Some sobering statistics to consider

• According to NELP real wages fall across the board by 2.8 percent between 2009 and 2012 and real wages for five of the top 10 lower-wage jobs (restaurant cooks, food prep workers, home health aides, personal care aides and housekeepers) fell by more than 5 percent during that period and 58 percent of all recovery growth being in low-paying jobs.
• In 1968, minimum wage was $10.71. Since then, it has decreased by 32 percent, resulting in millions of Americans working full-time hours and yet being unable to feed their families without assistance. Escaping poverty became, and is, a struggle. Of course, that isn’t true — the minimum wage in 1968 wasn’t $10.71. It was $1.60. However, $1.60 doesn’t have as much buying power as it used to, and when adjusted for inflation (as of today, June 29, 2013), that number is $10.71. Minimum wage was designed to increase with inflation. It has not done so.
• According to the USDA, in 2011, 14.9 percent of Americans (roughly 50 million individuals) had difficulty securing food "meaning that the food intake of one or more household members was reduced and their eating patterns were disrupted at times during the year because the household lacked money and other resources for food."
• Global food prices continue to rise, "Continuing a decade-long increase, global food prices rose 2.7 percent in 2012,,," devaluing SNAP benefits by 7%.
• According to the Center on Budget and Policy Prioritiesr SNAP provides estimated 22 million children a nutritionally adequate diet; 47% of all SNAP recipients are children.

Currently welfare as a whole falls under the 1996 reform law signed by President Clinton, though controlled by individual states, the federal government provides some of the funding through Temporary Assistance For Needy Families (TANF). TANF grants to states require that all welfare recipients must find work within two years of first receiving benefits. This includes single parents, who are required to work at least 30 hours per week. Two-parent families are required to work 35 to 50 hours per week. Failure to obtain work could result in loss of benefits.

Despite this, the House Republicans have introduced a bill that would cut $40 billion from SNAP over 10 years. Their reasoning, SNAP has been taken advantage of by people who aren't willing to work hard enough. For a bit of perspective, in 2012, our total underlying cost for SNAP $65 billion. But yet we spent $689 billion on the Department of Defense.

What's even more troubling, many co-called conservatives are jumping on a recent study by the CATO Institute which has concluded that welfare provides too high a level of benefits: "Welfare currently pays more than a minimum wage job in 35 states, even after accounting for the Earned Income Tax Credit, and in 13 states it pays more than $15 per hour.,,,[m]oreover, states should consider ways to shrink the gap between the value of welfare and work by reducing current benefit levels and tightening eligibility requirements."

So instead of taking that as a sign that minimum wage has stagnated and is too low, they are intent on slashing much needed help for the unemployed and underemployed. Also not being taken into consideration by conservatives and pundits (Faux News):

They [Michael Tanner and Charles Hughes at the CATO Institute] also acknowledge the central flaw in their conclusion: in real life the “typical” family in their study doesn’t come close to receiving the maximum benefit from every single program for which they’re eligible. But here the authors’ caveat doesn’t go far enough. Due largely to the fact that eligibility requirements have already become harder to overcome, these programs are helping fewer poor families get by. In 2009, around three out of four poor families with kids weren’t getting any TANF benefits. At the height of the economic crash, about 25 percent of those eligible for food stamps weren’t receiving them; during better times, that number hovers around 40 percent. And as the CATO study concedes, six out of seven poor families aren’t getting housing assistance.

So a study that claims to tell us about the “typical” poor family is really describing a rarity — the equivalent of a four-leaf clover. But the purpose of these studies isn’t to inform good policymaking. They feed a narrative that the poor are lazy and undeserving, and provide wonky cover for further weakening our social safety net. When studies like this one are picked up by the conservative media, all of the authors’ caveats tend to be stripped away, and they become straightforward claims that poor families sit back enjoying a good life, forcing overburdened tax-payers to pick up the tab. [Emphasis mine]

What I don't understand, how is the economic downturn we are trying to overcome now any different than what occurred in the 1930's? Why was it proper for the US government to intercede then but not now? Our country, our government, has a long history of helping the unemployed and underemployed dating back to the 1860s with the Civil War Pension Program; further still if you consider the colonies imported the British Poor Laws. Why are people making less money than when I was four years old?