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Even though November’s unemployment rate showed a slight drop from 9 percent to 8.6 percent, the number of Americans resorting to government food stamps to survive has sky rocketed. Data current through September 2011 showed that one in seven Americans now uses food stamps, participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. That is equivalent to 46 million Americans getting a little under $5 a day from the government to feed themselves if they cannot afford to buy their own food. The stark statistics were recently tragically personified in 38 year old Rachelle Grimmer, a Texas mother, who shot herself after repeatedly being denied assistance. Her two children aged 10 and 12 also died as a result of injuries sustained during a 7 hour showdown in a Laredo Texas food stamp office. A new report on poverty by the Council on Contemporary Families concluded, “Poverty in the U.S. grew substantially more common during the last decade, with hardships increasing for millions of people and their families, especially with regard to food, medical care and housing. And the Great Recession at the end of the 2000s – with high unemployment and housing foreclosures – increased the level of insecurity for millions of people who were not living below the poverty line.” Amazingly, instead of strengthening government assistance to the millions of struggling American families, the Obama Administration is using government resources to crack down on “food stamp fraud,” introducing stiff penalties for the trafficking of benefits.

GUEST: Doug Henwood, author of “After the New Economy,” and editor of “Left Business Observer,” host of a Pacifica weekly program called Behind the News