What's the most effective way to stop hunger? Discover the top 10 myths about Food Stamps” April 2, http://www.nyccah.org/node/31)

False: Food stamps help keep people off welfare . The Food Stamps Program is known in public policy as a “work support,” meaning it is used by people looking for a job, or employed but not making enough to make ends meet. Because food stamps allow these people to maintain their low-wage employment, food stamps actually help people get off and keep off the welfare rolls.

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SOLVES POVERTY

FOOD STAMPS SOLVE POVERTY

CENTER ON BUDGET AND POLICY PRIORITIES 2009(“Policy Basics: Introduction to the Food Stamp Program,” April 3, http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=2226)

Lessening the extent and severity of poverty. Food stamps are heavily targeted on the poor. Almost 90 percent of the households that receive food stamps have incomes below the poverty line, and roughly 40 percent of food stamp households have incomes below half of the poverty line (about $8,800 for a family of three). Also, as noted above, families with the greatest need receive the largest food stamp benefits. These features make food stamps a powerful tool in fighting poverty. Food stamps lifted 2.4 million children out of “deep poverty” (that is, raised their incomes above 75 percent of the poverty line as measured in accordance with National Academy of Sciences recommendations) in 2005, more than any other government program.

FOOD STAMPS SOLVE POVERTY

CENTER ON BUDGET AND POLICY PRIORITIES 2009(“Policy Basics: Introduction to the Food Stamp Program,” April 3, http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=2226)

Supporting and encouraging work. A large and growing share of food stamp households are working households. In 2007, more than twice as many food stamp households worked as relied solely on welfare benefits for their income. (See chart: “Working Households on the Rise.”) Food stamps help these low-wage working families make ends meet. Leaders from across the political spectrum agree that a family supported by a full-time, year-round, minimum-wage worker should not have to live in poverty. Such a family, however, will fall short of the poverty line by 25 percent, even after counting the Earned Income Tax Credit, if it does not receive food stamps. And because food stamps (unlike the EITC) come to families throughout the year, they can help these families meet monthly expenses. (See chart: “Helping Working Families Reach the Poverty Line.”)

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OBESITY NOW

LOW BENEFITS ARE CAUSING OBESITY NOW—PEOPLE ARE FORCED TO BUY UNHEALTHY FOOD

CENTER ON BUDGET AND POLICY PRIORITIES 2009(“Policy Basics: Introduction to the Food Stamp Program,” April 3, http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=2226)

In addition, many low-income households that receive food stamps still have trouble affording an adequate diet — especially in years when

food prices are rising quickly. Many families face stark choices between purchasing food and paying for rent and other necessities. If they manage this shortfall by buying less-nutritious foods, it can adversely affect their health: many low-cost, energy-dense foods that contribute to obesity are cheaper than nutritious foods such as fruits and vegetables.

LACK OF INCOME TO SPEND ON FOOD CAUSES OBESITY

AMERICAN ECONOMIST 2005(“From poverty to obesity: exploration of the food choice constraint model and the impact of an energy-dense food tax,” Sep 22, http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-5140358/From-poverty-to-obesity-exploration.html)

There is no doubt that poverty is associated with higher levels of obesity, as well as obesity-related disease, in the United States. The frequencies of obesity and type II diabetes follow an income gradient such that America's poor are overburdened with disease (US Department of Health and Human Services 2000). This relationship is displayed in Figure 1. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's analysis of the National Health Interview Survey dataset, comprised of information from 68,556 adults living in the United States, confirmed that the lowest income groups contain a disproportionately higher share of obese persons (Schoenborn, Adams, and Barnes 2002). [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] Although one cannot definitively infer cause and effect from these correlational

studies, there is reason to believe that the relationship between poverty and obesity is causal. Drewnowki and Specter (2004) recently reviewed the relevant literature to present possible mechanisms by which poverty and obesity may be causally linked. The major mechanism presented describes an inverse relationship between the energy-density (MJ/kg) and energy-cost (US dollars/MJ) of foods. The authors provide evidence for the existence of this relationship in the United States. Based on food composition tables, the work of Rolls and Barnett (2000), and winter 2003 supermarket prices in Seat, Drewnowski and Specter (2004) generated a plot of energy cost versus energy density (Figure 2). [FIGURE 2 OMITTED] Crudely, energy-dense food can be thought of as "junk food," packed with loads of calories. Drewnowski and Specter (2004) found that the energy-cost of cookies or potato chips was about 20 cents/M J, while it was much higher for fresh carrots (~95 cents/MJ). Likewise, soft drinks had a much lower energy-cost (~30 cents/M J) compared to orange juice from concentrate (~143 cents/MJ). In general, this data implies that energy-dense foods are the lowest cost option to consumers. Thus, the poor may favor consumption of such foods due to economic constraints (they learn to budget). The apparent mediation of the link between poverty and obesity by the relative low cost of energy-dense foods may be reinforced by the high palatability of these foods. Sugar and fat have been found to impart greater than normal levels of neurobiological reward, including sensory enjoyment and pleasure (Drewnowski 1997; Drewnowski 1999; Mela 1999; Yeomans and Gray 2002; Levine, Kotz, and Gosnell 2003). In clinical investigations, fats and sugars were the most frequent targets of food cravings (Yanovski 2003). After a number of studies in children (such as Birch 1992), researchers concluded that human taste preferences for sugar and fat are either innate or acquired very early in life (Birch 1999). Although energy-dense foods are generally less healthy, persons consuming such food would not be expected to become obese if they consumed smaller volumes of the energy-dense foods to account for its high energy content. However, researchers find that people consume the same volume of food regardless of the food's energy-density (Rolls and Barnett 2000) and that this leads to higher overall energy intakes with the consumption of energy-dense foods (Drewnowki 1995; Prentice and Poppit 1996). Indeed, a

U.S. study of 371 low-income women enrolled in the Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program found that a $10-20 per month decrease in family food expenditures (which likely increases consumption of energy-dense foods) correlated with a net increase of 300 kcal/day in daily energy intakes (Burney and Haughton 2002).

LOW INCOME CAUSES OBESITY

AMERICAN ECONOMIST 2005(“From poverty to obesity: exploration of the food choice constraint model and the impact of an energy-dense food tax,” Sep 22, http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-5140358/From-poverty-to-obesity-exploration.html)

Current literature, as reviewed above, supports what can be called a food choice constraint model. In this model, one's ability to purchase healthy foods declines as income falls (or as economic constraint increases) in a standard budget constraint shift fashion because healthy foods (non-energy-

dense foods) are relatively costly. In this way, consumption of an energy-dense diet is a strategy of the poor to consume more energy at a lower cost. This strategy is reinforced by a biological preference for energy-dense foods. Thus, the food choice constraint model provides a possible mechanism by

which poverty could lead to obesity and other obesity-related diseases.

