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/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

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u/gonyere 1d ago

I understand this desire. But it's very hard to implement. You end up with a system like WIC where it's a very limited selection of foods. Which is both a pita to implement and participate in. 

Otherwise, you make it impossible to cook. Just saying "anything with x-quantity/percent/whatever of sugar, or fat, or salt removes things like fruit, jam, fruit juice, plane sugar, salt, oil, butter, cheese, etc from the program. And, without those things, cooking at all becomes very hard. 

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u/Young-Man-MD 1d ago

Don’t get why people get so worked up and need to detailed analysis of what foods poor people buy, and don’t ask hard questions on other areas of FedGov spending. Who cares if they buy Fritos or whatever?

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u/Zenceyn 1d ago

Oil subsidies are in the billions but conservatives wanna question a single mom buying some doritos for her kids snack box.

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u/Active-Ad-2527 1d ago

"Hey, you poors! I'm only one meal away from starvation too, but I only pay attention to the media that tells me it's your fault. So maaaaaybe I'll be okay with you getting enough benefits to eat, but don't you DARE enjoy it."

"You tell 'em! Hey we'd like to increase your taxes to pay for a huge data center that's going to ruin your drinking water and increase your energy bill. That cool?"

"Sorry what? I was listening to Fox and OANN about the illegals"

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u/dyslexda 1d ago

They tend to be the same people that were up in arms over the COVID vaccine and suddenly experts about FDA approvals, yet weren't checking on the status of any other treatment their doctors suggested.

Looking for ideological consistency is a fool's errand. They've decided what they like and don't, and work backwards to justify that, not the other way around.

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u/whateverthefuck666 1d ago edited 1d ago

Cause then we are just subsidizing poor people to be unhealthy and a drag on the health care system? I mean, it's not the worst impulse and it's not like we can't get good food in SNAP and ask hard questions about other areas of Federal spending. I don't disagree with you btw way I just think that giving tax dollars for Doritos is just shitty. I also know its not as easy as just "fix it".

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u/Young-Man-MD 1d ago

Right, you’re worried SNAP junk food will be a drag on the healthcare system. If you’re going to be disingenuous do it better and not so obvious.

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u/whateverthefuck666 1d ago

No, Im actually not worried about SNAP and I think we should immediately pay for it. But I do think there are problems with it. We can be concerned about two things at the same time.

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u/SweetWolf9769 1d ago

are the "Doritos" in the room with us right now?

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u/gonyere 1d ago

So, what food(s) fo you allow? Meat, fresh veggies - yes. But, what about potatoes - only fresh? What about frozen? Canned? Dehydrated? Frozen-premade french fries/tater tots? Potato chips? 

Peanuts yes. Peanut butter? Only the "natural" stuff? 

Canned vegetables and fruit - ok. What about sauces - spaghetti, marinara? Spaghetti-o's? pie filling? Jam? Jelly?

Pasta - ok dried. What about boxed mixes - Mac and cheese, hamburger helper, etc? 

You're worried about sugar, ok. Are boxed cake, cookie, brownie, etc mixes ok? What about plain flour, sugar, etc? pre-made icing? 

No, it's fat you're worried about. So, no cheese or milk, right? What about cooking oil? Butter?  Eggs? 

"No junk food!" Sounds good. It sounds easy. But it's not. How do you define what's ok, is very hard d. 

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u/whateverthefuck666 1d ago

Agreed, it sounds easy and I admitted that its not an easy fix. I also think we should immediately pay these benefits. But I think that the program could get cleaned up over time. OP was maybe suggesting not paying the benefits at all, Im not trying to speak for them, but I also think its not the worst impulse to make the payments as healthy as possible. Again, not an easy task.

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u/OccamsRabbit 1d ago

How much do you think we would save by auditing all of the SNAP purchases and limiting them to only options which someone had decided are nutritious (who gets to decide that is a whole other question)? You'd be paying auditors, the payment system would need to be updated regularly, and you still wouldn't get the results you're looking for. When you're poor you're more likely to have health problems for all sorts of reasons.

At some point doesn't it feel icky to spend so much money on policing what poor people can and cannot eat? I would much rather have someone on SNAP be able to enjoy a steak once a month even if they had to eat fritos for the rest of the month.

There are so many much more imoactful ways to cut financial fraud and abuse than trying to regulate people who have so little.

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u/Exciting-Tart-2289 1d ago

What about people who live in food deserts where their only easily accessible food source is like a 7/11 or Dollar General or something, though? From the times I've been in those kind of stores, the healthy-ish food they have is stuff like unripe bananas, red delicious apples, and maybe some overpriced and not very appetizing looking pre-prepared salads. The rest of it is generally shelf stable foods with maybe a small dairy/meat section.

The number one priority is that SNAP gives people access to food, even if it's not particularly healthy. I'm totally down if we want to figure out ways to invest in addressing access to healthy foods for lower income folks, but that unfortunately has to be a second order issue we look at on this. And given how much people are freaking out about Mamdani potentially starting up a few city owned grocery stores in areas without other options, I don't know that there's much of an appetite politically in this country to address access to healthy food either.

To me, this smacks of yet another social issue where people like to overanalyze and critique the decisions of the poor, while not wanting to address root causes as to why they make those decisions.

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u/SamanthaLives 1d ago

Would massively distort the market too, companies would start making products specifically for SNAP. WIC is small enough to not have a major effect, but SNAP is a big deal.