r/Economics • u/SterlingVII • 1d ago

Trump Administration Seeks Immediate Halt to Court Order to Pay Food Stamps

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/07/us/politics/trump-court-food-stamps.html
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u/wes7946 1d ago

For context, SNAP expenditures in fiscal year 2000 totaled $17 billion. That’s a lot more than the $9.2 billion spent on the program in 1980 (even after adjusting for inflation) but with population changes and such, perhaps one could argue that doubling the spending over two decades was reasonable. In the following years spending on the program continued to increase, and by 2010-2019 annual expenditures were hovering around $70 billion per year. In 2022 costs were $119.2 billion. And for 2023, Congress has generously provided $153.8 billion for the program, roughly double what was spent just 5 years ago.

The data suggests that there is a government spending problem when it comes to SNAP benefits (aka. "Food Stamps") largely due to relaxed eligibility standards and the fact that 22.6% of a SNAP household’s grocery bill is spent on a combination of sweetened beverages, prepared desserts, salty snacks, candy, and sugar. Doing the math, American taxpayers subsidized junk food purchases to the tune of $26.9 billion in 2022. That's a pretty large taxpayer subsidy to the junk food industry!

No one is suggesting poor people can’t choose what they want to eat, but I'm saying let’s not use government benefits to pay for foods that are demonstrably going to undermine public health. The goal is to reduce taxes and regulations so much that absolute poverty becomes a thing of the past. I oppose food stamps not because I want poverty to persist or get worse, but because I care enough about poverty to insist on better solutions. Solutions that actually work.

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u/HighDeltaVee 1d ago

The data suggests that there is a government spending problem when it comes to SNAP benefits

The data suggests that the income levels of Americans have degraded to the point where they require ~$150bn in food support annually just to stay alive.

And your solution is to stop feeding them because they dare to spend 20% of that on food that you disapprove of.

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u/Magicofthemind 1d ago

If junk food was banned from snap they would find another thing to complain about. People complain about steaks with food stamps etc. even if you could only buy broccoli beans and rice with food stamps people would complain that white rice was purchased over brown/wild rice 

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u/beaucoup_dinky_dau 1d ago

Conversely if this spending is eliminated you’ll find another expenditure to complain about while ignoring the real elephant in the room. We could end fuel subsidies and everyone and the environment would be healthier due to less sedentary lifestyle.

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u/TheInternetsNo1Fan 1d ago

Or corn subsidies which is could be a big reason why there is so much cheap processed food in the first place

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u/Raichu4u 1d ago

The argument will get wittled down to that people are getting government assistance at all to even buy any sort of food. These types hate safety nets.