In 2023, the United States government appropriated $1.1 trillion for 13 anti-poverty and welfare programs. This includes $134 billion for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
The origin of food stamp programs dates back to the 1930s. At that time, for every dollar of food stamps purchased (orange stamps), an extra 50 cents in blue stamps were received to purchase foods determined as “surplus” by the Department of Agriculture. The first beneficiary of the program was in May of 1939, and the first abuse of the program was discovered by October of the same year.
The antecedent of the modern SNAP program began as the Food Stamp Act of 1964. The Act required states to develop program eligibility and for participants to purchase the stamps. For example, one dollar of purchased stamps received an additional fifty cents in stamps to be used to obtain a “low cost nutritionally adequate diet.” The original House version of the act, eliminated in the final version, would have prohibited the purchase of soft drinks. The act appropriated $75 million in funding and estimated that the program would eventually reach 4 million people at a cost of $300 million per year. The Food Stamp program has gone through dozens of revisions over the last 61 years, such as eliminating the requirement to purchase stamps, using EFT cards instead of stamps, adjusting eligibility standards, and creating the current program that now covers 40 million people at a cost of $134 billion per year.
The Food Stamp program was developed to help low-income households purchase a “nutritionally adequate diet,” which is embedded in the name “Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program.” But is the program accomplishing this purpose? After $1.9 trillion spent since the 1960s, are we a healthier society? We believe the answer to this question is an emphatic “no.” The original House version of the Food Stamp Act of 1964 disallowed the purchase of soft drinks. Today, 22.6 percent of SNAP benefits purchase sweetened drinks, desserts, salty snacks, candy, and sugar. That means $30.2 billion of your tax dollars purchase non-healthy foods each year, contributing to America’s exploding health care crisis. SNAP programs are benefiting the bottom line of soft drink and junk-food corporations, not healthy eating.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) states that 20% of children and adolescents are obese, particularly in low-income houses, resulting in an increase in Type 2 diabetes among children.
Therefore, we propose a common sense adjustment to SNAP that will help restore its original purpose and be taxpayer friendly. Eliminate the ability of SNAP to purchase soft drinks, candy, desserts, and sugary snacks. Six states have already done this, and the Trump administration is receptive to this waiver for states to adjust their SNAP programs.
We urge the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services, along with Governor Greg Gianforte, to seek a waiver from the federal government to make this change. Let’s provide SNAP to enhance healthy eating, not the bottom line of junk-food corporations. Montana will be a healthier state, health care costs will go down, and the SNAP program will move a step closer to its original purpose of enhancing the health and nutrition of Americans.
Sens. Tom McGillvray and Daniel Zolnikov are both Billings Republicans.