15% SNAP boost extended; states to get more than $1 billion over 3 years in other hunger aid; state data available

The Agriculture Department confirmed Monday that it will extend the 15 percent increase in benefits for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, once known as food stamps, through September with funds from the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief-and-stimulus bill. Without the funds, the extension would have ended in June. The bump will add up to about $3.5 billion of assistance to an estimated 41 million food-insecure Americans. That means $28 more per person, per month, or more than $100 more per month for a household of four, Shawna Chen reports for Axios. Rural households are more likely to use SNAP benefits than their suburban and urban peers.

"An additional $1.135 billion will be provided to U.S. states over three years, which they will not be required to match," Joseph Choi reports for The Hill. Of that, USDA will get $25 million to expand online SNAP purchasing, develop mobile-payment technologies, and provide technical assistance to retailers and farmers' markets in adopting the new platforms. "With these investments, we hope to make it easier for participants, especially individuals in rural areas, as well as those with physical limitations, to order and pay for their groceries online," according to USDA's fact sheet, which provides a state-level breakdown of the estimated increase in SNAP benefits.

The fact sheet details how the rest of that $1.135 billion will be divided: nearly $900 million will go to the Women, Infants and Children program; $37 million to the Commodity Supplemental Food Program, which feeds low-income seniors, and an unspecified amount will fund meals for young adults in emergency shelters participating in the Child and Adult Care Food Program.

"We cannot sit by and watch food insecurity grow in the United States," Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said. "The American Rescue Plan brings help to those hurting the most due to the pandemic. It increases SNAP benefits so households can afford to put food on the table. It invests in working people and small towns and small businesses to get the economy back on track. And it makes the most meaningful investments in generations to reduce poverty."

The SNAP boost is "a sharp contrast to the Trump administration's attempt to block states from giving emergency food stamps to low-income Americans during the pandemic last year," Chen writes.