Democratic State Assemblyman Mark Leno is hungry. He’s trying to live on the national average food stamp budget of about three dollars a day.  When purchasing his groceries for the week Leno says he lucked out and hit a sale: 

“So I bought two boxes of cereal at two dollars each, six cans of soup at two dollars each and a quart of milk for four dollars so I’ll have cereal morning and evening and the soup mid-day…”

Leno says he’s not sure he’ll make it through the week but says the exercise shows policymakers don’t have a clue as to the severity of hunger in society. 

Leno has a related measure that would lift the requirement for food stamp recipients to be fingerprinted. It was just approved in the state Assembly.