SNAP recipients would get shelf-stable milk, cereals, pasta, peanut butter, beans and canned — but no fresh — fruit and vegetables. https://t.co/MMLPjncH1M
— NPR (@NPR) February 13, 2018
Mick Mulvaney’s brill idea seems to have evaporated overnight, but Repubs never give up on a proposal that looks like a chance to screw The Undeserving while allowing a little free-market looting… er, “privatization”… of the common treasury. So I figure we’ll soon be seeing sketches of the proposed Versace-designed uniforms for the troops of the ‘SNAP czar’ in charge of seeing those people are humiliated and starved for the crime of being poor:
The Trump administration is proposing a major shake-up in one of the country’s most important “safety net” programs, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps. Under the proposal, most SNAP recipients would lose much of their ability to choose the food they buy with their SNAP benefits.
The proposal is included in the Trump administration budget request for fiscal year 2019. It would require approval from Congress…
Currently, SNAP beneficiaries get money loaded onto an EBT card they can use to buy what they want as long as it falls under the guidelines. The administration says the move is a “cost-effective approach” with “no loss in food benefits to participants.”
The USDA believes that state governments will be able to deliver this food at much less cost than SNAP recipients currently pay for food at retail stores — thus reducing the overall cost of the SNAP program by $129 billion over the next 10 years.
This and other changes in the SNAP program, according to the Trump administration, will reduce the SNAP budget by $213 billion over those years — cutting the program by almost 30 percent.
Joel Berg, CEO of Hunger Free America, a hunger advocacy group that also helps clients access food-assistance services, said the administration’s plan left him baffled. “They have managed to propose nearly the impossible, taking over $200 billion worth of food from low-income Americans while increasing bureaucracy and reducing choices,” Berg says…
It isn’t clear how billions of dollars’ worth of food each year would be distributed to millions of SNAP recipients who live all over the country, including dense urban areas and sparsely populated rural regions. The budget says states will have “substantial flexibility in designing the food box delivery system through existing infrastructure, partnerships or commercial/retail delivery services.”
Critics of the proposal said distributing that much food presents a logistical nightmare. “Among the problems, it’s going to be costly and take money out of the [SNAP] program from the administrative side. It’s going to stigmatize people when they have to go to certain places to pick up benefits,” says Jim Weill, president of the nonprofit Food Research and Action Center…
According to Dean, from CBPP, the Trump administration wants to trim an additional $80 billion from the SNAP program by cutting off about 4 million people who currently receive food assistance. Most of them live in states that have decided to loosen the program’s eligibility requirements slightly. Under the administration’s proposal, states would no longer be able to do so…
Of course, the biggest beneficiaries of SNAP are American farmers and local food retailers, both of whom need those ‘food stamp moochers’ as paying customers.
For more background, Simon Maloy at Media Matters has a good summary of the “decades of conservative lies about welfare” behind “Trump’s SNAP attack”.
1. What if you don't receive your box one month?
2. What if you're homeless?
3. What if you don't have a place to receive mail?
4. What if you move frequently?
5. What if you have allergies?
6. What if the box gets wet, or animals get into it?— Annie Lowrey (@AnnieLowrey) February 13, 2018
(Fifty-four more excellent questions from Lowrey here.)
The government contractor could only manage delivering 50,000 of the 30 million meals contracted for Puerto Rico, but I'm sure they'll give the job of packing and delivering boxes of cans to 16.4 million households to a more qualified crony.