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OBESITY IMPACT—ECONOMY

FAILURE TO REDUCE OBESITY WILL DESTROY THE U.S. ECONOMY

KAHAN AND ROBERTS 2007 (SCOTT KAHAN is a physician and postdoctoral fellow with the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and works part-time for the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington, D.C. SUSAN ROBERTS is a registered dietitian and attorney, Des Moines Register 8-22)

Congress is struggling with how to address rising health-care costs, which are busting federal and state budgets and eating into corporate profits. Already nearly $1 of every $6 of our economy is spent on health care. Then there are the staggering epidemics of obesity and chronic disease. These are intimately linked: The best way to decrease health-care costs is to prevent the most costly diseases. Poor diet and obesity are key causes for diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, numerous cancers and other chronic diseases. Given kids' poor diets, the majority of American teens already have some degree of atherosclerosis (clogged arteries). Eighty percent of diabetes cases and at least one-third of heart-disease cases and cancers could be avoided by lifestyle changes, including improved nutrition and maintaining a healthy weight. Obesity and diet-related diseases threaten the health of our economy. The Department of Health and Human Services estimates obesity costs American families, businesses and governments more than $115 billion yearly. And the problem is getting worse. One-third of American children and two-thirds of adults are overweight or obese. Obesity rates have tripled in children and doubled in adults over the past two decades. If the progression of obesity and related chronic diseases continues to grow unchecked, it will break the bank.

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SOLVES OBESITY

INCREASED INCOME FROM FOOD STAMPS ENCOURAGES HEALTHY DIETS

CENTER ON BUDGET AND POLICY PRIORITIES 2009(“Policy Basics: Introduction to the Food Stamp Program,” April 3, http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=2226)

Supporting healthy eating. Food stamps enable low-income households to afford more healthy foods. Because they can be spent only on food, food stamps raise families’ food purchases more than an equivalent amount of cash assistance would. Almost 90 percent of the food consumed by food stamp households goes to fruits and vegetables, grain products, meats, or dairy products. In addition, under the Food Stamp Program all states operate nutrition education programs to help food stamp recipients make healthy food choices.

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T—STUFF

FOOD STAMPS ONLY GO TO FAMILIES WITH NET INCOME BELOW THE POVERTY LINE

HUFF 2007(Mel, Times Argus, Sep 17, http://www.vtfoodbank.org/press_room/hunger/page165/)

Although the Food Stamp program is perceived by some as too generous, Food Stamp eligibility limits are, in fact, low. Only families with gross incomes under 130 percent of the Federal Poverty Guidelines are eligible for benefits, unless they have elderly or disabled members. And all families must have net incomes below 100 percent of poverty – that's $17,170 for a mother and two children. Nationally, 38.4 percent of Food Stamp families have gross incomes at (or below) half the poverty line, according to the Food Research and Action Center.

HOUSEHOLDS MUST MEET BOTH THE GROSS AND NET INCOME TESTS

USDA 2009(“Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program: Fact Sheet on Resources, Income, and Benefits,” May 26, http://www.fns.usda.gov/fsp/applicant_recipients/fs_Res_Ben_Elig.htm)

Households have to meet income tests unless all members are receiving TANF, SSI, or in some places general assistance. Most households must meet both the gross and net income tests, but a household with an elderly person or a person who is receiving certain types of disability payments only has to meet the net income test. Households, except those noted, that have income over the amounts listed below cannot get SNAP benefits. Gross income means a household's total, nonexcluded income, before any deductions have been made. Net income means gross income minus allowable deductions.

EVEN IF GROSS INCOME IS ABOVE THE POVERTY LINE, HOUSEHOLDS CAN ONLY GET FOOD STAMPS IF NET INCOME IS BELOW THE POVERTY LINE—THIS APPLIES TO ALL EXCEPTIONS

LEGAL SERVICES OF NORTHERN CALIFORNIA 2008(The California Guide to the Food Stamp Program, “101. Gross and net monthly income eligibility standards,” http://www.foodstampguide.org/?page_id=42)

To establish threshold eligibility, food stamp “households” in general must meet both the gross and net income limits, set forth below. But application of these gross and net income eligibility thresholds differs, depending on whether members of the “household” are receiving welfare payments, or are “elderly” or “disabled.” – If all members of the “household” are receiving some type of welfare cash assistance — e.g., Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF), or cash general assistance or general relief — then the household is “categorically” eligible, regardless of its gross or net income. – If the food stamp household has any members who are elderly or disabled, no gross income test applies. MPP §63-409.112; 7 C.F.R. § 273.10(e)(ii)(2)(A) (compare to (2)(B), which also applies a gross income standard to non-aged/disabled households). Only the “100% of poverty” net income limits apply. – If the household contains someone over 60, who meets a permanent disability standard, and cannot buy/prepare food separately because of the disability, that person (and his or her spouse) may still be a separate food stamps household. In this case, the income of the remaining household members (.e. excluding the aged/disabled individual/couple) must meet the “165% of poverty” gross income limit. MPP §63-402.17; 7 C.F.R. § 273.1(b)(2). The rules about applying the higher gross income limit are confusing, so be sure to read the section about the gross monthly income standards for households where an “elderly” or “disabled” member is a separate household. (Then take two aspirin and call us in the morning.) – For everyone else, the gross income limit is 130% of the federal poverty level. Once a household has cleared any relevant gross income test, the county will apply various deductions to determine net income. For all households, the total countable income must be less than the net income test. That test is based on 100% of the federal poverty level.

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A2: DOESN’T REACH PEOPLE

FOOD STAMP PARTICIPATION IS STEADILY INCREASING—THE PROGRAM REACHES MORE PEOPLE

CENTER ON BUDGET AND POLICY PRIORITIES 2009(“Policy Basics: Introduction to the Food Stamp Program,” April 3, http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=2226)

At the same time, the Food Stamp Program is reaching a growing share of eligible households. About two-thirds of individuals who qualified for food stamps received them in fiscal year 2006, the most recent year available. This approaches an all-time high, and shows significant improvement from 2001, when the participation rate bottomed out at 54 percent after changes from the 1996 welfare law caused many eligible families to lose their food stamps when they stopped receiving welfare. Even more impressive, 83 percent of the total amount of benefits that would have been delivered in 2006 if every eligible household received food stamps actually were delivered. This rate is higher than the program’s participation rate because families that qualify for higher benefits are more likely to participate in food stamps.

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A2: HUNGER AND OBESITY CONTRADICT

LACK OF MONEY FOR FOOD CAUSES BOTH OBESITY AND HUNGER DEPENDING ON AGE AND OTHER FACTORS—OUR ADVANTAGES DON’T CONTRADICT

FRANK 2009(Deborah A. Frank Founder and Principal Investigator Children's Sentinel Nutrition Assessment Program (C-SNAP), Committee on House Budget, CQ Congressional Testimony, February 12)

You may ask how we can believe that there is so much food insecurity and nutritional deficit when there is also so much obesity. The impact of food insecurity, like many biological insults, varies with the developmental stage in which it occurs, with increased low-birthweight and underweight in young children and, in some studies, increased obesity in elementary school children and adult women. This is a well-described phenomenon known as "the nutrition paradox" that is seen around the world. As the Director General of WHO, Dr. Margaret Chan stated, "The cheap foods that make adults fat starve children of absolutely essential nutrients. Children who do not receive protein and other nutrients during early development are damaged for the rest of their lives." (www.who.int/dg/speeches/2008/20081024/en/index.html) As this slide shows, when parents' food dollars run short it is not irrational for them to keep children's stomachs feeling full with sugary carbonated beverages although they know milk is healthier. Thus it is not uncommon to find, as in another family like that of a 12 pound ten month old I just treated, an obese older child and a severely malnourished infant - both of whom have been living primarily off French fries.

