Hits and Misses
MISS: Making $18,000 per year if you’re living on your own hardly assures a life of luxury. The same goes for a family of four trying to get by on $38,000 per year. But that’s apparently too much for the Ebenezer Scrooges who are wandering around in Washington, D.C., right now. The Trump administration has put forward a plan to cut the number of people using the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by forcing states to reduce the number of people deemed eligible. In Pennsylvania, an income of $18,000 for an individual and $38,000 for a family of four are the benchmarks for SNAP eligibility, but the proposed change would require states to use the federal levels of $16,000 a year for a single person and $32,000 for a family of four. If the rule change goes through, 3.1 million people around the country would lose SNAP benefits. That includes 200,000 people across Pennsylvania, 2,788 in Washington County, and 452 in Greene. Teresa Miller, the secretary of the commonwealth’s human services department, characterized the proposed cuts as “cruel and unacceptable.” She also said the cuts would have their deepest impacts on individuals with disabilities, the elderly and workers. If the Trump White House wants to make a gesture toward fiscal discipline, they shouldn’t do so on the backs of America’s poorest.
MISS: The merger between H.J. Heinz Co., and Kraft Foods in 2015 was met with no small amount of lamentation in Southwestern Pennsylvania, as it marked a regional institution being subsumed into a larger corporate entity. It turns out, four years after, that the marriage has been rocky. This week, The New York Times characterized it as a “mega-mess,” with dropping sales, layoffs, lawsuits and more. One of the criticisms that’s been leveled against what is now called Kraft Heinz is that the company failed to invest in research and development as other, smaller companies, sprinted forward. One area in particular where the company has fallen behind is in foods that are more organic and less processed. We can only hope that Kraft Heinz is able to right its ship. We would hate to see Heinz, even in its merged form, go the way of once-unassailable giants like Sears, Pan Am or Kodak.
MISS: The U.S. economy has been doing fairly well for the last several years, but the prosperity is still not making its way into every sector of society. This fact was brought home this week by the release of a report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation that found that 12% of all children in the United States live in neighborhoods that can be characterized as being high in poverty and low in opportunity. In Pennsylvania, the number of children in such neighborhoods increased from 311,000 to 323,000, representing a 1% increase. The report recommends that people with low or fixed incomes receive property tax relief, that vacant or blighted properties be purchased so they can be made useful again, and that more affordable housing be constructed. “Our nation is currently in the midst of a long period of economic expansion,” the report stated. “Yet stagnant wages, rising housing costs and inaccessible job opportunities keep many children and families trapped in impoverished communities.” We can do better.