What possible legitimate reason could there be for this?

 

Trump's war on hunger the hungry

SNAP is the current iteration of the Food Stamp program, which first came into being during the Great Depression, was made permanent in 1964, and went nationwide in 1974. Almost ever since, it’s faced attacks—and not just from Republicans. In 1996, neoliberal Bill Clinton announced the “end of welfare as we know it”—which just meant inflicting harsh new work requirements on people in need of government assistance, including food stamps—as he triangulated away the Democratic Party’s soul. Making hungry people performatively dance for their supper is apparently a bipartisan fascination.

[...]

Trump’s changes to the SNAP program are nasty and myriad (yep, he’s cutting off refugees)—but I want to focus on the even stricter “work requirements” he and the well-fed dauphins who run Congress put in place. Among other petty cruelties, veterans, people who are homeless, and young adults transitioning out of foster care are now required to work in exchange for their meager food-stamp allowance. So are older people, younger people with older kids, and more.

[...]

It’s hard to overstate how harmful this is. Over 42 million people receive some form of SNAP assistance. Those living in states that previously had waivers account for 36.5 million of those recipients. All those people could now be at risk of losing their benefits. The (Republican-controlled) Congressional Budget Office estimates that at least 4 million people will lose all or part of their SNAP benefits once the changes go into effect, but we will never know the true numbers, because the Trump administration canceled the annual reporting on food insecurity that we use to track the numbers of people who need assistance.

Whatever the real number is, it’s unconscionable. Many of those people are already about to face the toughest part of their year—winter—and now, suddenly, they will not know where their next meal is coming from.

[...]

Thanks to our long, bipartisan, embarrassing history of cruelty toward the needy, we know one thing about work requirements: They don’t work. First of all, most working-age people on SNAP already work. This is a simple fact that consistently gets lost or ignored every time this issue comes up. Most of the adults work, but they work unstable or part-time or simply poorly paid jobs that cannot cover their food needs.

All work requirements do is increase the paperwork necessary to get the benefit, and that means fewer people will be able to access the assistance they need even though they meet the work requirements. It’s not like people on SNAP are likely to have access to a personal assistant or a stay-at-home spouse or a lawyer or a CPA or anybody at all who is able to help them navigate through all the red tape. And it’s not like they have a lot of extra time on their hands, during business hours, to sit on the phone or show up to the government office because, you know, they’re working.

[...]

Moreover, focusing on the adult working requirements misses the fact that nearly two-thirds of the people who get food through SNAP are children.

[...]

But I also feel compelled to defend what Alfie P. Doolittle would call the “undeserving” poor. Regardless of what you think about any individual person, food assistance should not be predicated on meeting your personal definition of deserving. People shouldn’t have to perform feats of social worth to get food; in our incredibly wealthy society, people should just get food.

[...]

Of course, this country’s war against the poor does not stop at food stamps. In addition to cutting Medicaid and CHIP, the Trump administration is also covertly cutting Social Security Disability Benefits. Over 8 million people receive Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) checks. SSDI assistance is available to people with disabilities, regardless of age, but Trump is trying to change the eligibility requirements so that a person’s age is not taken into account when assessing their ability to find another job. I don’t think I’m being “ageist” to say that telling a 60-year-old grandpa to “learn to code, lmao” is not really a practical idea, but that’s pretty much where we are.

[...]

SNAP and SSDI make up part of the safety net for the whole economy in times of recession. When people who are out of work can still buy necessities, like groceries, it props up the businesses who sell those goods, even in times when consumer spending is at a premium. Public benefit programs create a floor that keeps local economies going when whatever bubble we happen to be in at the time bursts.

What’s maddening is that neither Trump, MAGA, mainline Republicans, or some Democrats actually want to do what is necessary so that people don’t have to turn to food assistance. They don’t want to address the underlying, structural factors. They don’t want to address food deserts. They don’t want to provide free childcare. They don’t want to raise wages so that people who have jobs can afford food. They just want to kick people and their children off of welfare, and lie in order to blame the hungry for their suffering. Hunger is a solvable problem. It’s a political problem, not a scarcity problem.

[...]

We have facts and figures proving that work requirements result in people who are working being denied the food assistance they need. Yet there are still people in both parties who think they are a good idea.

  The Nation

In case you wonder where those proving data come from, Georgia and Arkansas tried work requirements for Medicaid and found out they don't work. Doesn't mean they aren't still trying. The cruelty is a GOP bonus in any program.

PS. The government is still shut down.  Republicans in Congress are still not going to work.  Maybe they should have some work requirements.

UPDATE 10/28/2025:  Trump administration has announced SNAP benefits will be cut off November 1.  Because they're hoping people will believe them when they say it's the Democrats' fault people will go hungry.  Or that they can force the Democrats to vote for their cruel budget. Despicable beyond belief.  

Trump 2.0 - Let them eat cake

 

This while the price of everything is increasing.

SNAP in the Big Beautiful Bill

How much would SNAP benefits cost state governments under the new regime? It’s hard to say. That’s because, under the proposal, each state’s share of the cost will be calculated according to its error rate – how often it overpays or underpays program participants. All states would have to shoulder at least 5% of the SNAP bill, while the most error-prone states would have to pay for a staggering one-quarter. States would also have to foot the bill for three-quarters of the cost related to administering the program, up from their current share of just half.

The cost-shifting could cost states hundreds of millions of dollars each year. [...] That’s a problem, Bergh says, because most states are required to balance their budgets down to the penny – leaving little room for extra SNAP spending.

  US News

Leading to states dropping people from SNAP benefits.

