SNAP To It! Why Food Stamps Matter To All of Us—And Why They're Under Threat

23:40By 1980, one in 10 Americans was getting food stamps, and the USDA was spending more on food stamps than it was on agricultural programs. And then Reagan was elected, and he was not a fan of helping out poor people. He had all sorts of super offensive rhetoric about welfare queens, this idea that people were living large off government assistance. It's not that there wasn't any fraud, but this really wasn't widespread at all. So in the early 80s, the Reagan administration slashes social welfare spending, cuts the food stamp program, cuts other nutrition programs, cuts welfare. At the same time, you had the worst economic recession since the Great Depression.

24:17Meanwhile, once again, the problem of surpluses was hitting the headlines. In the 1977 Farm Bill, dairy farmers had been given particularly generous price supports with predictable results in terms of overproduction by the 80s. You have this massive amount of cheese being purchased and stored, and butter and dried milk being purchased and stored by the government to keep dairy prices stable. That led to Reagan wanting to give it all away. The government shipped millions and millions of pounds of cheese and butter all around the country, and nobody had the storage or the systems to hand it out.

24:50It was a total mess. At one point, people on government assistance got an entire five-pound block of American cheddar which became known as government cheese.

25:06This government cheese business was widely mocked. And to sort of rescue the whole thing, Congress ended up funding an entirely new program that would funnel dairy and other surpluses to states while also funneling money to a whole new kind of organization that could distribute that excess. And suddenly you had this organizational entity called a food bank that was going to be able to handle the commodity. These food banks were kind of new. They'd started to pop up in the late 70s and early 80s as a more organized way to try to feed people. So you have the surpluses back. It's just not in the same way.

25:39Suddenly it's being diverted to the food bank sector. Which also raises the question, why do people need food banks when we already have food stamps? We're going to come back to that. But first of all, we told you that food stamps are actually no longer technically called food stamps. So how did that happen? When Clinton was president, there was yet another battle over food stamps. Republicans pushed again to limit who could receive food stamps and increase how much they'd have to be working. These changes did end up getting incorporated into law, but in that law was another change, the move from the physical world to the digital one.

26:14And one of the provisions in there, we would move to EBT, electronic benefit transfer cards, debit cards essentially, to get rid of stamps. So that's why it was relabeled SNAP in 2008, because there was no stamps anymore. Lots of people still call SNAP benefits food stamps because it is the same program, just with a debit card and no paper stamps. But that can ruffle some feathers. Some people call it food stamps because it evokes negative images. You know, those who usually defend SNAP call it SNAP. But the change wasn't just a digital and a semantic one. It did make a material difference in the experience of the people who are using it.

26:48Under the old days, and I know people who had food stamps in the old days, you had to stand in line with your coupons and your cash, and you had to sort of pay cash for some things, and you had to use coupons for the other, and people are behind you looking at, oh, she's buying steak with her food stamps, that kind of shaming dimension that goes on in lines. And some big supermarkets would have separate food stamp lines, especially at the beginning of the month, where they would have a different cashier for those with food stamps. So you can imagine how people felt about that. But with the new EBT card, you just go into the store and use it like a credit card.

27:22Another unanticipated benefit is that some non-food stamp shoppers, the kind of people who might resent the idea that they as taxpayers are the ones paying for their neighbors to buy steak or shrimp or whatever else they feel like is too ritzy for poor people to eat, they can no longer see that someone is paying using EBT. So that actually helps reduce one trigger that used to set people against food stamps. Another benefit of the EBT cards was that they reduced fraud. There's never been a huge amount of fraud in the system, despite what the haters may say. But there was some in the past, and there's less now.

27:56It's just harder to cheat. The biggest source of cheating oftentimes is retailers. Back in the old days, retailers would sort of do deals with customers, or they'd steal the stamps. EBT cards reduce fraud. Today, like we said, SNAP is America's longest-running food assistance program. so on the level of pure, lasting power, it's definitely a success. But does it do what we want it to do? Does it actually reduce hunger and help Americans get out of poverty and eat a healthier diet? And could it do those things better? It's judgment time for Snap after this quick word from our sponsors. Don't let tax refund worries hold you back.

