Trump Budget Would Swap Food Stamps for ‘100% American’ Food Packages (Obama, retired)
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As someone who is generally considered part of this board's "liberal" camp, I see no issue with this and think it is an interesting idea. Certainly you need to make an accommodation for potential food allergies, but that is easy enough to do. This would allow the purchase of products in bulk to save money and the delivery direct to the home makes a lot of sense as well. SNAP benefits are not nearly as widely abused as some people claim/imply, but this would virtually eliminate SNAP benefit trafficking (which is only controlled on the retailer side) and ensure that benefits go to actual food instead of things like soda, cakes and cookies (which while not "fraud" are certainly not what is intended and I think what people are most outraged about when they see it).
If you add to the program some form of benefit dedicated to purchasing fresh produce to supplement the box (and the fresh portion could also probably be done via delivery in most urban areas as well) and I think you have a very viable solution that would eliminate whatever amount of fraud there is now.
Who will be upset by this are the large supermarket retailers who are the primary business financial beneficiaries of the program since you have to purchase things at a store at retail prices.
" Trump Budget Would Swap Food Stamps for ‘100% American’ Food Packages "
Sounds like WIC. I had to tour a WIC store and actually thought it was a pretty good program. They had all the good stuff and a lot of it was local. They had eggs, milk, cheese, dried beans, canned fish, iron rich cereal, vitamin C fruit/vegetable juice and so on.
Yes, WIC is a good program. As nearly as I can tell, this proposal isn't WIC or anything like it. But if I'm wrong about that, I will withdraw my objections.
I'm so old I once actually qualified for the excess commodity food program. It was terrible. Every month I got a box with dehydrated mashed potatoes, white flour, and dried milk (to this day, I swear they were all made of the same stuff, just textured differently), oily block cheese, corn syrup, and off-brand peanut butter. I understood very well that the point of the program was to give food producers a reliable market for excess and substandard product paid for by the US taxpayer.
I guess the 'meat, poultry or fish' will have to be the canned type.
Not true. You'd be surprised at what food is delivered by mail these days. I got a frozen food delivery last week. Don't they advertise Omaha steaks on TV?
Not true. You'd be surprised at what food is delivered by mail these days. I got a frozen food delivery last week. Don't they advertise Omaha steaks on TV?
what's not true?
shipping frozen food would be prohibitively expensive.
Nothing says smaller govt. than the govt. telling people what they can eat
How many Federal and state government employees / contractors will it take to decide what recipients will eat?
Most food is made in the USA by Big Food who lobbies at state and national levels for SNAP.
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Nothing says smaller govt. than the govt. telling people what they can eat