— Schooley (@Rschooley) February 13, 2018
Maybe I’m a little suspicious of Trump’s “box of food” plan considering his “Puerto Rico relief” pic.twitter.com/XmWwnChIOS
— Steve Marmel (@Marmel) February 13, 2018
How can any conservative–or anyone–back Trump's "food box" proposal? It's a Big Government, one-size-fits-all, the government know best, we're giving you no-choice plan. And it will be more expensive & less flexible & efficient than food stamps. https://t.co/c3EgrIN7r0
— Steven Greenhouse (@greenhousenyt) February 14, 2018
The idea that USDA would provide millions of low-income people packages of food on a national scale has not been floated by conservative think tanks, promoted by industry, or sought by previous administrations. https://t.co/q3dgdOusKk
— Helena Bottemiller Evich (@hbottemiller) February 13, 2018
Maybe Uber, trying to get the contract to deliver the boxes. https://t.co/cBQBMeQvBF
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) February 13, 2018
It's strange how willing headline writers can be to accept the White House's comically absurd framing, like their calling a monthly box of packaged cheap food that is nothing like Blue Apron a "Blue Apron-type program." pic.twitter.com/QhkCtlYGck
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) February 13, 2018
The irony of the Trump food assistance proposal is that if it ever came to fruition, the lousy meals would instantly become known as “Trump Boxes”.
The Trump brand would forever be associated with poverty.
— The Hoarse Whisperer (@HoarseWisperer) February 14, 2018
It will be called ESL for "eat shoots and leaves" https://t.co/JmeK9rFnob
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) February 13, 2018
For the people who think SNAP recipients getting a box of cereal, peanut butter, canned goods and NO FRESH VEGETABLES is somehow like @blueapron, here’s an image of what blue apron boxes look like: pic.twitter.com/XOyTHIYoBz
— Jennifer Wright (@JenAshleyWright) February 13, 2018
For the grace note that adds that true Trumpian fillip, the actual Blue Apron company has been hemorrhaging subscribers for the past year…
So the administration wants to replace food stamps with food boxes to ensure that people only eat healthy food pic.twitter.com/hpJ7OvdRsG
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) February 13, 2018
Duane
Remember the Commodity Food Program? My grandparents got them in the 60’s. Black and white packaging, no one knew who made them. Get a contract, sell your surplus to the government, profit! The bastards find another way to rob us everyday.
NobodySpecial
If there was an afterlife, I would hope they are subjected to every indignity that they try and heap on the poor.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
These people aren’t very Christian.
cthulhu
Having become an off and on customer of Blue Apron, I will point out that while their meals are both tasty and pretty nutritious, the cost for TWO meals for a family of FOUR is $75/week. Forget about breakfast. Forget about lunch. Forget about snacks.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Retired CIA officer breaks down on air
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niDf6M_IsAg
SiubhanDuinne
That Krugman tweet, with the photo, is some extremely fine burn.
Villago Delenda Est
The ignorance, probably with malice aforethought, of SNAP is appalling in this country. As Anne points out, this program not only feeds people, it provides economic stimulus without a parasite middleman.
NotMax
Two points:
1) It’s a non-starter (and even those proposing it know that)
2) It’s deliberate “ooh, shiny” misdirection.
Mike J
Too many links for wordpress, but google has this:
Blue Apron Holdings Inc Stock Is Likely Headed to Zero
Blue Apron Has New CEO, Same Broken Model
Blue Apron Stock Is Now Cheaper Than a Blue Apron Meal
Blue Apron: $3 and Still Not Cheap Enough?
BLUE APRON’S TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE, NO GOOD, VERY BAD WEEK
Blue Apron Performance Marred By Weak Financials, Fierce Competition
This is the model we wish to emulate? It should come as no surprise that Trump, who ran casinos into the ground, wants to emulate a completely failed dot bust.
lgerard
Oddly enough, this is almost exactly like the food distribution system they had in North Korea until the mid-nineties collapse of the economy ended it.
Mary G
Because shipping canned food will be so inexpensive. I have just been in a rage all day tweeting at Republican thoughts and prayers people.
ChrisH
Discovered today that a friend who has routinely organized group theater viewings of just about every Marvel film of the past two years has no interest in watching Black Panther and I’m going “…huh…”
lgerard
@Mike J:
But it will work great when we combine it with the other failed model Uber!
Achrachno
@Villago Delenda Est: “without a parasite middleman.”
You found the problem!
efgoldman
Schumer and senate Dems will croak most of this crap before it even gets to the floor. They’re going to have a busy year.
BTW, the asshole Mulvaney was quoted as saying he wouldn’t vote for it if he were still in congress (no link, sorry).
