Food Stamps: America’s Rising Gauge of Lean Times : Welfare: Aid program is one nearly everyone can live with. But with 27 million on rolls, it belies recovery.

Every day, in grocery store checkout lines across the country, thousands of Americans bear witness to their own misfortune in a public ritual that underscores both the pervasiveness of poverty and the fragility of the economic recovery. Debbie Nester is one of them.

Seven months ago, Nester’s husband was making $12 an hour as a plumber in rural West Virginia. Then he hurt his back and could no longer work. Although he possessed a high school diploma, he had never learned to read and was unable to find a new job. So Nester, the mother of two young children, reluctantly applied for food stamps for her family.

“I don’t want to depend on the government, but I need it for my kids,” said Nester, 32. “But I do not want it to become permanent.”

A record 27 million people--roughly 1 in 10 Americans--receive food stamps or live with someone who does. The 33-year-old program has grown steadily and continues to expand despite an economic recovery that officially began two years ago. It ranks as the second-biggest public assistance program, behind Medicaid.

For some critics, the program epitomizes the extent to which Americans have become dependent on government to meet their basic needs. Yet even if many taxpayers grumble when they see someone buy chips and soda with food stamps, surveys show that the program is generally perceived as essential and effective.

At a time when some federal assistance programs are shrinking, President Clinton has proposed a significant expansion of the food stamp program: more than $7 billion in new funding over four years.

Even more telling, Clinton is expected to exempt food stamps from proposed welfare reforms that could place a two-year limit on many government benefits for the poor.

Food stamps even draw praise from Republican lawmakers, who view them as fundamentally different from programs such as Aid to Families With Dependent Children, Medicaid and public housing.

“I don’t believe reasons for supporting the food stamp program break along party lines,” said Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.), who has been a powerful force behind the program since the 1960s. “There is now a tradition of bipartisan support for it.”

Experts say the program’s success reflects the fact that Americans are offended by the concept of hunger at home--in the world’s richest and most powerful nation--and are willing to support a carefully targeted program that helps put food on the table of those who need it.

Unlike Aid to Families With Dependent Children, which provides cash benefits to qualifying participants, food stamps can only be used to buy groceries. The definition is loose enough to include soft drinks and candy bars, but not cigarettes, alcohol or detergent.

“Visible hunger is something Americans just do not tolerate,” said Robert Fersh, executive director of the Food Research and Action Center, a Washington-based advocacy group. The food stamp program, he said, “seems to be more favorably received than ever. It is a very good program. I would hate to think where we would be without it.”

Another reason for the program’s political buoyancy is that it helps American farmers by creating more demand for agricultural products. As a result, it has forged a congressional alliance between rural conservatives and urban liberals.

Analysts and Administration officials say the program’s persistent growth underscores the prevalence of poverty in America. In fact, many economists contend that food stamps reflect the health of the economy and the size of the nation’s underclass more accurately than the unemployment rate and other statistical indicators.

A significant number of jobless people fall off the unemployment rolls because they’re too discouraged to look for work, for example, but they continue to get food stamps.

On the eve of the last recession, in the summer of 1990, some 20 million people were served by the food stamp program. When the economic recovery officially began in early 1991, the number had jumped to almost 23 million. The ranks have continued to swell ever since, rising to more than 27 million despite two years of growth in the overall economy. The number of Americans who qualify for benefits is believed to be even higher, perhaps 35 million.

The steady growth of the program shows that the recovery has been “toothless,” Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy said in an interview.

The spotty nature of the recovery and its effect on the lives of working people is evident at the Berkeley County Food Stamp Certification Office in Martinsburg, where the number of people served has jumped 35% in two years.

Sharon Michanco, a 32-year-old mother of three, had nowhere else to turn when she applied for food stamps about six months ago. Her husband had been out of a job for six months, she was pregnant and the generosity of friends and relatives had begun to wear thin.

“It was a last resort for us to come in here,” Michanco recalled as she waited in the food stamp office one recent morning. “We were down to nothing. The food stamps have been tremendously helpful. I use half of them to buy formula for my baby.”

Both she and her husband have found new jobs. But she is earning only $5 an hour as a telephone operator, and he gets $6 an hour as a driver. “We’re struggling,” she said. “It’s coming to the point where we’ll have to get off food stamps. Last month we earned $1,400, and $1,700 is the limit for a family of five to earn and still get food stamps.”

Like Michanco, most of those who receive food stamps in Berkeley County hold jobs that do not pay enough to cover basic living expenses, according to Gail Lucas, supervisor of the food stamp office.

Espy said the Administration’s goal is to adopt policies that will stimulate the economy to provide well-paying jobs with good benefits so people like the Michancos will no longer need to rely on public assistance.

