GOP’s war on food stamps has long, foul history

Just over a decade ago, when Congress was taking its periodic look at the food stamp program, House Republicans lined up with their legislative hatchets.

- MICHAEL HILTZIK COLUMNIST

Their plan was to slice some $40 billion out of the program over l0 years, a benefit reduction of more than 5%. Among the promoters of the cut was Rep. Doug LaMalfa, a Republican from the far north of California. He called the proposal a “modest change” and expressed wonderment that it faced opposition, including among Republican senators.

“To think that we can’t retract just a little bit of the spending over something that’s grown exponentially in the last three or four years,” he said at an Agriculture Committee hearing.

A bit of context is needed here. First, the food stamp program — formally the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP — had grown over the previous few years because Americans had been struggling through the Great Recession.

Second, as I pointed out then, LaMalfa was among the many budget-cutting Republicans who had their snouts in the farm-subsidy trough. In his case, the farm LaMalfa co-owned with other family members collected $5.1 million in government crop subsidies from 1995 through 2012.

The proposed SNAP cuts didn’t pass, not then. But the 2013 effort reflected a long-term Republican effort to cut food assistance programs for America’s neediest families. That’s important to keep in mind now, when the Trump administration already has taken steps to cut off all SNAP funding as of Saturday.

The White House and the Department of Agriculture, which runs SNAP, blame the government shutdown, asserting that federal law prohibits it from advancing SNAP funds as long as the shutdown continues.

But that’s untrue, according to the USDA itself. As recently as Sept. 30, the agency stated in its “Lapse of Funding Plan” that $6 billion in contingency reserves that Congress had appropriated in 2024 and earlier this year would be “available to fund participant benefits in the event that a lapse occurs in the middle of the fiscal year,” which began Oct 1.