Wednesday, June 14, 2023

Sid Salter: Food Stamp (SNAP) Benefits Rise Despite Debt Deal Hype

 In the wake of the recent congressionally adopted debt ceiling limit deal between Democratic President Joe Biden and Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated the bill would save taxpayers $1.5 trillion over 10 years.

That’s about half of the $3 trillion in deficit reduction that Biden originally proposed. That’s far less than the $4.8 trillion in savings over the next decade that House Republicans sought in the initial rounds of negotiation.

Social Security, Medicare, and public healthcare were political sacred cows spared from cuts by both parties. Republicans said “no deal” on tax hikes or cuts to military spending or veterans benefits. Likewise, the GOP rebuffed Biden’s entreaties for tax hikes as a political non-starter.

But one area of federal spending that surprisingly did not see significant impact from the debt ceiling deal was in the area of SNAP – the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or the program formerly identified as food stamps.

On SNAP, the deal increased work requirements through 2030 for recipients ages 50 to 54, but exempted those of all ages who are homeless, veterans or youth ages 18 to 24 who aged out of foster care. The Congressional Budget Office projected that the deal could actually add about 80,000 to the SNAP rolls due to the exemptions.

Between 2000 and 2021, U.S. Department of Agriculture data shows the food stamp program added 24 million recipients nationally with most of that growth attributable to the COVID-19 pandemic. In FY2022, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service reported providing assistance to 41.2 million Americans.

Even after the debt ceiling deal, the Congressional Budget Office projects that SNAP will spend nearly $1.2 trillion from FY2024 through FY2033 or some $120 billion a year for ten fiscal years.

So how does this national political battle over the debt ceiling and welfare spending impact Mississippi? In 2020, SNAP benefits were extended to 413,700 Mississippians – or some 14% of the state’s population. That compares to the 41.2 million recipients in the U.S. or 12% of the population. Some 72% of Mississippi food stamp recipients are in families with children.

An analysis by agricultural law professor Jonathan Coppess at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign found that for the five years in Mississippi between FY2018 and FY2022, taxpayers spent a total of $3.975 billion for an average 437,570 SNAP recipients and that total spending in the Magnolia State rose from an annual $679.7 million in 2018 to $851.7 million in 2022 after hitting an annual high of $1.064 billion in 2021.

Coppess writes: “The definition of the (SNAP) thrifty food plan is based on diet needs for a household of four using current food prices, food composition data, consumption patterns and dietary guidelines. USDA FNS reported that the average benefit per participating person each month was just over $230 in FY 2022—that would amount to less than $8 per day, or about $2.50 per meal. CBO projects the average monthly benefit per participating person to be $222 in FY2023 and increase to $265 by FY2033.”

In truth, neither Republicans nor Democrats were happy at the end of the debt ceiling deal. Neither side really got much more than stalemate. The deal kicked a number of the government spending debate cans down the political road.

One of those big political cans was SNAP spending. But Congress knows that much of the real business of SNAP is settled in the Farm Bill – the multi-year, sweeping legislation that funds and authorizes everything from crop subsidies to nutrition programs like SNAP to conservation and rural development. The Farm Bill is supposed to be written in 2023 – and half this year is gone with the debt ceiling battle delaying negotiations on that key legislation.

The 2018 Farm Bill allocated $867 billion, and more will be on the table in 2023. Farm subsidies and nutrition programs like SNAP are often used as political levers in farm bill fights. But agriculture remains Mississippi’s largest industry and the partisan fight started in the debt ceiling battle will continue in that legislation.


Sid Salter is a syndicated columnist. Contact him at sidsalter@sidsalter.com.



22 comments:

Anonymous said...

McCarthy is just another RINO.

Anonymous said...

Sid loves pork, federal spending, Chinese financed budget deficits and running up the national debt.

Anonymous said...

low information voters prevail-

Anonymous said...

Why do we provide SNAP benefits to anyone? If you are too lazy to get out and work, then why should I have to pay for it with my tax dollars?

Anonymous said...

Yeah, evil, communist welfare spending. We need to cut SNAP entirely. Those poor hungry kids need to get off their butts and find jobs.

Oh, and we need more tax cuts for the wealthy, too!