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29:39Members get more at Lowe's. Available in select zip codes only. Cancel anytime. Non-refundable fee. Product purchase required. Terms and service restrictions apply. Details at lowes.com slash terms. Subject to change. It's time to evaluate Snap. And so one big question is, do we still need Snap today? We're one of the richest countries in the world. But it turns out that about one in seven Americans are food insecure. About a third of those are kids. These are people who aren't sure they'll be able to buy enough groceries for their family each month. And SNAP does help. Yes. And that's unequivocal.

30:08I mean, there's every bit of evidence is that, if nothing else, SNAP reduces food insecurity. It enables households to buy more food. All the studies that we've seen indicate that. But that said, Chris says SNAP doesn't actually solve the problem of hunger and food insecurity in America. For a variety of reasons, it often isn't enough by itself. SNAP benefits often don't last through the whole month, especially for families with teenage kids, because SNAP benefits don't take into account the age of the children, just numbers of people in a household. And everyone who's not in the federal government is perfectly aware that teens eat slightly more than toddlers do.

30:48Also, SNAP benefits are based on something called a thrifty meal plan. It's the idea that you'll be cooking things like beans and bulk rice. It averages out at not much more than$3 per person per meal. So it really relies on home cooking and bulk shopping. It's not possible for everyone. So even with SNAP, roughly 50%, there's some estimates of 50 % of SNAP households end up going to food pantries at the end of the month. Which is why we still have that whole food bank system Chris talked about, where the government funds food banks through what they originally, 40-something years ago, called the Temporary Emergency Food Assistance Program, but eventually gave up and just took off the temporary.

31:26So SNAP does reduce food insecurity, though it doesn't get rid of the problem of hunger entirely. But then, so how about nutrition and general well-being? Do people who use SNAP eat food that's overall better for them than poor people who don't have access to it? Chris says yes. The higher SNAP benefits, the more the people can afford better quality, fresher and more nutritious food. We know that. Economists have proven that time and again. If you have more income, you buy better quality food, better quality proteins, more fruits and vegetables. One wrinkle is that while receiving SNAP benefits tends to lead to a healthier diet overall, Chris told us it is super tricky to assess whether SNAP positively affects people's health.

32:07Because SNAP enrollees tend to be poor, they tend to have worse health to start off with because of a whole list of reasons. Poor people are typically more exposed to environmental toxins, they have less access to quality health care, they have more chronic stress, etc. SNAP can't deal with all that. The only thing SNAP can do is give people money for food, and as Chris keeps saying, that has been shown to help them buy more, better, and healthier food options. But that doesn't stop some politicians and activists from wanting to put restrictions on what SNAP users can buy to force them away from sugary sodas and Doritos and toward healthier options.

32:42There's a new effort to do that right now. The Trump administration has allowed states to put these kinds of restrictions in place for the first time. It is being called a major win for the Maha movement. More states removing junk food from SNAP programs, that's food stamps, prioritizing real nutrition over processed snacks, sugary drinks. That brings the total to 12 states, so one dozen so far, all restricting SNAP purchases of unhealthy foods, beverages, under the new USDA waivers. Honestly, before we talked to Chris, that sounded kind of logical to us. But Chris said there's no data that these restrictions encourage people to choose healthier options.

33:25I've seen no evidence so far that restricting people on what they can use their SNAP benefits on will work. For one thing, I'll be blunt, if you want to buy your kids a two-liter bottle of, say, Coca-Cola. Which is available at the low, low price of$3. thanks in part to the highly subsidized high fructose corn syrup that is its main ingredient. And$3 is not a huge amount, even for folks who qualify for SNAP. So if you can't use your SNAP dollars for it, you'll use other money for it. So I don't think it'll have the intended impacts. Also, it's kind of a bureaucratic nightmare. Who is the person who's going to decide what's healthy and what's not?