He’s the fucking budget director. He wrote the fucking thing.
Walker
My understanding is that farm subsidies were always part of the deal to keep food stamps/SNAP. If the deal is being broken, it is time to break it all the way.
efgoldman
@Villago Delenda Est:
The first thing they deny: most of the benefits go to WWC people.
Mike J
@Walker: Find me the state with no farmers and I’ll show you the senator that might vote for that.
Omnes Omnibus
@ChrisH: Weird. It is the only one that I am considering seeing in a theater.
fuckwit
Much better idea, and much cheaper: why not just line the poor up against a wall, and shoot them all?
No, that won’t do. Bullets are expensive. And it would traumatize the soldiers who’d have to shoot them.
What to do? I’ve got it! We can tell the poor they’re getting a free shower. Then when they get into the shower, we flood the room with cynanide gas. Kills them all. No bullets required, no shooters, much less labor required. Then we can cremate the bodies so we don’t have a huge burial problem.
At last! A final solution to America’s poverty problem! It’s genius!
hellslittlestangel
Just like Blue Apron, but with dented cans, open boxes and expiration dates in the past.
B.B.A.
I remember when “government cheese” was mocked by conservatives as pointlessly wasteful liberal largesse, and at least food stamps left it to the private sector.
Now, though, bring on the gummint cheese.
jl
I, for one, am glad that the Trumpsters, someone, anyone, finally had the courage to stand up and talk about the horrific incentive destroying, soul crushing effects of FRESH fruit and vegetables. Been swept under the carpet too long.
Fresh fruit and vegetables have been destroying the poor for far too long. It’s time something be done about it.
I’m not even sure that the average person in the Trumpster base cares at all about fruit and vegetables, fresh or canned. Maybe just nice to know something that sounds fancy is being taken away from those people.
Edit: what do the supermarkets have to say about this? Walmart sells a lot of groceries these days. Would be a big fight for a dingbat program that is far less efficient. I think the proposal is red meat window dressing for dingbat Trumpster base and won’t go anywhere. They won’t keep track of what happens to it, and when it dies a few months from now, only the PR from the announcement will be the lasting benefit. And since the proposal is far less efficient, what does big ag have to say, they’ll lose market.
Villago Delenda Est
@hellslittlestangel: All necessary to get the maximum profit for the hard working contractor.
efgoldman
@Walker:
Kansas congresscritters, no matter how conservative otherwise, always voted and spoke for food stamps+subsidies. Then the KKKrazy KKKaukkkus took over in the state and in congress.
One of the kkkraziest of the kkkaukkkus got primaried out because he voted against the farm bill.
mai naem mobile
I would like to see Dolt45 living off the food for 3 days. I give him half a day.
OT This story on Reince Priebus is pretty entertaining. I’d love to know who the Republican COS there were. I think Reagans have died. Guessing Jim Baker,Andy Card and Josh Bolten were there.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/02/reince-priebus-opens-up-about-his-six-months-of-magical-thinking
Sab
Canned food is, by definition, not fresh, highly processed, and very salty.
Almost like they are more interested in incapacitating the recipients.
However, I do not think these guys are that bright. I do not believe there is a male in the West Wing capable of frying or boiling an egg.
I do not think there is a male in the West Wing who knows the basics about nutrition that any housewife knows.
Just a bunch of grown up Republican fratboys being evil to entertain each other.
This is who they are. This is what our government is.
Mike J
@B.B.A.: Government cheese
jl
@Sab: Maybe this is how GOPers plan to win back those dang kids, who have ungratefully turned their backs. Kids and teens around the country will come running to dig that mac ‘n’ cheese mix, soda pop, and cupcakes out of the weekly boxes. And, damn, the GOP will make themselves some young Republicans for life.
efgoldman
@Sab:
Will the boxes include Cheetos? They are a basic food group at Hair Furor properties
Corner Stone
@fuckwit: I am wondering where Adam is to chide you.