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A2: RECTOR/HERITAGE FOUNDATION

RECTOR’S ARGUMENTS ABOUT HUNGER ARE WRONG—POVERTY CAUSES OBESITY AND HUNGER

RIDGEWAY 2007(James, “Heritage Foundation on Hunger: Let Them Eat Broccoli,” Mother Jones, Dec 3, http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2007/12/heritage-foundation-hunger-let-them-eat-broccoli)

There's another side of the story, of course, that addresses realities Heritage and its followers choose to ignore. Adam Drewnowski, professor of epidemiology and director of the University of Washington's Center for Obesity Research, believes diet is determined by economic and social factors far more than by personal choice. "Healthier diets are more expensive," he says flatly. It's easy to point to specific exceptions like doughnuts vs. beans or Coke vs. milk (well, not always; my local Safeway charges 40 cents more for a half-gallon of milk than for a two-liter bottle of Coke). But research generally has shown that "energy-dense foods," which often are high in refined grains and added sugar and fat, "provide dietary energy at a far lower cost than do lean meats, fish, fresh vegetables, and fruit," as Drewnowski wrote in a 2004 article for Nutrition Today. Processed foods also dominate store shelves in poor neighborhoods, are quick to prepare, and simply taste better to some people than some nutritious foods available on the cheap—think cabbage, condensed milk, and canned fish. Drewnowski calls Rector's arguments "rubbish, written from a position of class privilege—let them eat broccoli, indeed." He cites the suggestion that the poor should purchase cheap, nutritious foods rather than processed stuff. "When you suggest that people buy rice, pasta, and beans," he says, "you presuppose that they have resources for capital investment for future meals"—since these healthy staples come in large bags—"a kitchen, pots, pans, utensils, gas, electricity, a refrigerator, a home with rent paid, the time to cook. Those healthy rice and beans can take hours; another class bias is that poor people's time is worthless. So this is all about resources that middle-class people take so much for granted that they do not give them another thought. Not everybody has them." On the other hand, he says, "buying a doughnut for dinner does not involve any of those middle-class resources. You pay 55 cents for this meal only and there you are. Yes, rice would be cheaper if only people had the time and were not working two jobs on minimum wage." The Food Research and Action Center, a D.C. public interest advocacy group, seconds Drewnowski’s findings in a position paper: "One factor that may contribute to the coexistence of obesity and food insecurity is the need for low-income families to stretch their food money as far as possible. Without adequate resources for food, families must make decisions to maximize the number of calories they can buy so that their members do not suffer from frequent hunger." The situation is likely to worsen, since rising food costs have outpaced inflation. According to the Department of Labor, prices rose more in the first half of 2007 than in all of 2006. If this continues, 2007 will mark the largest annual increase in food costs (7.5 percent) since 1980. Nutritious foods are even harder to afford; a study by Adam Drewnowski and Pablo Monsivais just published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association shows that prices for the healthiest foods have ballooned nearly 20 percent in the past two years, while those for fatty and sugary fare have actually decreased a bit.

30

MGW 2009FOOD STAMPS

A2: ERRORS

FOOD STAMPS ARE EXTREMELY EFFICIENT—ERROR RATE IS LOW

ROSENBAUM 2005(Dorothy, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities food assistance expert, “THE FOOD STAMP PROGRAM IS EFFECTIVE AND EFFICIENT Savings Cannot be Achieved by Targeting "Waste, Fraud, and Abuse", June 29, http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=1183)

Some in Congress have suggested that the Food Stamp Program can be cut this year by targeting “waste, fraud, and abuse.” In fact, * The Food Stamp Program is efficient and effective. Program integrity has improved dramatically in recent years and food stamp error rates are now at an all-time low. USDA data show that over 98 percent of food stamp benefits go to eligible households. The low error rate is a major accomplishment for a large benefit program that is administered by thousands of eligibility workers in state and local offices across the country. * As the U. S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported in May 2005, “[t]he payment error rate has fallen each year since 1999 … This decline in the payment error rate has been widespread: the rate fell in 42 states and the District of Columbia, and the rates in 18 of these states fell by at least one-third.”

FOOD STAMPS ARE EFFICIENT

NYCCAH 2007(New York City Coalition Against Hunger, “What's the most effective way to stop hunger? Discover the top 10 myths about Food Stamps” April 2, http://www.nyccah.org/node/31)

False: Since the introduction of the EBT card system, fraud in the Food Stamps Program has reached an all-time low. Ninety-eight percent of food stamp benefits now go to households that are found eligible under very strict rules. At last count (2005), only 4.56 percent of food stamps benefits were found to be overpaid, down more than a third from six years earlier . At the same time, 1.28 percent were found to be underpaid! Two thirds of all improper payments were found to be the fault of the caseworker, not the individual .

FOOD STAMPS ARE EFFECTIVE AND EFFICIENT—PRIVATE AND LOCAL AGENCIES CANNOT REPLACE THEM

FRAC 2005(Food Research and Action Center, “Why Food Stamps Matter: Talking Points,” May 20, http://www.frac.org/Press_Release/05.20.05.html)

Food Stamps are effective, efficient and closely monitored. * The Food Stamp Program is efficiently targeted to reach people who have the most difficulty affording an adequate diet. Over 95 percent of benefits go to households with incomes below the poverty level; nearly all of the remaining beneficiaries are elderly or disabled. * A full-time minimum wage worker earns the equivalent of just under half of the poverty level for a family of four. Even with the earned income tax credit (EITC), this family’s income is only about 70 percent of poverty. Food stamps make it possible for such working poor families to stretch their income so that it approaches the poverty level. * Food stamp benefits are provided in the form of an electronic benefit card that can be used in supermarket checkout lines only for the purchase of food. * Food stamp error rates (overpayments and underpayments) have declined for 6 consecutive years and are at an all-time low, which is an extraordinary accomplishment for a program administered by thousands of eligibility workers in state and local offices across the country. * Changes to the Food Stamp Program that reduce eligibility or benefits cannot be adequately replaced by food banks and other private charities, or by local communities suffering the loss of local jobs. These agencies are already struggling to meet growing demands driven by long-term unemployment, falling wages, and rising fuel prices.

31

MGW 2009FOOD STAMPS

A2: ERRORS

FOOD STAMP ERROR RATE IS EXTREMELY LOW—MISTAKES COST ALMOST NOTHING

ROSENBAUM 2005(Dorothy, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities food assistance expert, “THE FOOD STAMP PROGRAM IS EFFECTIVE AND EFFICIENT Savings Cannot be Achieved by Targeting "Waste, Fraud, and Abuse", June 29, http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=1183)

