Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Food Stamp Sticker Shock
Food Stamp Sticker Shock
Apr 20, 2025 9:05 AM

Grocery shopping is not a chore I enjoy. It’s a mundane task, and everything you buy you will have to soon replace. Then, when you finally get to the end of the chore, you look at the register and think, “HOW much??”

It gets worse.

You and I (American taxpayers) managed to “misspend” $2.4 billion this year on food stamps, now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP.)

How did we manage this?

According to the USDA’s audit for 2014, the government keeps giving food stamps to people who don’t fit the criteria. States are supposed to get such folks to pay back the debt, but that isn’t happening. While no one argues that we must have a safety net for people who cannot afford nutritional food for themselves and their families, SNAP is a bloated and wasteful mess.

At the Heritage Foundation, Robert Rector and Katherine Bradley make this mendation:

Congress and the Administration should transform food stamps into a program that encourages work and self-sufficiency, close eligibility loopholes, and, after the recession ends, reduce food stamp spending to pre-recession levels.

Alexandra Gourdikian points out that no one wants to get rid of SNAP, but there is clearly too much waste and fraud. Further, SNAP does nothing to encourage people to work or even look for work. Far too often, what this means is, once you start getting SNAP benefits, you’ll always get SNAP benefits.

Rector and Bradley also point out that SNAP benefits require no drug testing, and illegal immigrants (usually ones who have children who have been born in the U.S.) easily receive SNAP benefits.

There is one other glaring problem: the government has spent the past few years actively recruiting people for SNAP. panies like Coca-Cola and Walmart lobby for this: they make a lot of money from it. This type of crony capitalism is costing you and me big bucks at the grocery store. It’s time to end the sticker shock.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Barbie Is a Movie for Our Time. This Is a Bad Thing.
The War of the Sexes is over. Guess who won? Nobody. Read More… When I was a college boy, one of my history professors argued persuasively, if self-interestedly, that pink was the medieval European color of manliness—it was the color of living flesh, of manly health. And I certainly admire the pinks one sees in Renaissance paintings. But I’ve never been able to see the good of it in our lives. When a man puts on a suit, it had...
Christianity and Liberalism: The Spirituality of the Church in a Politicized World
It’s the 100th anniversary of J. Gresham Machen’s classic work. It didn’t change American Presbyterianism but should have. Was he just ahead of his time? Read More… J. Gresham Machen’s book Christianity and Liberalism, published 100 years ago, was a curious mix of theology and politics. Readers monly miss the political part if only because Machen, a Southern Presbyterian who labored in exile among Northern Presbyterians (the munions were divided from the Civil War to 1983), was a proponent of...
Young People Aren’t Becoming Conservatives. Here’s Why.
America’s biggest voting block doesn’t think conservatives “care.” To win, we have to change that. Read More… Almost everyone has heard the cynical political adage, generally attributed to Winston Churchill, that “Any man under 30 who is not a liberal has no heart, and any man over 30 who is not a conservative has no brains.” While the sentiment is lighthearted at its core, it municates a popular piece of political wisdom: as people get older and buy into the...
Identity Politics Is All That’s Left
George Hawley’s 2016 book, Right-Wing Critics of American Conservatism, received high marks for its balanced approach. Now he’s taken a look at the conservative response to identity politics. Unfortunately, a faulty methodology has upset that balance this time around. Read More… In a series of academic books, George Hawley has proven himself to be a thoughtful writer and thinker on American politics and its disputatious conservative and progressive elements. He is also that rare breed in contemporary academia who generally...
Hungary Is Not Viktor Orbán
Hungary’s history plicated. It’s also greater than its current leader. Hungarians still have hope for reform. What it needs is some friends. Read More… Viktor Orbán, the controversial prime minister of Hungary, has no shortage of critics or defenders. For the critics, he is an authoritarian villain, a sinister leading voice in the global populist movement. To his supporters, Orbán is a champion of traditional values, protecting the nation-state and Hungarian culture from shadowy global elites. A recent Religion and...
The Problem of Cults in Kenya
Although the overwhelming majority of Kenyans are Christians, religious con men still have a hold on many of the poor. Bringing them to justice is difficult owing to corruption, government connections, and constitutional freedom of religion. But is what they are practicing religion at all? Read More… As of 2021, Kenya’s population was estimated to be 54.7 million, and as of 2019 “approximately 85.5 percent of the total population is Christian and 11 percent Muslim. Groups constituting less than 2...
Oppenheimer and the Last Great America
Director Christopher Nolan had brought to life more than just the birth of the atomic age in his biopic of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer. He has forged worlds. Read More… The last major director we have is Christopher Nolan. As you watch his movies, you think about what it means for there to be masters of the art: people who seem to know the tools of the art so well that they are plete control of what they’re doing, yet...
The Lost-and-Found Art of Self-Branding
Re-creating the self has e big business, not to mention a matter of cultural and political controversy. But this is not a new phenomenon. It’s as old as the Garden of Eden. Read More… In Genesis 1:27, we read the following: “God created mankind in his image; in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” We are beings inextricably linked to God, yet we are constantly striving to separate ourselves from our Creator. It’s...
What Good Is a Christian Alternative Without Christ?
During his first term, George W. Bush promised that faith-based organizations that fought addiction and poverty would not be muted in their proclamation of the gospel. The heads of those organizations didn’t believe him. Read More… My last entry in this series on passionate conservatism movement concluded with a question: Would John DiIulio, head of the George W. Bush administration’s faith-based office, insist that religion-based programs, to be eligible for federal grants, be devoid of religious teaching or evangelism? I...
Alexa’s Just Not That into You
What do you do when your smart home starts outsmarting you? The dangers some forms of artificial intelligence pose are just beginning to be realized. Read More… A few weeks ago, software engineer Brandon Jackson found himself shut out of his smart home for a full week. When Alexa wouldn’t respond to mands, he called the Amazon help desk to see what the issue was. Evidently, pany locked him out because of his apparent racism: “I was told that the...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved