The government shutdown showcases food-stamp fraud and follies

The plight of 42 million food-stamp recipients is the federal-government shutdown’s most inflammatory issue. Federal judges ordered the Trump administration to pay food-stamp benefits regardless. Team Trump first offered to pay 50% of this month’s benefits, then raised its bid to 65% and now says it will pay 100% while appealing the court case.

Democrats and their media allies claim President Trump is “weaponizing hunger.” Full benefits will likely be paid in the coming weeks as Congress and Trump end their standoff.

Federal spending on food stamps — also known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) — has soared from $17 billion in 2000 to $100 billion last year. How did so many Americans come to rely on Washington for their next meal?

For the foreseeable future, millions of Americans will need government help to feed themselves. But tens of millions of other people have been swayed or bribed to accept handouts they did not absolutely need. Food-stamp enrollment exploded as a result of political propaganda, bureaucratic racketeering and a perpetual federal assault on self-reliance.

The feds paid states beginning in the mid-1970s to conduct door-to-door recruiting campaigns. Wisconsin distributed thousands of copies of a Food Stamp Nursery Rhyme Coloring Book, while Kentucky relied on a traveling puppet show to spur enrollment. A federally funded leaflet in Maryland showed a gaunt face with the question “Did you know some people would rather STARVE than seek HELP?” “PRIDE NEVER FILLS EMPTY STOMACHS,” it said inside. “Food Stamps should NOT be confused with CHARITY! In fact, food stamps are designed to help you help yourself.”

Propaganda campaigns became ever more histrionic. During the Obama administration, a North Carolina social-services agency won a United States Department of Agriculture “Hunger Champions Award” for attacking “mountain pride” as a reason not to accept government handouts. In Alabama, people received fliers proclaiming, “Be a patriot. Bring your food-stamp money home.” USDA urged states to conduct food-stamp parties with free food and bingo games to whip up enthusiasm for enrolling.

Federal regulations treated food-stamp dependency as a transcendent benefit for America. The Obama administration claimed, “Every $5 in SNAP benefits generates as much as $9 of economic activity.” Team Obama canceled the food-stamp work requirement, which speedily doubled the number of able-bodied recipients with no kids. The Biden administration did even more to discourage handout recipients from ever breaking a sweat.

Food-stamp enrollment also skyrocketed thanks to shameless scams. The Clinton administration launched the “food security survey,” which vastly exaggerated suffering and hunger (the Trump administration recently terminated that charade). Team Obama waived the asset tests for recipients, resulting in plenty of millionaires and lottery winners legally collecting food stamps as long as they had zero monthly income. The Biden administration jiggled eligibility rules so people with income twice as high as the poverty level could automatically qualify for food stamps.

Surveys have shown since the 1970s that low-income people who do not rely on food stamps have healthier diets than those who do. Harvard nutrition professor Walter Willett observed in 2015 that food-stamp recipients are “eating horrible food. It’s a diet designed to produce obesity and diabetes.” A 2017 survey found low-income people on food stamps were twice as likely to be obese as eligible non-recipients. 

President Biden permanently boosted food-stamp benefits by 23% in 2021 in part because so many food-stamp recipients were obese and needed extra food to provide “sufficient energy to support current weight status.” The Trump administration is authorizing a dozen states to stop the use of food stamps for sodas and other junk food, a reform Congress should make mandatory for all states.

Foul play has also bloated enrollment. USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins declared Sunday that SNAP is “a broken and corrupt program” and recent investigations have “already uncovered massive fraud.” Even though the USDA pays for food-stamp benefits, more than 20 states are refusing to disclose whether illegal immigrants are pocketing windfalls from the program.

Democrats are exploiting the food-stamp funding lapse to pressure Trump to approve more Obamacare subsidies for illegal aliens and other groups. But most SNAP recipients also receive benefits from other government programs, and many had leftover benefits on their EBT cards at the start of this month. Many states have launched programs to cover the food-stamp benefit shortfall among residents.

Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-Bronx/Yonkers) howled two years ago: “Cutting SNAP will lead to homelessness, incarceration and death for 38 million Americans.” That type of Democratic Party propaganda will always be popular with the media.

But the Trump administration is ignoring how its own policies and its tariffs are driving up the cost of living for Americans across the board. Restoring full food-stamp benefits will do nothing to aid average Americans who are gut-punched at the grocery checkout.

USDA Secretary Rollins says the funding standoff’s “silver lining” is “we’re having a national conversation on our SNAP program.” Regardless of how the impasse ends, food stamps must be radically reformed to exclude non-needy recipients and end the federal junk-food entitlement.

James Bovard is the author of 11 books, including “Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty.”