The Food Stamp Error Rate has Reached All-time Lows * Almost ninety-nine percent of food stamp benefits are issued to eligible persons, the vast bulk of whom are children and parents in low-income families, senior citizens, and people with disabilities. * On June 24, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced that the national combined payment error rate in 2004 reached is sixth consecutive all-time low at just 5.88 percent. Until recently 6 percent was the threshold the Food Stamp Act established for exemplary performance. An error rate below 6 percent qualified a state for a bonus payment or enhanced funding. Now, because of improved payment accuracy, the national average has exceeded this exemplary level. * Some portray the food stamp “combined” error rate as a reflection of the dimension of excessive federal expenditures due to errors. This is incorrect since the combined error rate includes underpayments that save the Program money. The USDA issues three separate payment error rates: the overpayment error rate, the underpayment error rate, and the combined payment error rate. The overpayment error rate counts benefits issued to ineligible households as well as benefits issued to eligible households in excess of what federal rules provide. The underpayment error rate measures errors in which eligible, participating households received fewer benefits than the Program’s rules direct. The combined payment error rate is the result of summing (rather than netting) the overpayment and underpayment error rates. As GAO notes, “[u]nderpayments represent unintentional financial savings to the federal government.” In other words, to calculate the combined payment error rate USDA adds together the overpayment error rate, which in 2004 was 4.48 percent nationally, and the underpayment error rate, which in 2004 was 1.41 percent, to reach a combined error rate of 5.88 percent. The net loss to the federal government, however, from the errors in that state’s program (i.e., the benefits lost through overpayments minus those saved by underpayments) would be only three percent. * Finally, since 98 percent of benefits go to eligible households, about half of overpayments result from eligible low-income households getting benefits that are modestly in error, rather than from ineligible households participating. * Relatively few of these errors represent dishonesty or fraud on the part of recipeents (for example, recipients lying to eligibility workers to get more food stamps). The overwhelming majority of food stamp errors result from honest mistakes by recipients, eligibility workers, data entry clerks, or computer programmers. In recent years, states have reported that about half of the dollar value of overpayments and three-quarters of the dollar value of underpayments were their fault, rather than recipients’ fault. Much of the rest of overpayments resulted from innocent errors by households facing a program with complex rules. * GAO reports that USDA and the states “have taken many approaches to increaseing food stamp payment accuracy, … includ[ing] practices to improve accountability, perform risk assessments, implement changes based on such assessments, and monitor program performance.” It found that these practices were “recognized as being effective in reducing payment errors.” * It also should be recognized that overpayments are counted in a state’s error rate even when the overpaid benefits are recouped from households. In fiscal year 2002, states collected over $200 million in overissued benefits. New collection techniques, such as intercepting wage earners’ income tax refunds, are expected to increase collections further. * Food stamps now come in the form of an electronic debit card –– like the ATM cards that most Americans carry in their wallets. The food stamp debit cards are used in the supermarket checkout line only to purchase food. This has been a key tool to reduce food stamp fraud. * Retailers or clients who defraud the Food Stamp Program by trading food stamps for money or misrepresenting their circumstances face tough criminal penalties. Sophisticated computer programs monitor food stamp transactions for patterns that may suggest abuse. Federal and state law enforcement agencies are then alerted and investigate. * Food stamp error rates compare favorably to those in other government programs for which data is available. For example, the Internal Revenue Service estimates a noncompliance rate with federal personal income taxes of at least fifteen percent in 2001. This represents at least $257 billion lost to the federal government.[1]

32

MGW 2009FOOD STAMPS

A2: IMMIGRATION

IMMIGRANTS DO NOT SEEK FOOD STAMPS

NYCCAH 2007(New York City Coalition Against Hunger, “What's the most effective way to stop hunger? Discover the top 10 myths about Food Stamps” April 2, http://www.nyccah.org/node/31)

False: Illegal immigrants are not eligible to receive food stamps, and never have been; there are stringent processes to determine citizenship in the program. Legal immigrants are also not allowed to receive food stamps until they have been in the country for five years (with the exception of asylum cases and some other situations). Immigrants generally are far less likely than other groups to apply for food stamps, both because they fear jeopardizing their immigration status, and because the complex application process is doubly hard for those who do not speak English well.

33

MGW 2009FOOD STAMPS

NEG—DEPENDENCE TURN

FOOD STAMPS CAUSE DEPENDENCE—LONG-TERM STUDIES PROVE FOOD STAMPS DECREASE INCOME AND OPPORTUNITY FOR CHILDREN GROWING UP WITH WELFARE POLICIES

RECTOR 2001(Robert E. Rector is a Senior Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation, “Reforming Food Stamps to Promote Work and Reduce Poverty and Dependence,” June 27, http://www.heritage.org/Research/Welfare/Test062701.cfm)

The traditional welfare system comprised of programs such as AFDC, Food Stamps and public housing dramatically undermined work ethic, reduced employment, and generated long-term dependence. For example, the Seattle-Denver Income Maintenance Experiment (SIME-DIME), a massive controlled experiment on effects of welfare conducted in the early 1980's, showed that each additional dollar of welfare aid led, on

average to a reduction of employment and earnings of 80 cents. These anti-employment effects should apply to cash as well as non-cash aid. The erosion of work ethic and the growth of dependence, in turn, has profound negative effects on the well being of children. Former CBO Director Dr. June O'Neill, comparing children who were identical in social and economic factors such as race, family structure, mothers' IQ and education, family income, and neighborhood, found that the more years a child spent on welfare, the lower the child's IQ. O'Neill made it clear that it is not poverty but welfare itself which has a damaging effect on the child. Examining the young children (with an average age of five-and-a-half), the author found

that those who had spent at least two months of each year since birth on AFDC had cognitive abilities 20 percent below those who had received no welfare, even after holding family income, race, parental IQ, and other variables constant.2 A similar study by Mary Corcoran and Roger

Gordon of the University of Michigan shows that receipt of welfare income has negative effects on the long-term employment and earnings capacity of young boys.3 The study shows that, holding constant race, parental education, family structure, and a range of other social variables, higher non-welfare income obtained by the family during a boy's childhood was associated with higher earnings when the boy became an adult (over age 25). However, welfare income had the opposite effect: The more welfare income received by a family while a boy was growing up, the lower the boy's earnings as an adult. Typically, liberals would dismiss this finding, arguing that families which receive a lot of welfare payments have lower total incomes than other families in society, and that it is the low overall family income, not welfare, which had a negative effect on the young boys. But the Corcoran and Gordon study compares families whose average non-welfare incomes were identical. In such cases, each extra dollar in welfare represents a net increase in overall financial resources available to the family. This extra income, according to conventional liberal welfare theory, should have positive effects on the well being of the children. But the study shows that the extra welfare income, even though it produced a net increase in resources available to the family, had a negative impact on the development of young boys within the family. The higher the welfare income received by the family, the lower the earnings obtained by the boys upon reaching adulthood. The study suggests that an increase of $1,000 per year in welfare received by a family decreased a boy's future earnings by as much as 10 percent.4 Other studies have confirmed the negative effects of welfare dependence on the development of children. For example, young women raised in families dependent on welfare are two to three times more likely to drop out and fail to graduate from high school than are young women of similar race and socioeconomic background not raised on

welfare.5 Similarly, single mothers raised as children in families receiving welfare remain on AFDC longer as adult parents than do single mothers not raised in welfare families, even when all other social and economic variables are held constant.6

FOOD STAMPS FOSTER DEPENDENCE AND MAKE POVERTY WORSE

RECTOR 2001(Robert E. Rector is a Senior Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation, “Reforming Food Stamps to Promote Work and Reduce Poverty and Dependence,” June 27, http://www.heritage.org/Research/Welfare/Test062701.cfm)

Despite the close resemblance between Food Stamps and the old AFDC program, and despite the success of replacing AFDC with TANF, the Food Stamp program continues to operate in direct contradiction to the reform principles embodied in TANF. While the TANF program seeks to reduce

caseloads, to minimize dependence, and to increase employment, the Food Stamp program seeks to maximize caseload and dependence. While TANF

requires recipients to work as a condition of receiving aid, Food Stamps continue to provide long-term one-way handouts; work requirements are

virtually non-existent. The current Food Stamp program is a fossil embodying all the errors of the old War on Poverty. It provides one way handouts, rewards non-work and idleness, fosters long-term dependence, rewards and promotes out of wedlock childbearing. As such, the Food Stamp program actively harms children and increases poverty in the nation.