34:05Something might be called a granola bar, but it actually might be little better than a candy bar. Who makes that decision? The food companies? Basically, limiting SNAP benefits sounds good in theory, but is unlikely to make a difference. What does work is carrots, literally in the form of incentives to buy fresh fruit and vegetables. A lot of states have what we call healthy incentives programs, where if you get SNAP dollars, maybe the state will kick in another$10 a month that you can use at the local farmer's market to buy fresh produce. Those work. So do higher benefits. The point is, if you give people more money, however you do it, they use it, again, to buy better, more and better food.

34:45Okay, so then what about overall poverty? Does SNAP help reduce it? Yes, actually. The studies I've seen say that SNAP, if nothing else, reduces poverty because, again, it's an income supplement. We target it toward food, but at the end of the day, it's an income supplement. And money of my own that I'm not having to spend on food, I can use for other purposes. Researchers have found that SNAP is particularly good at reducing extreme poverty and also poverty in families with children, and kids in households that receive SNAP benefits are likelier to graduate high school, have better health, and become economically self-sufficient than kids in low-income households that qualify for but are not enrolled in SNAP.

35:24Making SNAP available to newly released prisoners even reduces their rate of reoffending. It's also more effective as an anti-poverty program than a lot of our other anti-poverty programs, like, say, the child tax credit, because you don't have to be a parent or disabled or a veteran or whatever. You just have to need it. And it doesn't disappear once you go over a certain threshold like others do. It's graduated. You just get less of it when you don't need as much. If you make more money, you get fewer SNAP benefits, but you don't get cut off at the knees automatically. And also, moving people out of poverty, as SNAP does, it helps everyone.

35:58It turns out that each dollar of SNAP is money that's spent locally and generates even more economic activity. Throughout SNAP's history, conservatives have worried that even if SNAP reduces poverty and hunger, it's still kind of morally questionable because it incentivizes people not to work so as not to lose their free food. This is Reagan's whole welfare queen shtick. And as we told you, there are work requirements built into SNAP as a result. But Chris says that's actually counterproductive. A lot of those folks have other things going on. Mental illness, addiction. They have educational deficiencies.

36:35They have other kinds of deficiencies. And so it's not quite clear that these people have an easy time holding a job, period. Now, again, there's a fair percentage of SNAP households and people already are working. So it's not going to incentivize those folks anymore because they're already working. They just don't make enough money. But that hasn't stopped the people who want to make sure anyone who's getting assistance is working hard for it. The Trump administration's most recent bill made work requirements even more strict. And so, frankly, more people are going to go hungry. 42 million Americans participate in SNAP.

37:06But Rollins says 800 ,000 have moved off food stamps in part because of the administration's expansion of work requirements. That could sound like a saving, but Chris says in reality, it just means pain. Not just in terms of more hungry people, but also they're a pain for the states to implement. A lot of states would rather not do them. They require a lot of bureaucracy. And so, frankly, a lot of states would rather not be burdened by doing work requirements because there's no evidence or very little evidence that they actually incentivize work. But they are a pain to administer. The point here is not that states are lazy and don't want to do this.

37:43It's that the bureaucracy of making sure SNAP recipients are fulfilling their work requirements costs money, often as much if not more money as the state might save by kicking people off SNAP who are not fulfilling the requirements. And all those people being moved off SNAP, it's not like they suddenly can afford all the food they need. They're totally fine. They're not. And the food bank system does not have enough food or infrastructure to take the place of SNAP. So frankly, more people are going to go hungry. These initiatives aside, Chris says, in general, SNAP is still doing what it's supposed to do, reducing hunger while boosting nutrition and also reducing poverty while not encouraging people to laze around.

38:23But it's not the only tool that exists to achieve those goals. So would other things work better? The president wants to put government-issued food in boxes and have it delivered to the people directly. Now, they compare it to Blue Apron, that food delivery service for young professionals, young millennials. It ain't that. This is prepackaged food. It is canned meat. It is shelf-stable milk. It is that kind of stuff that then would be delivered. In a move that sounded suspiciously like the original boxes of 30 pounds of citrus or 4 pounds of prunes, Trump officials in his first time in office suggested that instead of Snap, people in need would be sent a so-called harvest box.