NotMax
Address to:
North Side Refrigerator Carton #3
Main Street Underpass
Shantytown, USA
dnfree
@Duane: When I was in college (1960s) there was some kind of government food program that supplied part of the cafeteria food. Hence we got giant anchovies in our salads. Never mind that no one I knew wanted anchovies in their salad. They had to be gotten rid of somehow.
MobiusKlein
@Corner Stone: give it a rest.
Joshua Norton
So if you’re diabetic you’re pretty much screwed. They might as well just give you a bag of flour and a bag of sugar since mostly what you’d be eating is loaded with carbohydrates that will send your blood sugar into the stratosphere.
Corner Stone
@MobiusKlein: Fuck you. And fuck off.
NotMax
@dnfree
Summer camp I worked at used to get in #10 cans of peas from the wholesaler with the following message prominently printed in bold inside a box on the front label:
Product Does Not Meet Minimum USDA Standards.
Directly beneath that, also in bold (but outside the box) was this:
Above notice mandatory. Peas actually high quality.
Corner Stone
@Joshua Norton: Or an IV bag of glucose. Either way.
Jay Noble
Say what you will about the “Circle of Life” that was farm subsidies/food stamps/commodities in the 60s and 70s, there are quite a few of us who wouldn’t be here now without them. Every public school got commodities so hot lunch programs proliferated. Farmers were still mostly family businesses and these helped to even out the visciitudes of the free market. Poor and low income families like mine got to buy fresh foods and had staples in the cupboard. The packaging/processing and transportion folks were kept busy.
And then came Ronnie and the “strapping young bucks eating T-bones” lies and the corporatizition of farming from the field to bakery. I’ll stop right here before I blow another fuse on this piece of idiocy from the Republicans
Jay Noble
@Sab: Humanity seemed to do okay on canned and preserved goods oh for millenia. The difference is – – – we don’t burn the calories sitting at a desk pushing pixels the way a farmer or bricklayer or sailor did.
Steve in the ATL
@NotMax:
Address to:
North Side Refrigerator Carton #3
Union Square
San Francisco, CA
Based on recent observations
RandomMonster
I’m sure there are some warehouses full of Reagan cheese somewhere that can be put to use for this enlightened program.
stinger
I can’t see Lowrey’s other questions, but I can think of some off the top of my head:
What if your box is “delivered” and left outside your door, and someone steals it?
What if you have to go somewhere to pick up your box, because Trump/Pence decide individual delivery is too expensive, and you work two jobs trying to make ends meet, and the pickup location isn’t open during the only time you can get there, or it is but the buses no longer run, and you have to walk 20 blocks home carrying a cardboard box full of canned food?
What if during that walk you are mugged? Can you get a replacement box? How soon? How will you prove you were mugged and aren’t just trying to weasel a second box of canned food?
What if you give birth while on the program? Will Trump/Pence know and will they include food for the baby in the next boxes?
How many meals’ worth of canned food can be put into a cardboard box?
Who determines what food is included? Will it be balanced nutritionally to any degree?
Will it be the same food every time, so you can plan around it? Or will it be a surprise?
NotMax
Real hard core Ruspublicans would insist the box also contain a carton of generic cigarettes.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@stinger:
Everybody loves surprises. //
Brachiator
Will they also sell the poor gold plated Trump brand can openers?
NotMax
@BillinGlendaleCA
Made me recall a semi-running gag on The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis – a reference now and again to a shelf in his father’s grocery store full up with cans of “pickled sow belly” which had (by intimation) been sitting there unsold for years.
JaneE
We have done this before. It was unwieldy and a lot of food was wasted, and people still were hungry. One reason to switch to food stamps was to allow assistance recipients the dignity of choosing their own food to eat. Almost certainly the reason for the return of commodities is to deny recipients any choice at all.
randy khan
The conservative meme about this is how terrible it is for liberals to be against giving food to poor people instead of money. Of course, this shows how little they know about SNAP (since, you know, you can only use SNAP to get food), but I do feel like the proper reply is “Since when are you in favor of the government deciding what people can eat?” (Perhaps with a dollop of “And you want to spend the money to deliver the food to them, rather than making them get it themselves?”)
