Trump Thread

[Montmorency]

To get it out of the way, it seems like the administration is claiming 'lol I troll you' wrt the proposal, just the standard desire to eliminate the welfare program entirely.

Instead, the idea, according to two administration officials who worked on the proposal, was a political gambit by fiscal hawks in the administration aimed at outraging liberals and stirring up members of the president’s own party working on the latest version of the farm bill. The move, they said, was intended to lay down a marker that the administration is serious about pressing for about $85 billion in other cuts to food assistance programs that will be achieved, in part, by imposing strict new work requirements on recipients.

Now let's clarify what SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) is.

https://www.cbpp.org/research/policy...e-program-snap

SNAP provides important nutritional support for low-wage working families, low-income seniors, and people with disabilities living on fixed incomes. Close to 70 percent of SNAP participants are in families with children; nearly a third are in households with seniors or people with disabilities. After unemployment insurance, it is the most responsive federal program providing additional assistance during economic downturns.

The federal government pays the full cost of SNAP benefits and splits the cost of administering the program with the states, which operate the program.

You get a debit card with the prescribed monthly balance and you head to most (eligible) grocery stores or supermarkets to use it. Most recipients work, are often obliged to meet work requirements, are restricted from using benefits to purchase :luxury" goods such as tobacco, alcohol, and in harsher environs even seafood and red meat, yadda yadda.


Taking the Trump admin proposal at face value, instead of permitting SNAP recipients to choose what food to buy for themselves (and conservatives fetishize "choice"), it would simultaneously make applying for SNAP more difficult, reduce the benefits across the board, and replace them substantially with government-selected and assembled items. To be delivered in a monthly package.

And that really is what's at the root of welfare chauvinism: 'To hell with all these regulations and taxes affecting me, I'm a good, honest, hardworking person who doesn't need their hand held or progress restrained. All my virtue deserves to be rewarded with the benefits and entitlements of government - as opposed to those lazy, stupid, immoral people, the undeserving parasites leeching my tax dollars, those ni-BOING. They are the ones who the government needs to monitor and interfere with, for our collective prosperity and security.'


But more than anything, the reason this proposal is/would have been DOA, and why SNAP is a relatively-secure welfare administration, is because it counts as a substantial subsidy to food producers and retailers.