“That’s what we’re trying to achieve in this Administration, to develop economic growth to promote full-time, real jobs,” Espy said. “But the fact is, we are not there yet--the greater participation in the program proves that we are not there--and we’ve got to provide food for those who need it.”

While a majority of food stamp recipients still live in the nation’s cities, the rate of growth has been higher among suburban and rural participants, some state and federal officials say.

The program roster includes increasing numbers of unemployed Americans who were able to hold steady jobs in the past and never thought they would need any form of government assistance. Many used to be solidly working class, but plant closings and other changes in local and regional economies have undermined their economic security.

A small portion of the program’s overall increase is attributed to changes in the qualifications and the effects of immigration (only legal immigrants qualify for food stamps), but the primary cause is the sluggish economy, officials say.

In 1991, an estimated 35.7 million people, or 14.2% of all Americans, were living below the poverty line. That was up from 13.5% the previous year and was the highest percentage since the start of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty in 1964.

Food stamp records suggest that the ranks of the poor continue to grow even though the overall economy is expanding. The divergent trends may reflect an increasing stratification of U.S. society: While national income may be stable or rising on average, the gap between rich and poor appears to be widening.

Of all the federal assistance programs, food stamps is the most inclusive. Childless people qualify, as do the elderly. No limit is imposed on the duration of benefits as long as recipients continue to satisfy the income criteria.

Eligibility for food stamps is based on an applicant’s income and assets. Under current rules, household income, after certain adjustments, must fall below $588 a month for one person, $965 for a family of three and $1,361 for a family of five.

A household’s “liquid assets”--money in the bank and, in some cases, the value of automobiles--cannot exceed $2,000 (or $3,000 if one member is elderly).

Monthly benefits averaged $68.50 per person in 1992, although maximum allotments are higher. In most areas, the top benefit is $111 for one person, $292 for a family of three and $440 for a family of five.

Nearly 40% of recipient households have monthly incomes that fall below 50% of the federal poverty standards, and only 20% have regular income from jobs.

The Administration has supported a change that would increase the food stamp program, which accounts for $27 billion in this year’s federal budget, by about $7.5 billion over the next five years.

The expansion would provide more assistance to families that have unusually high housing costs, and make it possible to own a more valuable car and still qualify.

Under current rules, if an automobile worth more than $4,500 is not used primarily to earn income, the excess value is counted toward the $2,000 limit on liquid assets. The restriction often forces people to choose between a car they may need to help them find work and the food stamps they need to feed their families.

The proposed revisions are part of the Administration’s welfare reform strategy, which seeks to stimulate responsibility and self-sufficiency.

Since 1979, the inflation-adjusted cost of the program has soared from $12 billion to $27 billion. Yet despite the program’s massive size, its political support seems as secure as it has ever been.

That special status is likely to protect it from the two-year limit the Administration is considering for other welfare programs, according to legislative sources and documents produced but not yet released by the President’s welfare reform task force.

David Ellwood, a co-chairman of the Administration’s Working Group on Welfare Reform, said the food stamp program is “on the table” along with all other welfare policies, but it has not yet been targeted for a time limit.

Yet in an era of massive federal deficits, there is increasing concern about assistance programs that may encourage dependency, especially across generations, and food stamps are not immune from criticism on that score.

If the Administration succeeds in reshaping the welfare system to foster work, independence, family and responsibility, the effects may spill over to the food stamp program--and the people who have come to depend on it.

For Robin Boyer, 24, another Berkeley County resident interviewed at the Martinsburg food stamp office, handing over coupons at the grocery store has become as natural as paying cash. She said she was applying for food stamps because her husband had fallen off a roof and was unable to work, but she acknowledged that she has gone on and off the program many times.

Her mother raised her and her six brothers and sisters in Queens, N.Y., on food stamps, she said.

Boyer offers an expert critique of the benefits. Her sisters, who live in Maryland and Upstate New York, have been issued special plastic cards they use at the cash register in place of stamps. The cards simply debit their food stamp accounts. There’s no stigma and no hassle.

“They should get this program in West Virginia too,” Boyer said. That way, she could go on and off the program without having to spend time in the Martinsburg office.

Food stamp debit cards may be the wave of the future. Maryland was the first state to adopt the concept statewide, but the Administration is pushing hard for other states to do the same.

Most states, including California, have expressed interest, but the switch-over is expensive. Maryland says it will spend $37 million to start the system by issuing cards to all recipients and installing electronic devices that can read the cards.

Experts say the debit card system is likely to make food stamps even more accepted by taxpayers, because it will to cut down on fraud and theft and prevent people from selling stamps for cash.

Perhaps more important, it will diminish the stigma associated with food stamp use by ending the ritual that forces recipients to publicly identify themselves every day in urban supermarkets, small-town markets and country stores all across America.