Food Stamp Reform in 2018?

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is one of the costliest welfare programs at about $70 billion a year. Not only is it costly, but a large share of the benefits are not used as intended.

Recipients are supposed to use SNAP or food stamp benefits to “make healthy food choices” and “obtain a more nutritious diet.” But it turns out that about $15 billion of food stamp spending goes for junk food, such as candy and cola. Many recipients are not making the nutritious choices the government intends.

The Trump administration is expected to pursue welfare reforms next year, and trimming food stamp benefits is one priority. The Washington Post says that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)

is considering proposals to let states impose new restrictions on purchases of soda and candy and require SNAP candidates to apply in person, according to the Secretaries Innovation Group (SIG), which represents state social service secretaries from 20 Republican administrations. The agency is also considering a proposal to allow states to reduce payments to some groups of people, including undocumented immigrants' citizen children.

… In the past, the USDA has rejected requests from states to take some of the actions SIG has suggested, particularly limiting the types of foods that people can buy with food stamps.

… One of the more controversial proposals involves a recommendation that the USDA ban “harmful” foods, such as soda and candy, from being purchased with food stamps. SIG also proposes that the program allow the purchase of only specific, “approved” foods, similar to what the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program does.

“The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is intended to subsidize nutrition for needy families,” reads SIG's proposal, which was submitted to the USDA and Republican congressional leadership, and obtained by The Post. “However, too many recipients are utilizing their benefit to purchase items that are not only void of nutrition, they are damaging to their health.”

The article says “SNAP is America's largest anti-hunger program,” but the main food-related health problem for low-income households today is not hunger, but obesity. Americans with low incomes are more obese than people with high incomes, on average. In general, people with low incomes are not suffering from too little food, but from too much of the wrong kinds of food.

So ending SNAP’s subsidies for junk food would be a pro-nutrition way to cut demand for the program and reduce taxpayer costs. Federal reforms to allow states to restrict benefits would move in the right direction. If food stamps could be only used for items such as fruits and vegetables, it is possible that fewer people would use the program and costs would fall.

For more on federal food subsidies, see here.