Reply #26: Food stamp program history

[ultraist]

excerpts:

http://www.fns.usda.gov/fsp/rules/Legislation/history.htm

The First Food Stamp Program (FSP) - May 16, 1939-Spring 1943

The idea for the first FSP has been credited to various people, most notably Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace and the program's first Administrator Milo Perkins. The program operated by permitting people on relief to buy orange stamps equal to their normal food expenditures; for every $1 worth of orange stamps purchased, 50 cents worth of blue stamps were received. Orange stamps could be used to buy any food; blue stamps could only be used to buy food determined by the Department to be surplus.

Pilot Food Stamp Program - May 29, 1961-1964

President Kennedy's first Executive Order called for expanded food distribution and, on Feb. 2, 1961, he announced that food stamp pilot programs would be initiated.

Food Stamp Act of 1964 - August 31, 1964

On Jan. 31, 1964, President Johnson requested Congress to pass legislation making the FSP permanent. Secretary Orville Freeman submitted proposed legislation to establish a permanent FSP on April 17, 1964

WALLACE, Henry Agard, a Vice President of the United States; born on a farm near Orient, Adair County, Iowa, October 7, 1888; attended the public schools; graduated from Iowa State College at Ames in 1910; served on the editorial staff of Wallace’s Farmer, Des Moines, Iowa, 1910-1924 and was editor 1924-1929; experimented with breeding high-yielding strains of corn 1913-1933; in 1915 devised the first corn-hog ratio charts indicating probable course of markets; author of many publications on agriculture; appointed Secretary of Agriculture in the Cabinet of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 and served until September 1940, when he resigned, having been nominated for Vice President; elected in November 1940 as Vice President of the United States on the Democratic ticket with President Franklin D. Roosevelt and was inaugurated January 20, 1941, for the term ending January 20, 1945; unsuccessful candidate for renomination in 1944; appointed Secretary of Commerce and served from March 1945 to September 1946; unsuccessful Progressive candidate for election as President of the United States in 1948; resumed his farming interests