39:07We've already seen why this doesn't work. It was widely ridiculed among everybody as impractical, convoluted, and robbed people of choice. Retailers also hated the box concept because, just like before in the days of four pounds of prunes, it would have bypassed them. And one thing to know about Snap is it is actually a huge benefit to retailers in the food industry in general. Big food companies like Kraft and PepsiCo and retailers like Walmart and Target, they benefit from and process tens of billions of dollars worth of snap money every year, which is a decent chunk of their annual revenue.

39:42What's interesting about a lot of these major companies is that they don't just benefit from processing snap. Also, they pay such a low wage, minimum wage, and they lobby for a low minimum wage that a lot of their workers are on snap assistance. In fact, Walmart and McDonald's are among the top companies in terms of workers who rely on Snap. We are subsidizing that for them. Yeah, I mean, the critique is, of course, that it enables retailers in particular, people in the food system in particular, to have low wages. One of the charges, Leavitt, is that Snap is a big subsidy for Walmart, for example.

40:16The entire food system is dependent, in many respects, on cheap labor. And cheap labor can only happen, you know, in many respects, if you provide Snap. or other supports. Sort of perverse in that sense. So if we're looking at other options instead of SNAP, it seems like we could definitely spend a lot less on SNAP as a nation if we raised the minimum wage to a living wage. Would that work? Chris says yes, but... So everybody says the higher minimum wages will be the higher prices. That's probably true. Again, we're subsidizing low prices already through the tax system and through the welfare system.

40:52I mean, in some respects, we already are paying the price just differently. So, you know, if we were paying a higher price for foods, the argument goes because of higher cost of labor, it'd be a more honest way of actually how we approach food. Neither Chris nor I are optimistic enough to think that we're going to achieve that kind of honesty in our relationship with food in America anytime soon, sadly. So yeah, we can dream and also vote for politicians who support a higher minimum wage. But food costs wouldn't necessarily soar with a higher minimum wage. These companies like Walmart that pay their workers so little that the workers need federal assistance, they often have executives that make kind of insane amounts of money.

41:35They could just pay some of that to their workers a salary and they'd barely notice. Also, we could afford to help out people who can't work with programs like SNAP if those companies and their owners paid their fair share of taxes. Well, OK, I'll go there. That, you know, again, I mean, if we just revoked all the tax cuts given under the last three Republican presidents, we wouldn't have this discussion. And renewed last year, a trillion dollar tax cut for billionaires on the backs of poor people. It's not very scholarly of me, but as a citizen, I think it's unconscionable. I mean, we could easily pay for this, but it would force us to actually confront the fact that we're just giving away massive amounts of money to rich people who don't really have anything to do with it.

42:18It's not like they're going to buy more food. I mean, how many yachts can Bezos have? While we're heading out to the barricades here, let's just go all the way and ask, why not just give poor people cash rather than an EBT card they can only use on food? That famously liberal president, Richard Nixon, even thought this was a great idea back in the 1970s. It was actually a fair number of moderate Republicans and others in the early 70s who thought, wait a minute, why don't we redo the tax system so that people are given a guaranteed minimum income through the tax system instead of this sort of the convoluted system of welfare?

42:54Let's simplify things and use the tax system in a way that people are guaranteed a minimum income. And so there was serious effort behind this, but it got derailed for a lot of reasons. We've pointed this out before, but the primary reason is that we, not us personally, but we as a country, we don't have a lot of faith that poor people can make good decisions. We don't trust poor people to spend their money wisely. So we, you know, we make everything, again, a voucher or a tax credit. This is not very smart of us, because every single study that has been done on cash assistance, or what is often called UBI or universal basic income these days, every single study has found that it is the single most efficient and effective way to help poor people.

43:39And in fact, no other country does what we do, this weird food assistance thing rather than cash. Other countries that have welfare programs do cash assistance for poor people. It might be tax credits, but it's still money. Not like you have to use this to buy food. And poverty rates and inequality are lower there. So theoretically, we should replace SNAP with cash. Well, economists would think so. I mean, cash is the easiest thing to do at all. But that's going to be highly unlikely for a while. I don't see us anytime soon in this country expanding cash assistance. I just don't see it ideologically or politically happening.