34

MGW 2009FOOD STAMPS

NEG—DEPENDENCE TURN

FOOD STAMPS ENCOURAGE DEPENDENCE

RECTOR 2001(Robert E. Rector is a Senior Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation, “Reforming Food Stamps to Promote Work and Reduce Poverty and Dependence,” June 27, http://www.heritage.org/Research/Welfare/Test062701.cfm)

There is a common misperception that the Food Stamp program provides mainly temporary, short term assistance. This is untrue. The majority of Food Stamp recipients at any given point in time are or will be long term dependents. The overwhelming majority of Food Stamp spending is received by individuals who have been or will be participants in the program for multiple years or even decades.In order to examine long term dependence on Food Stamps, my colleagues and I have analyzed data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) conducted by the U.S. Labor Department. The NLSY is a nationally representative sample of individuals born between 1957 and 1965. These individuals were teenagers or young adults in the late 1970's. The NLSY has tracked employment and welfare receipt among these individuals from 1979 to the present; the survey also collects data on all children born to these individuals. The NLSY thus provides a reliable picture of the duration of Food Stamp receipt and the allocation of Food Stamp expenditures among non-elderly adults and children over the last two decades. The NLSY data show that in the two decades between 1979 and 1998, 27 percent of all households received Food Stamp aid at least once. However, the bulk of Food Stamp expenditure was concentrated on a relatively small group of individuals who received aid for very extended periods. As Chart 3 shows, only 1.4 percent of Food Stamp spending went to households which received aid for 6 months or less. Less than 10 percent of Food Stamp expenditures went to individuals who received aid for two years or less. Over 90 percent of Food Stamp aid went to households which received aid for more than two years. Nearly 70 percent of all Food Stamp spending went to households which received Food Stamps for five years or more. And half of all Food Stamp spending went to individuals who received aid for 8.5 or more years. Very long term dependents, who received aid for 10 years or more, comprised only 2.5 percent of the whole NLSY sample but they received over 40 percent of all Food Stamp benefits. The average total value of Food Stamp aid received by these individuals and their families during the decades between 1979 and 1998 was $40,576.1

35

MGW 2009FOOD STAMPS

NEG—MARRIAGE TURN

FOOD STAMPS BENEFITS ARE LOWER FOR MARRIED COUPLES—THIS ENCOURAGES PEOPLE TO REMAIN UNMARRIED

RECTOR 2001(Robert E. Rector is a Senior Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation, “Reforming Food Stamps to Promote Work and Reduce Poverty and Dependence,” June 27, http://www.heritage.org/Research/Welfare/Test062701.cfm)

The U.S. welfare system is currently comprised of over 70 means-tested aid programs providing cash, food, housing, medical care, and social services to low-income persons. While it is widely accepted that welfare is biased against marriage, relatively few understand how this bias operates. Many erroneously believe that welfare programs have eligibility criteria that directly exclude married couples. This is not true. Nevertheless, welfare programs do penalize marriage and reward single parenthood because of the inherent design of all means-tested programs. In a means-tested program such as Food Stamps, the benefits are reduced as non-welfare income rises. Thus, under any means-tested system, a mother will receive greater benefits if she remains single than if she is married to a working husband. Welfare not only serves as a substitute for a husband, it actually penalizes marriage because a low-income couple will experience a significant drop in combined income if they marry. For example: the typical single mother on Temporary Assistance to Needy Families receives a combined welfare package of various means-tested aid benefits worth about $14,000 per year. Suppose this typical single mother receives welfare benefits worth $14,000 per year while the father of her children has a low-wage job paying $15,000 per year. If the mother and father remain unmarried, they will have a combined income of $29,000 ($14,000 from welfare and $15,000 from earnings). However, if the couple marry, the father's earnings will be counted against the mother's welfare eligibility. Welfare benefits will be eliminated or cut dramatically and the couple's combined income will fall substantially. Thus means-tested welfare programs do not penalize marriage per se, but instead implicitly penalize marriage to an employed man with earnings. Nonetheless, the practical effect is to significantly discourage marriage among low income couples. This anti-marriage discrimination is inherent in all means-tested aid programs including: TANF, Food Stamps, Public Housing, Medicaid, and the Women Infants and Children (WIC) food program. However, placing work requirements on these programs can mitigate the anti-marriage effects.

36

MGW 2009FOOD STAMPS

NEG—MARRIAGE TURN

FOOD STAMPS DISCOURAGE MARRIAGE AND CAUSE MORE BIRTH OUT OF WEDLOCK—THIS PERPETUATES POVERTY AND INCREASES CRIME

RECTOR 2001(Robert E. Rector is a Senior Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation, “Reforming Food Stamps to Promote Work and Reduce Poverty and Dependence,” June 27, http://www.heritage.org/Research/Welfare/Test062701.cfm)

As noted, the current Food Stamp program discourages marriage and rewards single parenthood. Some 85 percent of Food Stamp aid to children goes to single parent or no-parent families. But the absence of fathers harms children. Children born out-of-wedlock to never married women are poor fifty percent of the time. By contrast, children born within a marriage which remains intact are poor 7 percent of the time. Thus the absence of marriage increases the frequency of child poverty 700 percent Children raised by never-married mothers have significantly more behavior problems when compared to children raised by both biological parents. When comparisons are made between families that are identical in race, income, number of children, and mother's education, the behavioral differences between illegitimate and legitimate children actually widen. Compared to children living with both biological parents in similar socioeconomic circumstances, children of never-married mothers have three times more behavioral problems than children raised in comparable intact families.7 Children born out of wedlock have less ability to delay gratification and poorer impulse control (control over anger and sexual gratification). They have a weaker sense of conscience or sense of right and wrong.8 Adding to all this is the sad fact that the incidence of child abuse and neglect is higher among single-parent families.9 Being born out of wedlock increases the probability of teen sexual activity. Boys and girls born out of wedlock and raised by never-married mothers are two-and-a-half times more likely to be sexually active as teenagers when compared to legitimate children raised in intact married-couple families.10 The absence of married parents is related to poor academic performance during school years. The longer the time spent in a single-parent family, the lower the education attained by a child. In general, a boy's educational attainment was cut by one-tenth of a year for each year spent as a child in a single-parent home. Controlling for family income does not reduce the magnitude of the effect noticeably.11 Perhaps the worse feature of illegitimacy is that it is passed between generations. Being born outside of marriage significantly reduces the chances the child will grow up to have an intact marriage.12 Daughters of single mothers are twice as likely to be single mothers themselves if they are black, and only slightly less so if they are white.13 Boys living in a single-parent family are twice as likely to father a child out of wedlock as are boys from a two-parent home.14 Children born outside of marriage themselves are three times more likely to be on welfare when they grow up.15 Illegitimacy is a major factor in America's crime problem. Lack of married parents, rather than race or poverty, is the principal factor in the crime rate. It has been known for some time that high rates of welfare dependency correlate with high crime rates among young men in a neighborhood.16 But more important, a major 1988 study of 11,000 individuals found that "the percentage of single-parent households with children between the ages of 12 and 20 is significantly associated with rates of violent crime and burglary." The same study makes clear that the widespread popular assumption that there is an association between race and crime is false. Illegitimacy is the key factor. The absence of marriage, and the failure to form and maintain intact families, explains the incidence of high crime in a neighborhood among whites as well as blacks. This study also concluded that poverty does not explain the incidence of crime.17 Research on underclass behavior by Dr. June O'Neill confirms the linkage between crime and single-parent families. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, O'Neill found that young black men raised in single-parent families were twice as likely to engage in criminal activities when compared to black men raised in two-parent families, even after holding constant a wide range of variables such as family income, urban residence, neighborhood environment, and parents' education. Growing up in a single-parent family in a neighborhood with many other single-parent families on welfare triples the probability that a young black man will engage in criminal activity. 18

