Food Stamp Spending and Caseload Are Declining, Report Says

The money spent on food stamps and the number of people who receive them are declining as the economy has improved, according to a report released Wednesday, even as the program remains a source of contention in congressional negotiations to complete a five-year farm bill.

The report, by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington research group, said that spending and the program’s caseload leveled off in 2011 and 2012 and had remained essentially flat for the past year.

The center said the number of people on food stamps, formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, was declining month to month in about half the states and increasing incrementally in the other half. About a third of the states had fewer people participating in the food stamp program in August, the most recent month for which there is available data, than a year earlier, the group said.

The program is under fire in the Republican-led House, where a proposed bill would cut food stamps by nearly $40 billion over 10 years. A Senate bill would decrease spending by $4 billion over 10 years. Republicans lawmakers have said the program, which costs about $78 billion a year, has grown out of control.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said Utah and North Dakota had the biggest declines, about 6 percent.

Some of the caseload decline can be attributed to the fact that stimulus funding for the program, which had temporarily increased benefits, expired Nov. 1. That cut benefits by about 7 percent on average, for a total of about $5 billion, the center found.

The Congressional Budget Office expects that the number of food stamp recipients will fall by 2 to 5 percent each year over the next decade â€" from 47.7 million to 34.3 million by 2023 â€" if the economy continues to improve.

“Further large SNAP cuts, at a time when unemployment remains above 7 percent and the economy struggles to create enough jobs, would make life harder for tens of millions of Americans who are already struggling to put food on their tables each day,” Dorothy Rosenbaum, a senior policy analyst at the center, said in the report.

In an Attack Ad, an Alaskan Voter Is Really an Actress From Maryland

WASHINGTON - In a tough new advertisement from the Koch brothers-backed Americans for Prosperity, an unnamed woman looks directly into the camera and upbraids Senator Mark Begich, Democrat of Alaska.

“Senator Begich didn’t listen. How can I ever trust him again?” she asks in criticizing Senator Begich’s support for President Obama’s health care law. “It just isn’t fair. Alaska deserves better.”

But there is a slight problem with the commercial. The woman is not from Alaska. She is actually an actress who lives in Maryland. And to some, the elegant kitchen she is standing in, done in French country style with granite countertops, might seem out of place somewhere as rugged and frontierlike as Alaska.

The commercial, which was scheduled to start running on Wednesday, never explicitly claims that the woman is a real Alaskan voter. And actresses are used routinely in political commercials. But as far as Mr. Begich is concerned, it is an illegitimate attack from outsiders who have no business getting involved in Alaska politics.

“Today’s misleading ad from the Koch brothers is just more evidence that even billions of dollars can’t buy integrity,” said Rachel Barinbaum, a spokeswoman for Mr. Begich.

Aides to Mr. Begich, who is up for re-election next year and is expected to face a tough fight in a state where Mr. Obama lost handily in 2012, also took issue with the commercial’s claims, which attempt to tie the senator to the problems that millions of people are having in keeping their current health plans.

In a sign of how politically perilous the health care law’s problematic implementation has been, Mr. Begich’s office put out a fact sheet highlighting his support for a Senate plan that would allow people to maintain their current insurance through 2015. It also points to his impatience with the president’s claims that the problems are being addressed.

As for the actress, a woman named Connie Bowman who does voice-overs, commercials and print ads, she said she was just doing her job. “I’m just an actress,” she said Wednesday when reached by phone.