On Tuesday, Rep. Phil Roe (R-Tenn.) proposed legislation that would require beneficiaries of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to be limited to buying healthy foods. According to Roe’s proposal, the purchasing standard for SNAP would be brought in line with the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC).
“As a physician, I realize the importance of healthy eating, and as an obstetrician, I’ve seen how the WIC program helps empower families receiving assistance to use taxpayer dollars to purchase healthy, wholesome foods,” Roe wrote on his webpage. “If these guidelines are good and healthy enough for women and children, then SNAP recipients should also benefit from adhering to the same standards.”
“Already, states like Wisconsin and South Carolina have shown interest in improving the healthfulness of choices in their SNAP programs,” he continued. “By giving SNAP recipients more nutritious choices, we can take a meaningful step towards ending hunger in America.”
While SNAP explicitly excludes the purchase of alcohol, tobacco, medication, “ready-to-eat” or hot foods and non-food items, the program makes no special exceptions or distinctions between “healthy” and “unhealthy” foods. The Department of Agriculture’s position on establishing food restrictions is that it would create a costly, practically unenforceable requirement of the already cash-starved program.
The representative’s proposal would only allow SNAP benefits to be used to buy foods from the WIC list of approved foods — a restricted assortment of canned and dried foods, whole grains, reduced fat dairy and lean meats. The proposed legislation would make it a fineable offense for retailers to sell unapproved groceries with SNAP funds.
The USDA’s position statement on the issue states:
There are more than 300,000 food products on the market, and an average of 12,000 new products were introduced each year between 1990 and 2000. The task of identifying, evaluating, and tracking the nutritional profile of every food available for purchase would be substantial. The burden of identifying which products met Federal standards would most likely fall on an expanded bureaucracy or on manufacturers and producers asked to certify that their products meet Federal standards. …
There is no strong research-based evidence to support restricting food stamp benefits. Food stamp recipients are no more likely than higher income consumers to choose foods with little nutritional value; thus the basis for singling out low-income food stamp recipients and restricting their food choices is not clear.
While there is no definitive study of the buying habits of SNAP recipients, there is little to suggest that it is radically different from the rest of America. One consideration, however, is an interesting fact little acknowledged in the discussion of healthy food spending with SNAP.
For many SNAP recipients, it’s impossible to buy healthy food. Much of the nations’ poor live in food deserts — urban and rural communities that have no ready access to affordable fresh foods. Instead, these areas are typically serviced only by fast food restaurants, small stores that specialize in processed foods and convenience stores. The USDA estimates that 23.5 million people live in food deserts, with more than half being low-income.
Unless access to fresh food is improved, forcing a requirement to buy it is redundant and ineffectual. However, recent trends in Washington suggests that Roe’s proposal is less about promoting health and more about demonizing social welfare.
Republicans and SNAP cuts
Food stamps have been on the Republicans’ radar since earlier this summer, when House Republicans, for the first time in recent memory, passed a Farm Bill without an attached Nutrition Bill. In a tight vote of 216 to 208 — in which no Democrat voted aye — the House passed a set of agricultural policy changes. This included changes to conservation programs and the ending of direct subsidy payments to farmers, but did not address funding to SNAP. SNAP funding provisions traditionally constitute 80 percent of a Farm Bill.
House Republicans attempted to appease the Democrats by indicating that a vote on the separate Nutrition Bill would come later in June. The Nutrition Bill has yet to be introduced, with appropriations under the current Farm Bill expiring at the end of the federal fiscal year — September 30.
Indications, however, suggest that the Republicans are seeking to radically trim SNAP benefits. Under a proposal yet to be released but hinted at in an internal memo from House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the Republicans would seek the reduction of $40 billion from the SNAP program over the next ten years — twice what was sought in June.
“[SNAP] has ballooned since President Obama took office with one in seven Americans now receiving food stamps,” Cantor wrote to his fellow House Republicans. “As SNAP has grown, working middle class families are footing the $80 billion bill for a safety net gone well beyond assistance to children, seniors, and the disabled. That is why … a working group of our conference came together to address the major problems to reform SNAP while still preserving the safety net for those who truly need it.”
Cantor continued:
The Nutrition Reform and Work Opportunity Act restores the intent of the bipartisan welfare reforms adopted in 1996 by ensuring that work requirements for able-bodied adults without children are enforced — not waived — and eliminates loopholes exploited over the last few years to avoid the program’s income and asset tests. It also empowers states to engage able-bodied parents in work and job training as part of receiving food stamps to help move them to self-sufficiency. Most importantly, no individual who meets the income and asset guidelines of the SNAP program and is willing to comply with applicable work requirements will lose benefits as a result of these reforms. It is expected that these simple reforms will save taxpayers an estimated $40 billion over ten years.
The starving millions
Cantor’s proposal — which would cut benefits for four to six million individuals — would eliminate the USDA’s prerogative to waive able-bodied adults without children from the work or job training requirement. Typically, non-working, able-bodied adults would only be eligible for three months’ of coverage every three years. However, the USDA usually offer waivers to able-bodied adults in states that do not have the job training or job assistance programs that would assist them to work. Under the Republicans’ proposal, the USDA would not be able to make such determinations anymore.
“In New York City alone, if these cuts go through, we are talking about in a single year having 76 million meals be gone,” said Margarette Purvis, president and CEO of Food Bank For New York City, one of America’s largest food banks. “[That] is more than what we distribute in a year.”
SNAP benefits will face an additional $5 billion per year cut, due to the expiration of the 2009 Recovery Act on Nov. 1. In total, this would represent a $90 billion cut to SNAP proposed by the Republicans over the next decade. The Senate Farm Bill contains a more modest reduction in benefits — $4 billion in SNAP cuts.
“Say the Senate farm bill contains $4 billion in SNAP cuts and the House farm bill that went down contains $20 billion, so now you’re trying to conference something between $4 billion and $20 billion,” said a spokesperson for Rep. Jim McGovern, (D-Mass.) in July. “But what happens if the House Republicans bring a $40 billion cut? Now you’re conferencing between $4 billion and $40 billion, which is a lot worse.”
It is estimated that the current non-governmental support system — including churches and food banks — will not be able to compensate for the cuts to nutrition support the Republicans are recommending.