Currently browsing posts about: SNAP

I am just getting to this (better late than never), but in March Congress passed the 2,232-page appropriations bill H.R. 1625 (115).  This continued funding for the federal government until the end of September.

Despite White House calls for deep cuts—this bill gave:

• USDA and FDA $23.3 billion in discretionary funding, $2.4 billion above current levels.
• USDA USDA Farm to School Grant Program $5 million
• Food for Peace ,$1.7 billion
• Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program, $35 million, a 30% increase since last bill
• USDA Economic Research Service, $86.75 million, above USDA’s request of $77 million.
• USDA Agricultural Research Service, $1.2 billion, above the $993 million request
• Agriculture and Food Research Initiative, $400 million, $25 million more than in 2017
• USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, $981.1 million, $925 million more than current spending.
• Child nutrition programs (school meals), $24.25 million, $2 million more than current levels.
• Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), $6.175 billion in discretionary funding over two years
• Commodity assistance programs (soup kitchens, food banks, farmer’s market nutrition programs and other emergency assistance programs), $322.1 million over two years, and above current $313 million

But then there’s SNAP, where the real money is: $74.01 billion.  This is a $4 billion cut from current levels, and “subject to any work registration or workfare requirements as may be required by law.”

Except for SNAP, these look good for the next few months.

But the Farm Bill can change all this and we have yet to see what Congress will do about it.

And, according to Politico, the White House is expected to ask for up to $60 billion in cuts.

Start lobbying now.

While the farm bill is in play, it’s worth looking at what The Bipartisan Policy Center has to say about SNAP:

It provides evidence for a long list of recommendations for improving SNAP, among them:

• Make diet quality a core SNAP objective
• Eliminate sugar-sweetened beverages from SNAP eligibility
• Provide incentives for purchases of fruits and vegetables
• Authorize USDA to collect and share data on SNAP purchases

It also has recommendations for improving education of SNAP recipients, and no wonder.

This is an excellent follow-up to the 2012 SNAP to Health initiative in which I participated.  That report made similar recommendations.

Maybe now is the time?

The USDA, straight out of George Orwell’s 1984, has promised “new SNAP flexibilities to promote self-sufficiency.”

What does USDA mean by “flexibilities”?  Here are its exact words (I put the key words in quotes and in bold for emphasis:

Scott Faber, Vice President of Government Affairs for the Environmental Working Group summarizes Trump’s Full-Scale War on Food.  Since taking office, he writes, Trump has:

• Proposed to cut food safety funding for the Food and Drug Administration by $117 million.
• Proposed to cut funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, by $193 billion – a 25 percent cut – and cut international food aid by $2 billion.
• Delayed new labeling rules for menus and packaged foods that would give consumers more information about calories and added sugars, and so far failed to issue a draft rule to implement a new law on disclosing genetically modified ingredients in food.
• Weakened new rules designed to drive junk food out of U.S. schools.
• Proposed to eliminate several Department of Agriculture programs that helped farmers sell directly to local consumers.
• Proposed to eliminate funding for an entire division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that works to reduce obesity.
• Withdrawn new rules to protect drinking water supplies from polluters and proposed cutting the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget by 31 percent.
• Proposed to suspended two of the largest farmland stewardship programs and mothball others.
• Postponed new rules designed to strengthen animal welfare standards on organic farms and proposed to eliminate funding for programs that help farmers switch to organic farming.
• Reversed a ban on a pesticide linked to brain damage in kids and proposed cutting EPA funding for pesticide review programs by 20 percent.
• Punted on new rules to protect farmworkers from pesticides, and proposed to eliminate a program to train migrant and seasonal farmworkers.
• Mothballed new voluntary sodium guidelines that would drive reformulation of foods.
• Called for so-called regulatory “reforms” that would block agencies like the FDA and USDA from adopting new rules designed to keep food safe, update food labels or provide students healthier meal options in schools.

This is an impressive list, calling for serious resistance.

How?  That’s the question….

