Back in April, social service spending advocates in Oregon orchestrated the “Food Stamp Challenge,” claiming that the average program recipient’s benefits of $21 per week were woefully inadequate. Those who took the Food Stamp Challenge attempted to show just how unacceptable this average benefit was by buying $21 worth of food and trying to survive on it for seven days.

The entire premise of the Challenge was bogus from the very beginning, as syndicated columnist Mona Charen and yours truly demonstrated. This table, based on information readily available at the Department of Agriculture, shows what the real benefit levels are, before taking into account any resources (income, etc.) a person or family would be expected to have, based on their actual circumstances, to pay for food themselves (i.e., the average benefit is $21 per person week, AFTER taking those resources into account):

Program advocates should have been trying to live on the higher amounts listed above, depending on their family size. But they didn’t, pretending that the benefit received is all recipients have available to buy food.

Buoyed by the visibility provided when Oregon’s governor participated, the Challenge turned into a nationwide phenomenon, with politicians and journalists all over the country getting in on the act. Time and again, gullible Old Media outlets, including the Associated Press, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, disseminated the myth that the average Food Stamp recipient only has $21 per person per week with which to buy food.

Colorado residents Ari Armstrong and his wife Jennifer could have refuted the Food Stamp Challenge by staying within $284 per month, or $32.68 per person per week. Instead, they went much further.

Originally, Mr. Armstrong’s Serious Food Economy Challenge called out Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News journalists and editorialists (who for some reason chose $3.57 per person per day, and still pronounced that guideline unachievable), to “bet” against the couple’s ability to live on less than $1,080 in food for six months. Losers of the “bet” would have been required to give an amount equivalent to the money not spent by the Armstrongs to charity. Armstrong reports that “all but two supporters of food-stamp increases refused to sponsor our six-month challenge.”

So they went to Plan B. The Armstrongs promised, in their Liberty and Prosperity Challenge, that during the entire month of August they would spend $180 or less on food, or slightly under $3 per person per day. The rules they imposed on themselves to keep critics at bay included starting with an empty cupboard, shopping at traditional grocery outlets (no Wal-Marts, and no clubs like Costco), and taking no freebies from anyone.

The overall result, chronicled in detail (including copies of receipts, pictures of food purchased, etc.) at Armstrong’s Colorado Freedom Report: The couple spent $159.04, had a modest supply of leftovers (meaning they consumed a bit less than $159), lost very little weight, and lived to tell about it. Rounded, the amount they spent was $21 less than the $180 benchmark they had set for themselves, and a whopping $125 (44%) less than the Food Stamp program’s gross monthly benefit of $284 for a 2-person family. Reading through the detail, you will find that Mr. Armstrong even acknowledges having made some mistakes during the month that caused the couple to spend a bit more money than necessary.

Other takeaways from the Armstrongs’ Liberty and Prosperity Challenge:

• Their money-saving efforts, while aggressive, were not in any way, shape, or form over-the-top.
• Most of us could pick up a money-saving tip or two by reading through what they did and how they did it.
• It is not unreasonable, and certainly not an assault on anyone’s dignity, to expect Food Stamp recipients to take similar measures.

Remember, as long as the benefit formulas are fair (I have not seen any of the original Food Stamp Challenge participants attempt to dispute the reasonableness of the benefit formulas), a 2-person family actually has $104, or 58% more than the Armstrongs allowed themselves ($284 minus $180 = $104; $104 divided by $180 = 58%), and $125, or 79% more than they actually spent ($284 minus $159 = $125; $125 divided by $159 = 79%), to buy a month’s worth of food.

Armstrong reported to me a few days ago that Old Media in Colorado, after putting up such a fuss over the alleged inadequacy of Food Stamp benefits earlier this year, has expressed no interest in chronicling the couple’s accomplishment and its all-too-obvious public-policy implications.

Surely you’re not surprised. Nevertheless, the Armstrongs have performed a valuable service whose results should be referenced when needed. It is the definitive rebuttal to mindless and insulting allegations by some that anyone who has the nerve to suggest that current benefit levels are actually adequate must “hate poor people.”

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Here are the numbers (The August Monthly Treasury Statement is here; July’s results were covered at this post):

At first, this looks like a disaster. Receipts in August 2007 were up a nice 8.2% over August 2006, but spending was up a whopping 30% ($65 billion) in the same comparative period. August 2007’s spending was also $77 billion higher than July’s.