37

MGW 2009FOOD STAMPS

NEG—NO HUNGER IMPACT

FOOD INSECURITY IS NOT THE SAME AS HUNGER—THERE’S NO IMPACT TO THE CASE

RECTOR 2007(Robert Rector is Senior Research Fellow in Domestic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation, “Hunger Hysteria: Examining Food Security and Obesity in America,” Web Memo 1701, Nov 13, http://www.heritage.org/research/welfare/wm1701.cfm)

This week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) released its annual report on household food security in the United States. According to USDA, some 12.5 million households, or roughly 11 percent of all households, experienced "household food insecurity" at some point in 2006 and some 35 million people lived in households with some form of food insecurity.[1] Most of these households were low income. The report showed little change in food security levels in the U.S. over the last decade. Food Insecurity, Hunger, and Obesity While these numbers sound ominous, it is important to understand what "food insecurity" means. According to the USDA, "food insecurity" is usually a recurring and episodic problem rather than a chronic condition.[2] In 2006, around two-thirds of food insecure households experienced "low food security," meaning that these households managed to avoid any disruption or reduction in food intake throughout the year but were forced by financial pressures to reduce "variety in their diets" or rely on a "few basic foods" at various times in the year.[3] According to the USDA, the remaining one-third of food insecure households (around 4 percent of all households) experienced "very low food security," meaning that at least once in the year their actual intake of food was reduced due to a lack of funds for food purchase.[4] At the extreme, about 1.4 percent of all adults in the U.S. went an entire day without eating at least once during 2006 due to lack of funds for food.[5] Children are generally shielded from food insecurity. Around one child in two hundred experienced "very low food security" and reduced food intake at least one time during 2006. One child in a thousand went a whole day without eating at least once during the year because the family lacked funds for food.[6] Political advocates proclaim that the USDA reports suggest there is widespread chronic hunger in the U.S.[7] But the USDA clearly and specifically does not identify food insecurity with the more intense condition of "hunger," which it defines as "discomfort, illness, weakness, or pain...caused by prolonged involuntary lack of food."[8]

38

MGW 2009FOOD STAMPS

NEG—NO HUNGER SOLVENCY

FOOD STAMPS DON’T SOLVE HUNGER—MOST MONEY ISN’T SPENT ON FOOD AND FRAUD UNDERMINES BENEFITS

HOBBS 2004(Jon, American Institute for Full Employment, Steps to Employment Prosperity and Success, Spring, http://www.fullemployment.org/pdf/STEPS%20SPRING%20O4.pdf)

Food Stamps—one of the largest federal welfare programs, with annual costs approaching $24 billion—are intended to help low-income families purchase nutritious food. So, how effective are Food Stamps in meeting its goal? Not very, according to experts. Depending on one study, only between 17 and 47 cents of each Food Stamp dollar are used to increase the amount of food a family purchases. The rest effectively supplements recipients’ other income, allowing them to increase purchases of non-food items. In other words, from half to four-fifths of Food Stamp dollars aren’t even spent on food. The program also continues to be vulnerable to fraud. Although attempts have been made to curb the flagrant abuses in the 70s and 80s, where it was not uncommon to see Food Stamp coupon discount rates openly advertised in inner cities, the program is still susceptible to fraud. For example, an electronic benefit transfer (EBT) card has replaced Food Stamp coupons, but implementing regulations do not require an individual to present picture identification when using the card.

39

MGW 2009FOOD STAMPS

NEG—EXTINCTION OUTWEIGHS HUNGER

NO IMPACT CAN OUTWEIGH EXTINCTION—EVERY PERSON INCLUDED IN THEIR IMPACT IS INCLUDED IN OURS, PLUS MANY MORE

YUDKOWSKY 2006 (Eliezer, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, “Cognitive biases potentially affecting judgment of global risks,” forthcoming in Global Catastrophic Risks, August 31)

In addition to standard biases, I have personally observed what look like harmful modes of thinking specific to existential risks. The Spanish flu of 1918 killed 25-50 million people. World War II killed 60 million people. 107 is the order of the largest catastrophes in humanity's written history. Substantially larger numbers, such as 500 million deaths, and especially qualitatively different scenarios such as the extinction of the entire human species, seem to trigger a different mode of thinking - enter into a "separate magisterium". People who would never dream of hurting a child hear of an existential risk, and say, "Well, maybe the human species doesn't really deserve to survive." There is a saying in heuristics and biases that people do not evaluate events, but descriptions of events - what is called non-extensional reasoning. The extension of humanity's extinction includes the death of yourself, of your friends, of your family, of your loved ones, of your city, of your country, of your political fellows. Yet people who would take great offense at a proposal to wipe the country of Britain from the map, to kill every member of the Democratic Party in the U.S., to turn the city of Paris to glass - who would feel still greater horror on hearing the doctor say that their child had cancer - these people will discuss the extinction of humanity with perfect calm. "Extinction of humanity", as words on paper, appears in fictional novels, or is discussed in philosophy books - it belongs to a different context than the Spanish flu. We evaluate descriptions of events, not extensions of events. The cliché phrase end of the world invokes the magisterium of myth and dream, of prophecy and apocalypse, of novels and movies. The challenge of existential risks to rationality is that, the catastrophes being so huge, people snap into a different mode of thinking. Human deaths are suddenly no longer bad, and detailed predictions suddenly no longer require any expertise, and whether the story is told with a happy ending or a sad ending is a matter of personal taste in stories. But that is only an anecdotal observation of mine. I thought it better that this essay should focus on mistakes well-documented in the literature - the general literature of cognitive psychology, because there is not yet experimental literature specific to the psychology of existential risks. There should be. In the mathematics of Bayesian decision theory there is a concept of information value - the expected utility of knowledge. The value of information emerges from the value of whatever it is information about; if you double the stakes, you double the value of information about the stakes. The value of rational thinking works similarly - the value of performing a computation that integrates the evidence is calculated much the same way as the value of the evidence itself. (Good 1952; Horvitz et. al. 1989.) No more than Albert Szent-Györgyi could multiply the suffering of one human by a hundred million can I truly understand the value of clear thinking about global risks. Scope neglect is the hazard of being a biological human, running on an analog brain; the brain cannot multiply by six billion. And the stakes of existential risk extend beyond even the six billion humans alive today, to all the stars in all the galaxies that humanity and humanity's descendants may some day touch. All that vast potential hinges on our survival here, now, in the days when the realm of humankind is a single planet orbiting a single star. I can't feel our future. All I can do is try to defend it.

