In keeping with its penchant for increasing government dependence, the Biden administration recently announced it has greenlit the largest-ever increase for Americans on the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), also known as food stamps.
Under the revised SNAP guidelines, the 42 million Americans on SNAP will receive a 25 percent monthly increase. This means the average SNAP recipient will now receive $157 per month in benefits.
According toTom Vilsack, secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, “I think the pandemic sort of shocked people out of the belief that this is a program that was for some others, somebody else, I would never be involved in the SNAP program. All the sudden we found families either in need of SNAP or in need of the food bank pantry system that never in a million years thought that they would be faced with that situation.”
Stacy Dean, deputy undersecretary for Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services, added, “Too many of our fellow Americans struggle to afford healthy meals. The revised plan is one step toward getting them the support they need to feed their families.”
Interestingly, the Biden administration implemented the monthly increase without Congress, under an arcane provision of the 2018 Farm Bill called the Thrifty Food Plan. As Dean describes it, “To set SNAP families up for success, we need a Thrifty Food Plan that supports current dietary guidance on a budget.”
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Put another way, the Biden administration has circumvented Congress again (like it did with the extension of the federal eviction moratorium), in order to placate the Democratic Party’s increasingly powerful far-left constituency.
In 2019, when then-President Trump announced he supported states’ seeking to implement work requirements for able-bodied SNAP beneficiaries without dependents, many on the left went apoplectic.
Shortly after the announcement, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) tweeted, “My family relied on food stamps (EBT) when my dad died at 48. I was a student. If this happened then, we might’ve just starved. Now, many people will.”
Of course, after the 2019 reform, AOC’s prediction of Americans starving in the streets never came to pass.
In fact, after the 2019 SNAP reforms, hundreds of thousands of previously unemployed Americans entered the workforce, thereby reducing the total number of Americans on SNAP.
The same thing also occurred in 1996, when then-President Bill Clinton signed the "Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act."
What’s more, according to several studies, Americans on SNAP tend to have higher obesity rates than those not on the program. Per a 2015 Health and Human Services report, “Participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) has been associated with obesity. SNAP is a means-tested entitlement program that provides financial assistance for food purchases to low-income households; it is the largest food assistance program in the United States, serving ~14% of all Americans. Given the high costs associated with obesity and the large reach of SNAP, it is important to understand the role that SNAP may play in obesity development among the poor.”
So, even as many on the left call for more money for those on SNAP, or else they will starve, the data show that those on SNAP (before the increase in benefits) already had higher obesity rates than those not on the program.
Moreover, despite calls from Biden administration officials that the increase in benefits is needed due to the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, that is simply not true.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are 10.1 million job openings in the United States.
As of now, the worst of the pandemic is behind us. Vaccines are widely available. Americans are returning to work, the economy is reopening, and jobs are aplenty.
Given all this, there is no justification for the Biden administration’s move to increase benefits for those on SNAP.
Yet, facts be damned, the Biden administration, with pressure from its far-left flank, has decided to increase SNAP benefits anyways.
This is par for the course when it comes to the Biden White House. From policies such as “free” college to “free” pre-K, the Biden team is all-in on substantially increasing the welfare state.
Ronald Reagan once said, “We should measure welfare’s success by how many people leave welfare, not by how many are added.”
Unfortunately, it seems as if that mentality, which was embraced by President Clinton just 25 years ago, is the antithesis of the modern-day Democratic Party.
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