Anonymous said...

I'll be concerned about SNAP benefit spending, when the war budget moves below a half of a trillion dollars. Until then, anyone complaining about monies spent on the American people sound like idiots.

Anonymous said...

Mississippi’s largest industry is the federal government support payments

Anonymous said...

Government hand outs are killing our country.... just a bunch of lazy, entitled people that think they have it so rough and are treated so unfairly. They make me sick.

Anonymous said...

I don't disagree with you 9:22.

Sadly leaders on both sides benefit greatly from said war spending and no matter the lip service provided, neither D nor R is going to do anything to lower that budget.

Anonymous said...

Having a reason to borrow doesn't make it smart. You can live like a king taking out bank loan after bank loan, and maxing out as many credit cards as you can get. But one day all that debt will come for you, and that day is looming for the U.S. Government.
On that day, you'll see our free republic become a confiscatory regime where citizens are literally robbed of their bank accounts. Cautionary tale: In 2016, Greece confiscated 428,000 bank accounts to avoid bankruptcy - simply because it had the power to do so. Think it can't happen here?

Anonymous said...

If you don't pay taxes, you shouldnt have a right to vote. Period. Sorry, Not Sorry.

Anonymous said...

If you think 13th checks for people who have worked 30 years are compounding annually, just take a look at the annual increases in food allotment and the concurrent lack of incentive to work.

And then we wonder why so damned many 'We Are Hiring' signs appear in windows up and down every Main Street in America.

Anonymous said...

Lol@ you clowns blaming a political party like good sheeple.
When your currency is based on nothing more than debt, and your entire bank system runs on fractional reserve Ponzi scheme, you get situations like this.

The global Central banks demand eternal debt and eternal interest payments that are deducted from the savings and labor of every human on the planet.

The elected elites serve the global central bankers.
Only Rand Paul attempts to even bring any sanity to the budget.
And just like his father, the majority of Joe Sixpack and Sally Soccermom’s ignore him.

Anonymous said...

For over two hundred years there has been a concerted effort by the rich and politically powerful to create and exploit a permanent underclass. The cost of maintaining that underclass is feeding them. If some of these underclassmen escape through their own enterprise or good fortune they are soon replaced. The latest replacements are flooding the southern border. It's part of our economic system. Face it. Don't complain unless you are ready to change the system itself.

Anonymous said...

I hate deficit spending. But I also hate that every post on JJ needs only about five minutes and three comments before the nut jobs take over.

Anonymous said...

Ole Sid brought them out the woodwork with this one. Good Job Dude! You couldn’t ask for more diverse opionions.

Anonymous said...

Well LBJ said he'd some folks voting Democratic for the next 200 years and he was right but the question now is will the country actually last 200 more years . Put me down as being very skeptical.

Anonymous said...

Keeping thinds calm on the welfare plantation

Anonymous said...

Money is no longer real.

You're all foolish luddites who have aged out of your brain cells.

Enjoy obscurity you old farts.

Anonymous said...

It’s called a nutrition program. Yet the receipt TD are entitled to free soft drinks, coffee, cookies, cake mix, candy, and I think prepared bakery items. Those items should be prohibited because they cause obesity and health problems, and of course taxpayers have to pay for their medical expenses via Medicaid.

Anonymous said...

Gotta keep the free food train going to the lazy obese peoples in their food deserts so they can ride around on their their motorized wheelchairs at the local Walmart where they parked in their handicapped parking space just steps from the door while the working taxpayers work til they die to fund the purchase of their Cheetos and honey buns.

Anonymous said...

I'm afraid 12:13 is exactly correct!

LBJ constructed a permanent under-class, wrongly assuming it would be a class of worker-bees. He never imagined they would sit back on their haunches and balk. And BRAY!

So, now, we are developing and have developed another under class, this time assuming they will continue as worker-bees. But, what if they don't?

Meanwhile, what is to be done about the earlier under-class we developed, the one that balks at everything productive?

And as soon as the newly developed lower-class balks at work and productivity, what then?

Exactly how long can the socialist-communist model work for a society? Nobody alive today will see the plan play out and implode. But one thing is assured. It WILL implode.


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