The ‘Food Insecurity’ Racket

The feds spend $114 billion a year on food stamps. Biden wants more

WSJ editorial.

"The White House wants to change the subject from the troubled economy ahead of the November elections, and so arrives President Biden’s modest promise this week to “end hunger in America” by 2030. He’s holding a conference at the White House Wednesday on the subject, which will no doubt be full of high-minded intentions. But the food problem in American life isn’t a matter of deprivation, and the government already spends tens of billions of dollars on food.

The White House on Tuesday rolled out its National Strategy on Hunger, Nutrition and Health. “Transformative programs, policies, and system changes are needed” says the strategy document, including improving “food access and affordability.” Toward that end, the White House promises to “work with Congress to expand access” to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), better known as food stamps, and one idea is letting college students sign up.

But insufficient public benefits aren’t a problem. More than 41 million Americans participated in food stamps each month on average in 2021, up from 35 million in 2019. In 2021 the Agriculture Department increased the benefit by more than 20%, rejiggering the formula ostensibly so recipients could afford more and better food like eggs and produce.

That fillip was separate from a temporary 15% bump in benefits as part of pandemic relief. States have also been allowed to waive whatever modest work and verification requirements once existed. The net effect has been an enormous taxpayer blowout: The feds spent $114 billion on SNAP in 2021, up from $60 billion in 2019. Any residual hunger in America isn’t the result of stingy government.

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated the new benefit formula alone will cost $250 billion to $300 billion over a decade. As the American Enterprise Institute’s Angela Rachidi pointed out this month, a gusher of spending hasn't been accompanied by a significant drop in “food insecurity,” which has replaced “hunger” as the justification for more government programs.

Food insecurity is a gauzy measure that overstates how many Americans don’t consume enough calories. One irony is that ferocious grocery-store inflation may be driving Americans to eat more fast food, which is more affordable but often less healthy. How about making food more affordable by reducing the 11.4% annual pace of food inflation?

The White House nutrition document is a long list of half-baked ideas, from recycled calls to expand the child tax credit to promises of increasing “procurement of local foods in federal prisons.” Why not a farmer’s market in the prison yard? Nearly all of these ideas involve government spending more money or using government to change human behavior it has never been able to change.

Like welfare in general, food stamps were once intended as temporary help for people down on their luck. But over time the program has expanded to become a large and growing entitlement that breeds dependence on government but nonetheless hasn’t managed to solve “food insecurity.” Maybe dependency is the real problem."