June Foodstamp Recipients Hit All Time High As Three Times As Many Americans Enter Poverty As Find Jobs

I was digging for a little more information on how Snap participant numbers are derived, whether the number represents number of households or they are actually the total of members per household. Well I still haven't found that, but I did find this
http://www.fns.usda.gov/pd/29snapcurrpp.htm
And at the very bottom it states this
May and June 2012 data are preliminary and are subject to significant revision.
So not only do unemployment numbers get revised, but SNAP numbers do as well.
I feel like we're all looking at a Monet up close and we won't know what the real picture looks like until we can stand back far enough away to see it.
The only problem with that is, these are human lives we're talking about, not art, and standing back far enough, is the equivalent of decades further into the future of time, and when involving human lives, the view from decades back, is entirely to late, to stop what's unfolding now.

Updated: I did find out that the figure released by the Gov is a household figure. All members in the household unit are counted as 1.
When you look at the census count figure of 330 million people, and you figure on the lessor side of 3 member per house hold, almost half if not better than (due to the least number of members per household used)people in the United States no longer have a viable income to enable the survival of their family.
That my friends IS THE BIG PICTURE, and monthly that picture expands.

Following a brief period in which it seemed that US foodstamp recipients may have peaked, with those living in poverty maxing out at 46.514 million in December 2011, and then declining modestly for the next few months, June saw a new surge in those Americans living in poverty and thus eligible for foodstamps, with 173,600 new entrants into the system, bringing the total to a new all time high of 46.670 million and once again rising fast. Furthermore, with subsequent emergency events affecting the heartland due to the drought, the administration has made sure even more Americans will be eligible going forward. As a result expect the July and August numbers to promptly surpass 47 million on their way to the psychological resistance level of 50 million. Indicatively, the 173,600 increase in Foodstamps recipients in June was three times greater than Americans finding jobs (64,000, most of which part-time) according to the BLS. Finally, a new record was also breached for American households on foodstamps, which now hit 22.4 million, an increase of 106,298 households. The average benefit per household decline once more, this time to $276.5. Not an all time low, but just above it.

Persons on Foodstamps

Senate Cuts Food Stamp Funds; Leaves Oil and Gas Subsidies Intact

http://food.change.org/blog/view/senate_cuts_food_stamp_funds_leaves_oil_and_gas_subsidies_intact

Times are better now, and besides the government needs that extra money to help make sure there are actually teachers when your child goes back to school this year.
From what I understand between 3-400,000 won't be coming back to school this year to teach our children, unless the government forks over for their salary, because the States don't have it, to be able to gainfully employ them.

America's poor rarely catch a break these days. The Senate is expected to vote today for a bill that will cut food stamp benefits by $6.1 billion to help fund Medicaid and teachers' jobs, reasoning they were too high now that food costs are lower than predicted. Proponents essentially argued that poor people had too much money for food.

As the Washington Post's Ezra Klein explains, last year's federal Recovery Act increased the amount of money for food stamps, or the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), to about $80 more per household each month. Amid the recession and high unemployment, about six million more people registered for the program in the past year alone, so program costs boomed from $20 billion to $65 billion. Meanwhile, food prices have deflated from last year's high rates. Now people are able to get more bang for their buck, hence the Senate's idea to cut payments. It's frustrating not only because America's poor, working, and middle class are suffering at record levels and could use this tiny leg up, but also because it's a really stupid cut for the overall economic picture: According to Klein, food stamps serve as one of the best forms of stimulus money, to the tune of $1.70 of activity for every dollar spent. In other words, our economy desperately needs this.

"This is also a question of priorities," Klein writes, explaining that the Senate voted against proposed cuts to oil and gas subsidies, and may continue tax cuts for the wealthy. "But food assistance for poor families? You can get the votes to slash those."