This isn't something that the corporate media speaks about very often, but more people are on food stamps in America today than at any other point in American history. Of course, the corporate press loves to push the line that America is dealing with a fantastic economic recovery, and that President Biden's policies are working better for Americans than any other President before. They love shilling for the President, and the Twitter files go a long way to explain why that is. The reality of the situation, however, is rather bleak for a lot of Americans, as they cannot afford to feed their families. So despite the fact that you will not hear it on the news, 25 American states (to start) have extended the emergency SNAP benefits through the end of January.

SNAP stands for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and this is the federal program that replaced food stamps under the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The FDA is a federal organization but gives its funding out to individual states to handle independently. The current main allotment for SNAP is around $900/month, increased over the past few months to counter inflation. This allotment is going to remain in place for at least 25 states this month; and most experts suggest that all 50 states are going to decide to keep the emergency allotment in place.

The President stands up on stage and tells Americans that things are fantastic in America. Meanwhile, the Secretary of Health and Human Services has used Section 319 of the Public Health Service Act to declare a literal state of emergency. So, what does that tell you as an American? Are the words of a sitting President and his friendly corporate media true? Or do you trust the literal state of emergency declared by the federal government? In a fair country, this wouldn't even be a question. Obviously America is in a state of emergency. Food costs nearly 200% more at the store than it did in 2019, and tens of millions of Americans need to rely on food stamps in order to not starve to death.

America is currently in a state of ongoing emergency, and its politicians are bickering about how many billions to give to Ukraine, and who the Speaker of the House is going to be. For the average American who cannot afford groceries, they're going to receive an additional $95 this month on their SNAP allotment, and so they don't rightly care about these political games being played. They just want something to be done about the state of affairs in America. Sadly, it doesn't appear that anything is being done to solve the problems.
 

A Temporary State of Permanence

One of Joe Biden's first acts as President of the United States was to cancel Donald Trump's insulin cap. You may have your own personal feelings on "the former guy," but Trump had capped insulin for all Americans at under $30 per month. Biden destroyed that, and his Congress has been pushing a new bill through the halls for two years in order to "cap insulin" at $35 for seniors. Why is this important? The Federal Government of the United States of America quite literally (and intentionally) raised the prices of insulin for millions of Americans simply so they could play politics with the prices, claiming that Americans need to support one particular party in order to pay less for insulin. In any other country on the planet, this would be called extortion, and America might decide to invade that country to save its citizens. In America, this is just business as usual, and the corporate media ran interference for the scam. The point here is that this is what the United States government has been doing for two whole years, instead of working to bring inflation down.

So, when a health emergency is declared due to the fact that most Americans cannot afford to eat, the way the federal government acts lets you know that this is not going to be temporary. Regardless of which political party you're aligned with, and which politicians you really like, the fact is that they're all conspiring to play political games for votes while Americans suffer and face potential starvation.

The SNAP program is all millions of Americans have, and it's really scary to think that food prices are just going to keep climbing because America's "elected" representatives are more worried about extorting votes from people than fixing issues.