Food Stamps | featured news

Hoping to break any stigmas of government assistance, Newark Mayor Cory Booker of New Jersey will live on food stamps this week–a challenge that first began as a Twitter conversation. The Democratic mayor will operate on a food stamp budget of about $30 a week ($4.32 per day), roughly the same amount provided to people in New Jersey who take part in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

The number of Americans on food stamps hit a record high in June, and economists don't expect much improvement as long as unemployment remains high. Those receiving benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program numbered 46.37 million, the government said in a report that hit just days ahead of the monthly nonfarm payrolls report, which the Labor Department releases Friday.

A drunken man viciously carved up a Brooklyn bodega clerk’s face Thursday after being told he couldn’t use food stamps to buy a $1.25 bottle of beer. “Sell it to me,” the suspect barked at Mutahar Murshed Ali, 34, in the Express Deli in Bushwick about 7:35 a.m. “Don’t get me mad.” Ali told the Daily News he held his ground, telling the enraged drunk he couldn’t buy the 22-ounce Colt 45 with a food stamp card. The suspect hurled a racial slur and then stormed out of the store, Ali said.

A unique, hard-hitting report just completed by a California attorney exposes a largely unknown federal food-stamp racket involving large grocery retailers, food manufacturing giants and other private players, including the Federal Reserve and JPMorganChase, which combine to channel food stamp spending into a gravy train for the heavy hitters in the food industry.

Food stamp recipients are ripping off the government for millions of dollars by illegally selling their benefit cards for cash - sometimes even in the open, on eBay or Craigslist - and then asking the government for replacement cards.

Nadya "Octomom" Suleman is on food stamps. "I made that call reluctantly," she said on the "Today" show Thursday. "I needed to remove my pride, it was fear. I was terrified and I received thousands and thousands of death threats."

Republicans are ready to ram through the House an election-year, $3.5 trillion budget that showcases their deficit-cutting plan for revamping Medicare and slicing everything from food stamps to transportation while rejecting President Barack Obama's call to raise taxes on the rich....

The number of businesses approved to accept food stamps grew by a third from 2005 to 2010, U.S. Department of Agriculture records show, as vendors from convenience and dollar discount stores to gas stations and pharmacies increasingly joined the growing entitlement program. Now, restaurants, which typically have not participated in the program, are lobbying for a piece of the action. Louisville-based Yum! Brands, whose restaurants include Taco Bell, KFC, Long John Silver's and Pizza Hut, is trying to get restaurants more involved, federal lobbying records show.

Federal officials rejected a proposal to bar New York City’s food stamp users from buying soda with their benefits.

A Michigan Lottery $2 million jackpot winner from last year is eligible and collecting some food stamp assistance under a loophole state officials have been working for months to close.