40

MGW 2009FOOD STAMPS

NEG—OBESITY TURN

FOOD STAMPS CAUSE OBESITY

RECTOR 2007(Robert Rector is Senior Research Fellow in Domestic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation, “Hunger Hysteria: Examining Food Security and Obesity in America,” Web Memo 1701, Nov 13, http://www.heritage.org/research/welfare/wm1701.cfm)

Thus, the government's own data show that, even though they may have brief episodes of reduced food intake, most adults in food insecure households actually consume too much, not too little, food. To improve health, policies must be devised to encourage these individuals to avoid chronic over-consumption of calories and to spread their food intake more evenly over the course of each month to avoid episodic shortfalls. Yet most proposed policy responses to food insecurity call for giving low-income persons more money to purchase food despite the fact that most low-income persons, like most Americans, already eat too much. Such policies are likely to make the current situation worse, not better. One commonly proposed policy, for example, is to expand participation in the Food Stamp program. Participation in the Food Stamp program, however, does not appear to reduce food insecurity. Households receiving food stamps do not have improved food security compared to similar households with the same non-food stamp income who do not participate in the program.[10] Moreover, participation in the Food Stamp program does not appear to increase diet quality. Compared to similar households who do not receive food stamps but have the same non-food stamp income, households receiving food stamps do not consume more fruits and vegetables but do, unfortunately, consume more added sugars and fats.[11] While the Food Stamp program has little positive effect on food quality, considerable evidence indicates that the program has the counter-productive effect of increasing obesity. For example, a recent study funded by USDA found that low-income women who participate in the Food Stamp program are substantially more likely to be obese than women in households with the same non-food stamp income who did not receive food stamps. Over the long term, food stamp receipt was found to increase obesity in men as well.[12] While other research has failed to confirm this link between food stamps and obesity, the possibility that this program has harmful effects remains quite real.[13]

41

MGW 2009FOOD STAMPS

NEG—NO SOLVENCY: OBESITY

FOOD STAMPS DON’T SOLVE OBESITY

RECTOR 2007(Robert Rector is Senior Research Fellow in Domestic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation, “Hunger Hysteria: Examining Food Security and Obesity in America,” Web Memo 1701, Nov 13, http://www.heritage.org/research/welfare/wm1701.cfm)

Developing a rational policy on nutrition and poor Americans will require dispelling common misconceptions concerning poverty and obesity. For example, one common misconception is that poor people become obese because they are forced, due to a lack of financial resources, to eat too many junk foods that are high in fat and added sugar. According to this theory, poor persons struggle to obtain sufficient calories to maintain themselves and are forced to rely on junk foods as the cheapest source of calories, but because junk foods have high "energy density" (more calories per ounce of food content), these foods paradoxically induce a tendency to overeat and thereby cause weight gain.[14] One problem with this theory is that junk foods are not a particularly cheap source of calories. For example, soft drinks are high in added sugar and are generally associated with weight gain, but as a source of calories, brand name soft drinks such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi are often more expensive (in terms of calories per dollar) than milk.[15]

Snack foods such as potato chips and donuts cost two to five times more per calorie than healthier staples such as beans, rice, and pasta. Families truly seeking to maximize calories per dollar of food expenditure would focus not on junk and snack foods but on traditional low-cost staples such as beans, rice, flour, pasta, and milk. These foods are not only less expensive but actually have below-average energy

density and therefore a lower potential to promote weight gain.[16] In reality, poor people are increasingly becoming overweight for the same reason that most Americans are becoming overweight: They eat too much and exercise too little. Like the rest of America, the poor eat too many high-fat foods and foods with added sugars, but they do this for the same reason the average American over-consumes these foods: They are highly palatable. While it would be desirable for poor people (like all Americans) to drink fewer soft drinks and eat more broccoli, simply expanding the Food Stamp program would not accomplish that goal. What is required is a very difficult effort to change food preferences.

NO SOLVENCY—CULTURAL FACTORS GUARANTEE OBESITY

TRUST FOR AMERICA’S HEALTH 2008 (non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to saving lives by protecting the health of every community and working to make disease prevention a national priority, “F as in Fat,” August, http://www.rwjf.org/files/research/081908.3424.fasinfat.pdf)

Many of the forces that have contributed to our national weight gain are deeply ingrained in our culture, such as an increase in prepared foods and eating in restaurants, and the greater distances people have between home, work, schools, and shopping areas that lead to an increased need for cars and motorized transportation to get around.

GROWTH HORMONES AND ANIMAL FOOD ADDITIVES CAUSE OBESITY—THE PLAN CAN’T SOLVE THIS

WEIS 2008(Peter, creator of truehealth.org, “Obesity—the real cause,” http://www.truehealth.org/obesity.html)

Growth hormones! What do you expect! We give our livestock - beef, lamb, pork, chicken, turkeys, asf. - growth hormones so they gain weight faster and can

be sold sooner. And in the case of dairy cows, we also give them estrogen hormones, so they give more milk. It works, it works wonderfully well. Both hormones result in rapid weight gain of the animals, and consequently, we too are now expressing these added hormones in our food - in rapidly growing bulk. In addition, we also give anti-biotics to most, if not all, of our livestock (70% of all anti-biotics produced are sold to ranchers and farmers ). This has the most welcome side effect - at least to farmers - that their livestock also gain weight quicker, and thus, can be sold sooner (the live stock, that is; not the farmers). And that's not all. We also give our crops N-P-K (nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium) - the fundamental and "major" nutrients of all of our crops. Here too, the intent is on rapid growth and greater productivity. This amounts to giving our crops "speed" - resulting in nutrient empty, overgrown bloat, since all of the other 13 known nutrients are replaced only when absolutely necessary, and the still unknown - but crucially vital - 64 trace elements not at all. The result is a massive drop in nutrients in our daily food (more below). We haven't got a chance. We are fed growth hormones in our meat and dairy products, and bloated, nutrient-empty fodder in our grains, fruit and vegetables. And we are now beginning to reflect the nature and quality of our daily food - empty bloat - in an epidemic of obesity.

42

MGW 2009FOOD STAMPS

NEG—NO SOLVENCY: OBESITY

FOOD IS NOT THE CAUSE OF OBESITY—LACK OF EXERCISE IS KEY

WHITEFIELD 2008(Trice, senior research analyst for the Center for Consumer Freedom, The Oklahoman, July 30)

