Today’s column is going to praise him for cutting back on excessive redistribution as part of the food stamp program.
We’ll start with this chart from the Department of Agriculture, which is the (should-be-abolished) bureaucracy that administers the program. The bars show inflation-adjusted spending and the blue line shows the number food stamp dependents.
As you can see, the trend for the 21st century has been in the wrong direction (a problem I wrote about back in 2012), with more spending and more dependency.
That’s the bad news.
The good news is that this is an area where Trump is making progress (especially when compared to his first term).
Here are some excerpts from a report last month in the Washington Post, authored by Hannah Knowles and Mariana Alfaro.
One year after Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill tightened eligibility for food aid and pushed states to do more screening, Arizona is a striking example… The number of Arizonans on food stamps has plummeted by half — a loss of nearly 500,000 people, including about 200,000 children, according to the latest available state data. Federal officials praised Arizona last month for carrying out the president’s sweeping changes to the social safety net, declaring the state was “leading the way” in directing benefits to the right people and reducing “waste, fraud and abuse.” …Other states have seen less dramatic decreases in enrollment. The USDA reported a roughly 12 percent drop nationwide as of this March, the latest month for which it posted data, compared to one year previously. …Republicans have defended the changes to SNAP as reasonable efforts to cut federal costs and expand work requirements for those who receive food stamps. Before, “able-bodied” people had to work to get more than a few months of benefits if they were between the ages of 18 to 54; now that requirement applies to adults up to 64 years old. Before, parents caring for children of any age were exempt from work requirements; now, that exemption applies only for children under 14. Exemptions for veterans, homeless people and young people transitioning out of foster care were removed. The measure also narrowed the categories of lawfully present noncitizens eligible for SNAP.
And here are some passages from a report back in May by Dan Frosch in the Wall Street Journal.
The number of food-stamp recipients is dropping sharply across the country as states move to implement new Trump administration rules on who qualifies. Enrollment in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, has decreased by nearly 3.5 million people since stricter eligibility requirements were enacted last July, federal data show. Some states, including Arizona, are seeing dramatic declines in the numbers of SNAP recipients. …The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the tighter work requirements will reduce spending on SNAP by $68.6 billion over roughly the next decade. The office also estimated it would result in an around 2.4 million fewer people receiving monthly SNAP benefits over that period.
Needless to say, advocates of bigger government are upset about Trump’s changes.
The second half of today’s column will focus on why the reforms were a step in the right direction.
We’ll start with this summary from the Economic Policy Innovation Center.
Here are some excerpts from a column last month in the Washington Examiner by Joshua Pauze.
He points out that all of Trump’s “cuts” simply bring the program’s burden back to where is way before the pandemic.
Critics of last year’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (OBBBA) argue that the Trump administration is stripping vulnerable households of crucial benefits, citing a $187 billion reduction in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) funding over the next decade. Since the OBBBA’s passage last summer, the number of food-stamp recipients has declined by over 4.1 million while food prices have risen. But there is much more to this story. …SNAP is cyclical by nature and expansions are expected in times of crisis, so it’s no surprise that benefits surged from $55.6 billion in 2019 to $107.9 billion in 2021. The troubling part is that they remained at $95 billion in 2025 despite a recovered labor market. Even after the OBBBA’s adjustments, roughly 1 million more people are receiving benefits than prior to the pandemic. This past February, benefits per person were also about 47% higher than the pre-pandemic level, while the overall cost of living has increased by about 28%. It’s one thing to argue for SNAP to be expanded; it’s another to frame the OBBBA’s corrections as “cuts.” Characterizing a return to the status quo this way is misleading. …SNAP benefits are administered by states but fully funded by the federal government. So, while states play with house money, they lack meaningful incentives to police overpayments or other issues. When was the last time you heard about a private entity overpaying nearly 1-in-10 of its bills? …Congress, for once, decided not to let an emergency become an entitlement, and it took on waste and abuse.
Last but not least, some of the reforms are trying to make sure food stamps are not wasted on junk food.
Here’s some of what Paige Terryberry wrote for the Washington Post earlier this year.
The administration is finally allowing states to restrict the purchase of soda, sugary snacks and other junk food with the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), more commonly known as food stamps. A handful of states — Republican- and Democrat-led alike — have wanted to do this for decades. But they needed a waiver from the Agriculture Department, which runs the food stamp program at the national level, and previous administrations refused. …nearly $1 in every $4 of food stamps pays for sugary drinks, candy or snacks — about $25 billion every year. Soda is actually the No. 1 item bought with food stamps, and taxpayers in 2023 were projected to spend more than $60 billion on those sugary drinks over the next decade. …No wonder 30 states are working to limit junk food. They don’t want to fund people’s descent into sickness and even death. …Seventy-eight percent of food-stamp recipients are also on Medicaid, which means taxpayers are picking up the tab for their obesity-related treatments.
And here’s a map that accompanied her column.
For what it’s worth, if states such as California, Illinois, and New York want to fund junk food, they should be doing it with their own funds, not relying on Uncle Sam.
Which actually brings us to my contribution to the discussion.