John Revolta
And I’ll betcha that they’ll have special Food Boxes for poor people who keep kosher, right? Or even……….(wait for it)………….halal?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA I slay me
1000 flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
The Fair Food Network sponsors a program called Double Up Bucks that lets SNAP recipients increase their purchasing power at farmers’ markets–they’ve expanded from Michigan to at least 20 states so far.
But Big Corn and Big Wheat and Big Sugar and the rest of Big Ag aren’t going to make any money off that kind of hippie nonsense.
On the other hand, I bet Big Chicken & Big Pork don’t like this plan of Trump’s very much. Not much in it for them!
Aleta
Thinking of the grift and the graft and the cans of peas and subsidized meat products is a whole new nightmare. How shrunken do you have to be to take advantage of food programs and shame people for hunger. Also, they’re lying.
Aleta
@stinger: Where do you go if your box doesn’t arrive? How do you get there? Or do you call a number, enter your codes, wait 15 min. Make a report by pressing 1 and 2s to answer questions. Then wait 3 weeks to see if it comes.
Origuy
Someone pointed out that in certain times of the year in Maine, lobster costs no more than chicken. Certainly this plan would not take into account local suppliers; national brands would get the contracts
My housemates tried Blue Apron for a while. The meals were good, but forget about reusing the recipes. There was always one ingredient that was impossible to find..
TriassicSands
Humiliating the poor is always Job 1 for the Republicans. Anything they can do to make life more difficult for the poor is a source of recreation for the monsters in the GOP. They’ve made it clear that they don’t care at all about deficits (unless a Dem is in the White House), so the claim that this will save money is entirely bogus — both from a logistical standpoint and as a matter of principle.
Democrats need to do everything they can to keep this kind of thing from happening before November. After that, if the Republicans still control both houses, we can expect two years of carnage.
Grover Gardner
Maybe they’ll hire that wedding planner who did such a great job sending emergency meals to Puerto Rico.
opiejeanne
@Jay Noble: And some of them still died early because of their poor diets and hard work, like my grandmother’s brother who dropped dead at age 45 while plowing.
opiejeanne
@RandomMonster: was it Reagan cheese? I thought we encountered it a couple of years before Reagan was elected. My husband’s grandparents were supposed to distribute the stuff at their senior center but after everyone had dealt with one brick of the stuff they had trouble giving it away. They tried to stick us with a couple of bricks of the stuff. I think we broke it into smaller bricks and froze what we weren’t going to use right away. We didn’t like it but felt guilty about wasting it. I think we ate a lot of grilled cheese sandwiches.
opiejeanne
@stinger: Canned whelks and other delights.’
‘I’m joking. those are expensive and I don’t think they are a domestic product.
Kraft Mac n Cheese, baked beans if you’re lucky, canned peas and corn and green beans, peaches and pears if you’re lucky, shelf stable milk and some form of cereal. Maybe some pasta and tomato sauce. Canned tuna would be good but I kind of doubt they’ll include it because it’s not as cheap as the other things.
TriassicSands
It will be important for the boxes to be day-glo orange — so that everyone will know you’re a “taker.” With any luck they will be able to develop a dye that will come off on people’s hands and then be “set” by the oils on the skin. That way, anyone getting SNAP will have permanently stained orange hands. This is such a great outlet for Republican creativity.
NorthLeft12
@TriassicSands: I remember my few weeks in 1983 collecting unemployment insurance in Canada after the plant I was working in shutdown. I received a bright pink check for my modest amount of money that was to tide me over until my next job. And this was/is a program that everyone working in Canada is required to pay into.
So yeah, shame and identification of your situation is a requirement of a “properly” functioning program.
rikyrah
@ChrisH:
Uh huh
Uh huh ?
rikyrah
The evil never sleeps with these muthaphuckas ??
singing truth to power
@efgoldman: What are WWC people?
West of the Cascades
@singing truth to power: White Working Class
pluky
@ChrisH: When people show you who they really are, believe them.