44:16It's this odd compromise we've had to make in America. Giving people cash in the form of food benefits means that fewer people are against it. In a country where people are famously against welfare, at least in the abstract sense, they also don't want to see their fellow Americans go hungry. In fact, when you quiz people, when there's public opinion polls, and you ask people, well, what do you think about welfare in some abstract sense? Everybody's against it. But if you ask them about more support for specific kinds of programs, like, you know, nutrition support, people are for it. So people programmatically are supporting SNAP because it's about food.

44:50This weird logic where a weakness of SNAP, that it's less efficient than cash, is actually a strength because it means more people support it? That's one of the main insights of Chris's new book, Why SNAP Works. SNAP works because it doesn't 100 % make sense. Another big strength of SNAP is another thing that really made no sense to either of us until we read this book. SNAP is part of the Farm Bill, and it comes under the authority of the Department of Agriculture. Other than SNAP, the Farm Bill is mostly subsidies for corn, soybeans, wheat, rice, dairy, and sugar, with some crop insurance, conservation programs, loans, and research in there too.

45:25Helping hungry people and helping farmers, those two things were connected in the original food stamp program, but they haven't been for decades. So it seems weird to keep SNAP in the farm bill, but Chris says this is why it's still around. It comes down to political horse trading. The farmers need SNAP because it gives politicians from states with big commodity farms something to negotiate over to make sure politicians who don't have commodity farmers among their constituents still support all the subsidies and so on. Those who are promoting agricultural programs are a smaller and smaller group.

45:58So they recognize that they have a sort of, hostage taking. They're going to leverage support for food stamps in return for liberals' support for commodity programs. Though we should point out that there are a lot of SNAP recipients in rural areas as well, so politicians in those more rural states should also support SNAP. But in any case, if you separated out SNAP from the farm bill, the farmers would lose. Nice commodity program you have there. Too bad about it. Why would I vote for that? Why would I support something that's essentially welfare for affluent farmers? That's the way it'll be seen.

46:33So if I'm the ag sector folks, I'd be very careful about what I wish for, because this can come back to haunt you. But also, if you separated out SNAP from the farm bill, SNAP would lose. Chris says that even though it's a tiny chunk of the federal budget, way, way less than what we spend on, for example, defense or servicing the national debt, or for that matter, social security, it would be vulnerable out there on its own. It'd be too easy to sort of go at it as welfare. Whereas if it's sort of shielded within the farm bill to some extent, it becomes, you can bargain. And so call me a bit skeptical about calls to move SNAP out of the USDA and out of the Agricultural Act because, and I've said this to people who are nutrition folks who think it'd be better off on its own, I say, not in terms of the real politics.

47:21I think in real politics terms, you want all the friends you can get. So basically, even with all its challenges, Chris says that SNAP works. It's kind of the best we can do with our current political situation. Chris says what would make SNAP better would be to just make it easier to qualify for it. From my perspective, you want to enable everybody who is eligible, technically eligible because of income, to get their benefits. But we throw up a lot of hurdles. I think under the recently enacted One Big Beautiful Bill Act, they've made it harder. We're going to force states to actually pay more in administrative costs.

47:55We're going to force states to pay a portion of the benefits for the first time in history. These are all bad things. From my perspective, SNAP works. So I think you want to make it as easy as possible for those who are eligible to apply for their benefits and get their benefits. Period. End of discussion.

48:14Thanks this episode to Chris Bosso. His new book is called Why Snap Works, and we have a link to it on our website, gastropod.com. Thanks also to our fantastic producer, Claudia Geib. We'll be back in a couple of weeks with a brand new episode. Till then. Spring just slid into your DMs. Grab that boho look for that rooftop dinner, those sandals that can keep up with you, and hang some string lights to give your patio a glow up. Spring's calling. Ross, work your magic.