Underfunded SNAP offices may make more payment errors, which will, in turn, jack up states’ share of the costs even more.

[...]

A diminished SNAP program would be less prepared to insulate people from hunger during a recession, experts say. A report by another nonpartisan think tank, the Urban Institute, projects that without the benefits they need, close to 900,000 more Americans could fall into poverty during an economic downturn.

Weakening SNAP could also have ripple effects beyond food insecurity. Elaine Waxman, a coauthor on the Urban Institute report, calls the program an “economic multiplier” because it keeps grocery stores and food suppliers open even when people don’t have much to spend on food. The less money for SNAP, the less support for the broader food system during difficult times.

“It’s a job generator and a way to quickly help stabilize” a rocky economy, Waxman adds. “SNAP is exactly the kind of thing you want people to have when food prices are persistently high, when people feel a great deal of economic uncertainty.”

[...]

The proposed SNAP reforms also include an expansion of the program’s existing work requirement, which limits most nondisabled adults to just three months of benefits unless they clock in for at least 80 hours per month. Currently, people caring for children, people over 55 and some people in areas with particularly poor job markets are exempt from the limit. But the changes pitched by the GOP would make it so these groups, too, would max out at three months of benefits unless they meet the work requirement threshold. Only parents with children under 7 and a small handful of extremely high-unemployment counties would be exempt under the new regime.

[...]

The affected families would include over 1 million households where at least one member works, the analysis shows. The majority of SNAP recipients who can work, do work, another report by the CBPP found. But intermittent employment, like seasonal jobs and gig-economy work, may not meet the threshold required to maintain benefits.

[...]

A third report, also by the Urban Institute, calculated that the work requirement changes would kick 1.5 million families out of the program entirely. And an additional 1.2 million families would receive less grocery money than they currently do.

[...]

“It’s very draconian,” she says. “These [requirements] don’t actually increase work efforts or income and result in a lot of people leaving the program.”

MAGA!

UPDATE 10/28/2025:  Oh, well.  Under the GOP shutdown, the administration is taking this opportunity to simply cut off SNAP altogether.  

More good news for MAGA farmers and voters

 

That oughta hit well in Trumpland.

Disgusting prick

 

Cutting SNAP benefits

[E]xtra [SNAP (food stamps)] money is gone now as the government winds down its pandemic assistance programs. The boosted benefits expired this month and payments are dropping by about $90 a month on average for individuals, and $250 or more for some families, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan research institute.

[...]

The reduction comes as food prices in the U.S. continue to rise. Without the extra help, many people will go hungry.

  NPR

GOP: The poor don't deserve to eat. They should have thought about that before becoming poor.

Megan Sandel is a pediatrician and co-director of the Boston Medical Center's Grow Clinic, which focuses on treating malnutrition issues in kids. She sees a lot of heartbroken parents in her office.

"They're working sometimes two jobs," she said. "They have this, you know, young child that's not growing the way you would expect on the growth curve. And the mom will break down in tears and say, 'I just got my rent bill; landlord is increasing it; I can't keep up. And now I know that there's going to be one less tool in the toolbox to try and help this kid grow and get back on the growth curve.'"

Which goes hand in hand with the learning curve.

[...]

The assistance programs of the pandemic era were working — not just to uphold communities affected by COVID-19, but as examples of how long-standing issues like food insecurity and unstable incomes could be addressed as a whole.

But that safety net is fading fast. Gone are the extra unemployment payments, free school lunches for all, and the extended child tax credit. According to the Department of Agriculture, SNAP cost $119 billion last year with the extra benefits. That would equate to about 2% of the national budget for the 2023 fiscal year.

We can't afford it. We have tax cuts for the rich to pay for.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

L'etat c'est moi

The Department of Agriculture is mandating that letters from President Trump be included in millions of food assistance boxes, according to Politico.

The $4 billion Families to Farmers Food Box Program has distributed 100 million boxes already, the USDA announced Wednesday. The program delivers surplus goods that would normally go to restaurants to families experiencing financial hardship due to the coronavirus pandemic.

  The Hill

Why is it called Families to Farmers Food Box Program? That sounds like families are sending food to farmers. Is that a misprint?

Organizations tasked with distributing the food have complained that the messaging and campaign-like letters included in the boxes appear to have the goal of boosting the president’s image ahead of the election.

"Appear" to have?

“In my 30 years of doing this work, I've never seen something this egregious,” said Lisa Hamler-Fugitt, executive director of the Ohio Association of Food Banks, told Politico. "These are federally purchased boxes.”

[...]

The letter, which comes in English and Spanish, says: “As President, safeguarding the health and well-being of our citizens is one of my highest priorities. As part of our response to coronavirus, I prioritized sending nutritious food from our farmers to families in need throughout America.”

Some lawmakers have argued that the letters could potentially violate the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal officials besides the president and vice president from engaging in politics in their official capacity.

And Trump should be scared of that, why? Practically the whole damned administration has violated the Hatch Act repeatedly and suffered no consequences.

“A public health crisis is not an opportunity for the administration to promote its own political interests. Likewise, a federal food assistance program should not be used as a tool for the President to exploit taxpayer dollars for his re-election campaign.”

EVERYTHING is an opportunity for this administration to promote its own political interests.

In a statement to The Hill, the Agriculture Department said “politics has played zero role in the Farmers to Families food box program — it is purely about helping farmers and distributors get food to Americans in need during this unprecedented time.”

Farmers to Families. That's more like it. But, bullshit. Politics played a leading role.

Just waiting for...

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.