Oh, Boo, Hoo

Starting today, most SNAP/Food Stamp participants are being cut a few dollars a month.
From Best of the Web: "Food stamp benefits will be cut to more than 47 million Americans starting Friday as a temporary boost to the federal program comes to an end without a new budget from a deadlocked Congress to replace it," USA Today reports:

Under the program, known formally as the Supplemental Nutrition and Assistance Program, or SNAP, a family of four that gets $668 per month in benefits will find that amount cut by $36. . . .

In California overall, the cuts will affect more than 4 million residents and will amount to the equivalent of losing roughly 21 individual meals per month, based on calculations used by the Department of Agriculture, the San Jose Mercury News reports.

These numbers, all of which come from the Mercury News report, don't seem to add up. A reduction of $36 amounts to 5.7% of the stipulated $668 allotment. Assuming a family eats 90 meals a month and is unable to make individual meals cheaper, a cut of 5.7% would reduce the number of meals by only a bit more than five--5.13 to be exact.
The answer must lie in the somewhat cryptic phrase "individual meals." If a family meal for a four-person family constitutes four "individual meals," then the numbers work: 5.13 multiplied by 4 comes to 20.52, which rounds up to 21. But in that case the arbitrary standard of a "family of four" makes the cuts sound much more severe than they are. "Twenty-one individual meals per month" sounds a lot more severe than "slightly more than one meal a week."
Note too that these calculations assume that food-stamp recipients rely on the program to pay for all their food costs. That would appear to go against the spirit of SNAP. After all the S stands for "supplemental." 
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304073204579171762226617546
As someone who deals with food stamps and has seen the abuse, I really don't feel sorry for those who were cut.
Don't get me wrong, there are some, people,, but not that many people, who need food stamps.
But it frustrates me when some food stamp people pay for their steaks and shrimp and then, pay for their beer and hard liquor with the thick wad of cash they carry on them.
And these families can also get food from relatives, free lunch programs if they have kids, food banks, churches etc.
Based on the figures above, a family of 4 gets about $20 a day for food.  As someone who works and shops, that is more than enough for a family, especially if they have kids of school age and get free lunch.
Breakfast, you can have a couple of bowls of cereal and milk for about$1.50 each, total of $6.
For lunch, soup and a soda and free lunch for the kids- total of $5- max, leaving $11 for dinner.  That should cover 2 pounds of hamburger, hamburger helper or mixer, a gallon of milk and some vegetables along with a dessert.
So, boo hoo to the those who lost benefits, and if you don't like, go get a job or a job that pays more and stop living off the taxpayer.
Like the article says, S stands for supplemental, not your only source of food.