Some 170,000 US veterans to be cut from food stamps

Some 170,000 U.S. veterans would no longer qualify for food stamps via a provision of a House of Representatives bill, a non-profit group says. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington said the House of Representatives' Republican version of the farm bill -- a five-year piece of legislation that funds nutrition and agriculture provisions -- would cut Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program funding for food stamps by nearly $40 billion over 10 years beginning next year. SNAP currently costs about $80 billion a year and provides food aid to about 47 million people, or 14 percent of all U.S. households. In any given month, a total of 900,000 veterans nationwide live in households that relied on SNAP to provide food for their families in 2011, military.com reported. Veterans, who served in the past decade have a higher unemployment rate -- about 10 percent versus the national unemployment rate of 7.3 for the country -- but about a quarter of veterans reported service-related disabilities in 2011, said the report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.