Food Stamps

The new summer EBT program will give an extra $120 to eligible school-age kids. But, families in Missouri and Kansas probably won’t get the money until late summer or fall.

The program would provide $40 in food benefits for each month an eligible child is on summer break, loaded onto a card that can be used like a debit card to purchase groceries. Missouri's decision is nonbinding, and the state now has until Feb. 15 to submit a detailed plan to the federal government.

Roughly 429,000 Missouri children would be eligible to receive $51.5 million in food benefits next summer if the state chooses to participate in the federal program.

Over a year after a lawsuit alleged the state’s ‘dysfunctional’ SNAP call center violates federal law, low-income Missourians still face automatic disconnections and wait times of around an hour.

Officials previously said the summer emergency food benefits program would be dispersed by the end of the year. Achieving that goal looks increasingly unlikely.

The Supplemental Nutrition Education Program (SNAP-Ed) is funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and helps SNAP recipients learn how to eat healthy food on a budget. Its employees complain of wages so low that they themselves qualify for SNAP.

Difficulty scheduling interviews contributes to a high rejection rate of SNAP applicants, the lawsuit alleges. In September, October, and December of 2021, over half of SNAP applications rejected were due to failure to complete an interview, according to the lawsuit.

A bill in the Missouri House to expand the sales tax exemption so that includes food purchased with food stamps became a bill virtually ending the exemption., making it a $416 million tax increase.

Legal advocates are going to court to seek benefits for Missourians who they say are being illegally shut out by a protracted application process.

A new report from the USDA shows benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps, have a bigger impact on rural economies.