Why Are We Snapping Over SNAP?

Last week, our nation seemed to split across a metaphorical fault line over the “Big Beautiful Bill.” One side called the measure a masterpiece while the other condemned it as the downfall of our society. Yet, amid all this fighting, our nation experienced a real tragedy.

While politics is always important, last week the political sphere took a back seat to events happening to our neighbors. We paused bickering to read heartbreaking stories of families who lost loved ones to flooding. Stories of sisters found holding hands or parents receiving final texts just saying “I love you” broke hearts and made us reconsider what is most important in this world: family.

Like many, I am sympathetic for those families and hope in some way they can find peace. It’s unfortunate that it takes such tragedies to make us unite as a nation and reprioritize matters. We continue to keep these families in our prayers as our political fighting resumes.

The Big Beautiful Bill (House Resolution 1) addresses the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Most of these rules H.R. 1 addresses are not new. It continues to restrict SNAP benefits to U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents (green card holders), etc. but some measures were tweaked, like requiring anyone of able body to work in order to receive SNAP benefits. There are certain exceptions, like if applicants are pregnant or single with kids under 14. H.R. 1 also raised the working age requirement for SNAP recipients from 54 to 64.

While many are critical of the “new” SNAP rules, they do align with the original intent of the program that began in 1939 during the worst economic disaster in our history.

During the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, doing all within his power to help those in need, launched the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA). One of the causes of the depression was overproduction. Farmers had more crops and livestock than they could sell, and too much supply caused prices to plummet, killing farmers’ income. To combat overproduction, the AAA paid farmers to slaughter livestock and plow under crops. The goal was to level out supply and demand so prices would stabilize. While this works on paper, people had a problem with destroying food while thousands were starving.

The optics were bad and FDR knew he need to do something else. The answer was the creation of the Federal Surplus Commodities Corporation (FSCC) in 1933, which worked under the Department of Agriculture. There were two problems the FSCC faced. One, if surplus food was just given out, people would not need to buy food, hurting grocery stores and farmers. The second issue was leaders were leery of welfare or handing out something for nothing. The fear was creating a nation of people “on the dole.”

The solution was food stamps. People could buy an orange stamp from post offices or Federal Emergency Relief offices for a $1.00 and receive $.50 worth of a blue stamp for free. So, if they bought $4.00 worth of orange stamps they received $2.00 worth of blue stamps. Orange stamps could be used at grocery stores to buy anything needed and blue stamps could be used to buy the surplus food that the government had bought from farmers. This system allowed for the stores to earn money and for people to buy into the program. It worked so well that more than 20 million families used food stamps until 1943 when the program ended because WWII had brought our nation out of the depression.

While the 1950s are known as a decade of prosperity, it was not the case for all Americans. When John F. Kennedy campaigned in West Virginia, he saw how poor regions like Appalachia still were and made it a campaign promise to reinstitute the food stamp program, if elected.

True to his word, JFK’s first official executive order was to create a food stamp pilot program. Then in 1964 President Lyndon B. Johnson pushed The Food Stamp Act through Congress as part of his “War on Poverty.” The new program operated on the same principle but with new rules. The two different stamps were eliminated and participants now just bought one book of stamps. The price for the stamps was based on the family’s size and income. Basically, if someone bought a book of stamps for $10.00, it allowed them to purchase something like $30.00 worth of food or enough to feed a family a healthy diet.

The act was not an easy sell as many conservatives still worried about welfare programs. Making families buy into the program and not just receive “handouts” helped with the passage. The other selling point to conservatives was keeping the program under the USDA. It could now be seen as helping farmers. Many farm-state lawmakers, including from the South who were beginning to switch over to the Republican Party, were hesitant to support welfare programs but could get behind benefiting rural economies.

While the food stamp program grew most during Richard Nixon’s presidency and with his support, the next major changed happened during President Jimmy Carter’s term with The Food and Agriculture Act of 1977. With this act, the program created many of the changes still used today. First, there was no longer a need to buy into the program; recipients were now given vouchers, based on family size and household income, to purchase healthy meals. The second aspect was a crackdown on fraud. All participants were required to provide a Social Security number to guarantee their citizenship and allow tracking. This was to ensure they were not receiving benefits from multiple sources.

In the late 1990s, physical vouchers were discontinued in lieu of EBT (Electronic Benefit Transfer) cards. During Bill Clinton’s presidency the 1996 Welfare Reform Act was passed which required able-bodied adults to work and eliminated eligibility for legal noncitizen residents (which was restored by the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002 under George W. Bush). Finally, in 2008, the food stamp program was renamed the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

Our current SNAP program has been around for almost 100 years and is still as controversial as the day it began. While anything President Donald Trump does will come under attack, the SNAP rules under H.R. 1 are not that different from before and seem to have the original program’s intent at heart.

James Finck is a professor of American history at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma. He can be reached at HistoricallySpeaking1776@gmail.com.