But a closer look shows there’s less to worry about than meets the eye. That’s because $57 billion of the $77 billion July-August difference occurred in Social Security ($35 billion) and the Department of Health and Human Services ($22 billion). Those two big differences happened mostly, if not entirely, because September benefit and vendor payments were electronically transferred or mailed on August 31 instead of on the first business day of September. This would have been done to ensure that beneficiaries and vendors got their money on September 4, the first business day after Labor Day.

One example: The August 31, 2007 Daily Treasury Statement shows $21.2 billion in Social Security Electronic Funds Transfers, while July 31, 2007 shows just $16 million; the big SocSec EFTs took place on August 3. Another: Vendor payments relating to Medicare were $10 billion higher on August 31 than they were on July 31. There are surely more examples I could not as easily find.

What this means is that September’s disbursements should quite a bit lower than the average so far through 11 months. I don’t expect the same last-day disbursement wave at the end of September, because it didn’t take place at the end of fiscal 2006, when the last business day was September 29. For example, Social Security EFTs were zero on September 29, 2006, $325 million on October 2, and $21.1 billion on October 3. This year’s last business day will be September 28. Since a big year-end rush of benefit and other payments didn’t happen last year, there’s less reason for it to happen this year.

Given all of this, I’m going to go out onto what appears to be a limb and predict that the final deficit for the year will still come in below $150 billion. Specifically:

• September’s receipts should be about $315 billion, about 11% higher than last year’s $283 billion, because of high estimated payments that will pour in after the September 17 due date.
• September’s outlays will be about $185 billion, because so much doubling-up took place in Social Security and HHS in August.
• September’s surplus will be about $130 billion ($315 - $185).
• Fiscal 2007’s deficit will be about $144 billion (the $274 billion deficit through the end of August less September’s $130 billion surplus). That will be over 40% lower than the fiscal 2006 deficit of $247 billion, and 55% lower than fiscal 2005’s $318 billion.

Wild cards that remain:

• Will the estimated tax money pour in like it did in April?
• Will federal bureaucrats engage in a last-minute spending spree to use up any remaining unspent amounts in their departmental budgets?
• Will someone get “clever” and try to get October’s Social Security benefits and other payments into September, effectively squeezing 13 months of spending into 12?

I hope new Budget Director Jim Nussle is paying attention.

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UPDATE: The AP’s Martin Crutsinger reports that “$44 billion in Social Security and Medicare payments that normally would have been made in September to be shifted into August.” I think the number is bigger, but this howler from Crutsinger can’t be allowed to stand:

While forecasts had projected that government surpluses would total $5.6 trillion over the next decade, the 2001 recession, spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the president’s first-term tax cuts all combined to wipe out those surpluses.

That report was issued by the Congressional Budget Office in January 2001, as the dot-com bubble was bursting, the economy was slowing, and, not coincidentally, as administrations were changing. Nobody should have believed the surplus nonsense when it was released, and it’s disingenuous to pretend now that it ever had any credibility.

From Baker County, Oregon:

Story Published: Sep 6, 2007 at 4:34 PM PDT
Story Updated: Sep 7, 2007 at 12:56 PM PDT

A woman missing in the remote Eastern Oregon wilderness since August 24 has been found alive.

Doris Anderson, 76, was reportedly located in a steep canyon in Baker County with a hip injury. She was reportedly found about 2 p.m.

Rescuers report she was found conscious and alert. She was taken to a Baker City hospital by helicopter once out of the canyon.

According to a press release from the Baker County Sheriff’s Office, Anderson was found by a Baker County Sheriff’s Deputy and an Oregon State Police trooper. They located the missing woman alive in extremely rough terrain deep in a canyon near Bennett Creek.

The two lawmen had continued looking for the woman long after most search efforts had been ended. When first reported missing, over 70 people were looking for the lost woman.

Family members were elated at the news. Anderson’s sister-in-law told KATU News that she had a constant vision of Doris alive in a canyon. She said she had not given up hope.

Her brother-in-law said he did not think Anderson knew any special survival skills. Overnight temperatures in the area where she was found have been in the 30s.

A memorial for Anderson had been planned for this coming weekend.

Go here for the rest of the story.