But the cause of obesity isn't what you think.In the largest, most comprehensive study of its kind, research published in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association found that fewer than a third of U.S. teens meet the minimum recommended amount of exercise. It gets worse: On weekends, teens move, on average, a mere 35 minutes per day. And even though these figures are only the latest addition to a growing body of evidence - confirming that inactivity is a major factor in our health - the study's lead author explained that "people don't recognize this as the crisis that it is." And there's a good reason for that. Dietary scaremongers have monopolized the public's attention. Sure, there have been some changes between modern meals and those of our grandparents. But overall nutrition in the '50s and '60s (when there were half as many restaurants and far fewer convenience foods) was far from superior to our own. Fifty years ago, most Americans ate a high-fat, high-cholesterol and high-sugar diet. The dietary difference between generations isn't remarkable. The change in activity is. Technological advancements have undeniably influenced our lifestyles and, consequently, our waistlines too. According to a study by Mayo Clinic researcher Dr. James Levine in Science magazine, the mechanization of society - replacing manual tasks with machines - has decreased physical activity. That absence leaves us with a daily surplus of 100-200 calories, unused energy that "potentially could account for the entire obesity epidemic." Other experts agree. Researchers at the Cooper Institute in Dallas determined that by forgoing automated assistance (like mechanized car washes and riding lawn mowers) in our daily chores, we could increase monthly energy expenditure by almost 9,000 calories - the equivalent of 2.5 pounds of body fat. The study's lead author suggested that "inactivity is the major public health problem of this century." But for such a major concern, inactivity barely catches a blip on the public's radar. For most of us, the term "obesity" doesn't conjure images of drive-through car washes. That makes sense given that most campaigns about weight gain fixate on a different kind of drive-though: fast food. From Los Angeles (where city council members aim to outlaw new fast-food restaurants) to New York (where the Department of Health is trying to guilt consumers into eating low-calorie lunches), lawmakers are eagerly pushing food-focused schemes. But the best solution isn't dietary regulation. It's individual motivation. Simply move more. Walk your dog, wash your car, dance, vacuum, garden or shop. Almost anything counts, as long as you're going. Though small, these adjustments offer big benefits for your health.Food may be a sensational target. It's just not the right one.

GENETICS AND ENVIRONMENT CAUSE OBESITY

SCOTT 2007(Jennifer, health writer for 7 years, “Obesity FAQ: What Causes Obesity?” May 17)

It's important to remember that there are other, underlying causes that can contribute to one's tendency to become overweight or obese.There are some factors in weight gain that we simply have no control over. For example. some illnesses may lead to weight gain, such as Cushing's disease. Certain medications like steroids and antidepressants may also cause weight gain.There are also other underlying issues that often lead to weight gain, such as genetics, environmental factors, psychological issues, physical inactivity due to injury or illness, and eating disorders, such as BED (binge eating disorder).

43

MGW 2009FOOD STAMPS

NEG—STATUS QUO SOLVES OBESITY

STATUS QUO MEASURES ARE SOLVING OBESITY

TRUST FOR AMERICA’S HEALTH 2008 (non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to saving lives by protecting the health of every community and working to make disease prevention a national priority, “F as in Fat,” August, http://www.rwjf.org/files/research/081908.3424.fasinfat.pdf)

In the past year, there has been one reason for cautious optimism. According to the latest data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), after years of increases, childhood and adolescent obesity rates remained level between 2003-2004 and 2005-2006.17 It is too early to determine if this is a result of obesity-prevention programs, but it does provide encouragement.

OBESITY RATES HAVE PEAKED

TRUST FOR AMERICA’S HEALTH 2008 (non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to saving lives by protecting the health of every community and working to make disease prevention a national priority, “F as in Fat,” August, http://www.rwjf.org/files/research/081908.3424.fasinfat.pdf)

According to a recent analysis of data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), the number of U.S. children who are overweight or obese may have peaked, after years of steady increases. Researchers at CDC report that there was no statistically significant change in the number of children and adolescents (aged 2 to 19) with high BMI for age between 2003-2004 and 2005-2006.38

44

MGW 2009FOOD STAMPS

NEG—STATUS QUO SOLVES ECONOMY

RECENT INCREASE IN FOOD STAMPS IS ENOUGH TO SPARK ECONOMIC RECOVERY

ST JOE NEWS.NET 2009(April 15, http://www.stjoenews.net/news/2009/apr/15/food-stamp-recipients-see-benefit-increase/)

The increase gives about an extra $24 to each eligible person per month who is enrolled in the federal food stamp program. That amounts to an additional $72 for a family of three, and $96 for a family of four. Food stamp households began receiving the increase on April 1 to contend with putting food on the table during a recession. In making the announcement, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said the increase will stimulate local economies because food stamps are typically spent quickly. Already, grocery stores report an economic impact.

45

MGW 2009FOOD STAMPS

NEG—NO IMPACT TO ECONOMY

THERE’S NO LINK BETWEEN ECONOMIC COLLAPSE AND WAR—THEIR HISTORICAL ARGUMENTS ARE WRONG

FERGUSON 2006 (Niall, MA, D.Phil., is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University. He is a resident faculty member of the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies. He is also a Senior Reseach Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford University, and a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Foreign Affairs, Sept/Oct)

Nor can economic crises explain the bloodshed. What may be the most familiar causal chain in modern historiography links the Great Depression to the rise of fascism and the outbreak of World War II. But that simple story leaves too much out. Nazi Germany started the war in Europe only after its economy had recovered. Not all the countries affected by the Great Depression were taken over by fascist regimes, nor did all such regimes start wars of aggression. In fact, no general relationship between economics and conflict is discernible for the century as a whole. Some wars came after periods of growth, others were the causes rather than the consequences of economic catastrophe, and some severe economic crises were not followed by wars.

TRADE DOES NOT SOLVE WAR—THERE’S NO CORRELATION BETWEEN TRADE AND PEACE

MARTIN, MAYER, AND THOENIG 2008Phillipe, University of Paris 1 Pantheon—Sorbonne, Paris School of Economics, and Centre for Economic Policy Research; Thierry MAYER, University of Paris 1 Pantheon—Sorbonne, Paris School of Economics, CEPII, and Centre for Economic Policy Research, Mathias THOENIG, University of Geneva and Paris School of Economics, The Review of Economic Studies 75)

Does globalization pacify international relations? The “liberal” view in political science argues that increasing trade flows and the spread of free markets and democracy should limit the incentive to use military force in interstate relations. This vision, which can partly be traced back to Kant’s Essay on Perpetual Peace (1795), has been very influential: The main objective of the European trade integration process was to prevent the killing and destruction of the two World Wars from ever happening again.1 Figure 1 suggests2 however, that during the 1870–2001 period, the correlation between trade openness and military conflicts is not a clear cut one. The first era of globalization, at the end of the 19th century, was a period of rising trade openness and multiple military conflicts, culminating with World War I. Then, the interwar period was characterized by a simultaneous collapse of world trade and conflicts. After World War II, world trade increased rapidly, while the number of conflicts decreased (although the risk of a global conflict was obviously high). There is no clear evidence that the 1990s, during which trade flows increased dramatically, was a period of lower prevalence of military conflicts, even taking into account the increase in the number of sovereign states.

46

MGW 2009FOOD STAMPS

NEG—ECONOMY TURN

FOOD STAMPS HURT STATE BUDGETS—THEY ARE WASTEFUL AND DIVERT FROM OTHER PROGRAMS

HOBBS 2004(Jon, American Institute for Full Employment, Steps to Employment Prosperity and Success, Spring, http://www.fullemployment.org/pdf/STEPS%20SPRING%20O4.pdf)

Despite its ineffectiveness, the Food Stamp program is popular with many special interest groups, including grocers, farmers, government workers, and poverty advocates. The program has also been highly inflexible, with Food Stamp administrators being very hesitant to allow program re-alignment to match the most successful components of TANF—even though current law and regulation allow these changes. The program is also expensive to administer. Federal regulators seem far more interested in fining states for errors than rewarding them for successfully moving people off of public assistance. Many states are forced to increase their administrative resources to improve error rates, even to the point of moving staff from their successful TANF and work-related public assistance programs to Food Stamp eligibility and verification units.

47