By Alfred Lubrano
Inquirer Staff Writer

By Alfred Lubrano

Inquirer Staff Writer

The federal official in charge of the U.S. food stamp program said Thursday that Pennsylvania's plan to tie food-stamp benefits to people's assets will save the state nothing and create more problems than it solves.

Secreatary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, in Philadelphia to discuss President Obama's State of the Union message, said the asset test, "is not going to save the commonwealth a single dime," and would, in fact, cost the state money to implement.

In 1997, the federal government revamped our national welfare system.

Under the new rules, people were given better ways to get job training and chart a course off of welfare.

One of the most significant changes from AFDC to TANF, as the new program was called, allowed people to keep more assets; for example, own a car worth more than $1500.

It had become painfully clear over the previous decades that the kind of financial limits placed on families who needed assistance simply continued to suck them into the welfare system.

By Jesse Washington, AP National Writer

Some have advanced degrees and remember middle-class lives. Some work selling lingerie or building websites. They are white, black and Hispanic, young and old, homeowners and homeless. What they have in common: They're all on food stamps.

By Mary Elizabeth McCarthy

Imagine having to choose between buying food or paying medical expenses in order to maintain the meager savings you've put together for your own funerals.

Just this feeling of dread -- something that no senior citizen should have to experience -- washed over me last week when I read about the Corbett administration's proposed asset test for food stamps.

By Alan Butkovitz

The Daily News' Jan. 12 editorial was spot-on in exposing the fact that Gov. Tom Corbett's plan to reinstitute food-stamp asset tests will not only hurt thousands who are struggling to put food on the table, but the rest of the commonwealth as well.

Annette John-Hall, Inquirer Columnist

Oh, the irony of it all.

On Monday, I tried to get someone in Harrisburg to explain why, in the name of all that's fair and just, low-income Pennsylvanians who have managed to build up a modest savings are slated to have their food stamps - now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program - cut off.

When I called the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare, the office was closed - for the Martin Luther King holiday.

Say what?

By Alfred Lubrano, Inquirer Staff Writer

Pennsylvania's plan to make people's food-stamp eligibility contingent on the assets they own has drawn the ire of U.S. Rep. Robert Brady and union officials, who describe the proposal as ill-conceived and costly.

"It just doesn't make any sense to me," Brady, the Philadelphia Democrat, said in an interview Friday. "We're trying to figure out hunger, and this drops us back to square one. I don't think they really thought this through."

By Meteor Blades