Moms Rising wants your help in collecting stories about SNAP from individuals and families who have been helped by SNAP and might be affected by cuts to the program.

The stories can be any length.  Moms Rising plans to compile them into a story book to be delivered to legislators along with a petition asking them to protect SNAP.

Stories can be submitted HERE.

Voice of the People has the results of a survey finding that most respondents support:

• Increased benefits for SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps) recipients [81%].
• The idea that SNAP benefits should not be permitted to be used for candy and sodas [73-76%].
• Providing incentives to encourage SNAP beneficiaries to eat more fruits and vegetables [90%].

Politico commented (April 26):

The findings suggest there is a massive divide between the public and Congress on SNAP issues. There is currently no feasible discussion of raising SNAP benefits, and a recent House Agriculture Committee hearing on SNAP restrictions showcased that there is bipartisan opposition to the idea on the committee.

Documents

• The findings of the report
• The survey questionnaire
• A recent study: What foods and beverages SNAP recipients are buying (“room for improvement”)

In recent years, the USDA has received requests from several cities and states to allow pilot projects to remove sodas from items that can be purchased with SNAP benefit cards.

The agency has always found reasons to deny the requests, as it did for one from New York City in 2011.

The latest “denial” is to a request from the state of Maine for a pilot project to eliminate soft drinks and candy.  I put denial in quotes because it’s not actually a denial.   It’s a request for more information.  USDA wants to know:

• Whether Maine’s previous responses to previous queries still apply.
• What would happen without this restriction?
• Whether there will be a pre- and post-implementation data collection on purchases before and after the pilot.
• How Maine will correct for biases due to self-reporting of purchase data.
• Why Maine isn’t planning to get agreement from retailers to provide data.
• If Maine plans to provide a reasonable and legal time frame.
• Whether Maine plans to submit a new request for a waiver to cover use of SNAP-ED funds.
• What the evidence base is for using SNAP-ED funds as Maine plans.
• The full costs of this effort.

If Maine is serious about wanting to do this, it will have a lot more work to do.  USDA might as well have issued another denial.

I’m out of the country for a few weeks (México) and missed the House hearing on whether SNAP-eligible food items should continue to include sugary beverages.

From what I gather, most witnesses opposed any change in the program, with one from the American Enterprise Institute the lone holdout.

As I discussed in the chapter on SNAP in Soda Politics, I continue to think that taking sugar-sweetened beverages out of the package is a no brainer.

• They are sugars and water and have no nutritional value.
• Tons of research links their consumption to a higher risk for obesity and its consequences.
• SNAP recipients spend a lot of taxpayer money on them.
• SNAP recipients may well have worse diets and higher proportions of chronic disease than equally poor people who do not get SNAP benefits.
• Surveys say that SNAP recipients would not mind this change.
• SNAP recipients can always buy sodas with their own cash.

I recognize that not everyone sees things this way.  I suspect that people opposed to this idea are worried that any change to SNAP will leave it vulnerable to cuts, and they could well be right.

Here are their arguments:

• The Hill: Restricting what recipients of SNAP benefits eat won’t fix nutritional issues
• FoodDive: Grocery and food industry to Congress: No SNAP soda ban
• Washington Post: How liberals undermine the food stamp program
• Politico: Few fans for restricting SNAP purchases

Politico provides some sound bites on the topic:

• “Food surveillance violates the basic principles of this great country.” — Rep. David Scott (D-Ga.)
• “What can we do to incentivize rather than punish?” — Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.)
• “If you want to do a pilot program, I’m happy to co-sponsor one at the White House. I’m worried about our president’s eating habits.” — Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Ma.)

The state of Maine, however, has just renewed its request to USDA to remove sugar-sweetened beverages and candy from SNAP-eligible items.

Maine believes the purchase of sugar sweetened beverages and candy is detrimental to the health of the SNAP population, and is antithetical to the purpose of the SNAP program.

SNAP is supposed to be a nutrition program, no?  Nutrition is about a lot more than calories (and this from someone who wrote a book about calories).