November 17, 2025 • 21 mins
In this episode of One Thing Trump Did, we look at SNAP benefits, which were partially halted by the government shutdown. The Trump Administration has claimed that the SNAP program, which has helped feed the poorest Americans for decades, is filled with fraud and needs to be reformed. Jeremy is joined by Diane Schanzenbach, an economist and Chair at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University. #SNAP #SNAPbenefits #EBT #Trump #USDA #poverty #povertyline #inflation #groceries
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
We've never really had a situation where we didn't have
SNAP as this fundamental building block of the social safety net,
and I certainly know that we will not be able
to replace what's lost with private charity. We cannot food
bank our way out of this problem, and I'm really
worried about woe we'll see.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Welcome to One Thing Trump did, available exclusively on the
Middle Podcast feed. I'm Jeremy Hobson, and each week on
this podcast, and you know this if you're a regular listener,
we pick one thing coming out of the Trump White
House and break it down in a nonpartisan way with
someone who knows what they're talking about. And this week,
our one thing is the federal program known as SNAP.
(00:47):
That's the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance program used to be called
food stamps. The program is administered by the US Department
of Agriculture and provides food assistance benefits to low income households.
Last year, almost forty two million people received SNAP benefits
each month. But as you've probably heard, the SNAP program
got caught up in the government shutdown, had to stop
(01:10):
for many recipients. Some eventually got partial benefits. Now that
the government has reopened, SNAP benefits are back, but the
White House has been saying that the program has problems
and needs to be reformed. Here's the Agriculture Secretary Brick
Rollins speaking on CNN.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
SNAP is a broken program. SNAP is full of corruption.
We found one hundred and eighty six thousand dead people.
We asked for the SNAP data earlier this year. Has
never been turned over to the federal government.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Before.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
We had twenty nine states turn it over, mostly red states.
Twenty one states said no, thank you for litigation. From
just those twenty nine states, we have found again almost
two hundred thousand dead people. It's just it's remarkable.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Well, for more on SNAP, I am joined by Diane Shanzenbach,
who's an economist and chair at the McCourt School of
Public Policy at Georgetown University. Diane, it's great to.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Have you here, great to be here.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Well, so let's start with the basics. Forty two million
people on SNAP benefits. Who are they?
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Broadly, so SNAP goes to low income families. Generally, your
income has to be below one hundred and thirty percent
of the poverty line and that's the primary thing that
makes you eligible or not. And so you know who
is low income in the United States, well, about forty
percent of the people on SNAP are children, about twenty
(02:27):
percent are older Americans ages sixty and above, and then
the rest are some mix of adults with low levels
of education and very very low incomes. Parents working, parents
that you know are qualify for SNAP because they've got
relatively low incomes and lots of expenses, you know, things
like that. But it's low income Americans on this program.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Well, and just to give people an idea of what
that means, one hundred and thirty percent of above the
poverty level. The eligibility cut up off is forty one
seven and ninety five dollars for a family of four
per year.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
That's right. These are really, you know, low income Americans.
A lot of them are working, a lot of them
are retired, on fixed incomes, et cetera. But they're really
live in paycheck to paycheck or even in some cases
hand to mouth.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
And if you are that family of four on SNAP,
do you get just the one hundred and eighty seven
dollars a month for all four people?
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Now that's the average amount per person per month person, Okay,
and then the amount that you get you know that
we talked about one eighty eight is the average per
person per month. But there's a range from the maximum
benefit which is something like two hundred and two hundred
and forty maybe dollars per person down to a minimum
(03:50):
benefit for most household sizes of about twenty dollars per
person per month. And it's the Snap benefits get reduced
as your income goes up, and so it's really it's
designed to meet the gap between the resources you've got
for food and then the amount that the government says
(04:11):
it costs to have a healthy diet.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
And when you take that EBT card with your SNAP
benefits on it, you can use it at the supermarket?
Can you use it anywhere else? What can you buy
with it? Are there limitations? Can you go into the
supermarket and only buy certain things with that?
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Yeah, you should think about it, as you can purchase
most groceries at most grocery outlets. So in order to
be able to redeem your Snap benefits, the retailer has
to participate. But as you can imagine, a lot of
retailers have a big incentive to want to participate because
you know, in many places, you know, this is a
lot of grocery money that can be spent, so you'll see,
(04:53):
you know, other sort of stores. Convenience stores will often
say EBT or snap you know, can be deemed here
sometimes convenience stores like the wah Wah or seven to
eleven something like that. But then most of the benefits
are redeemed at what we think of as either grocery
stores or the bigger retail markets things like Walmart, Target,
(05:15):
et cetera.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
So when you say most groceries, like, what can you
use it to buy?
Speaker 1 (05:21):
So, according to the programmer rules, it's foods that don't
include hot foods intended for immediate consumption. You know. Also
you can't buy vitamins. You can't buy things that aren't food,
like you can't buy paper towels, things like that. I
encourage you not to eat paper towels. But also alcohol,
you know, tobacco, nothing like that. And a lot of
(05:44):
people don't know. Of course, the way that we've shopped
has changed over time, and a lot of families, you know,
I've got three teenagers myself, rely on things like rotisserie
chickens from the grocery store, and so they wonder, like,
why is it that you can't buy a rotisserie chicken
when that's such a useful ingredient for dinner, and that,
(06:06):
as I understand, it goes back to the nineteen seventies
when Kentucky Fried Chicken took the program to court and said,
you you know, it's unfair competitive advantage to let you
use these benefits only at grocery stores. And so my
understanding is that's when they drew that line. And of course,
you know then so much of you know, our ability
(06:28):
to buy partially prepared foods at the grocery store have changed.
But really where they draw the line is hot. So
you'll see sometimes at stores you can buy a cold sandwich,
but if you want us to toast it, you can't
use your snap benefits, and so you get some kind
of silly edge cases. But that's basically the idea is
just this normal stuff in your grocery cart.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Yeah. I mean, it's interesting that the way that this
program is set up, it's not like there's a national
food bank to give people food. That is, it is
relying on private businesses to make this work.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
This is one of the reasons as an economist I
love this program is because it uses our very efficient
private sector. You know, we're really good at getting food
onto shelves at grocery stores, you know, all over the nation.
Sure there are places where there are food deserts and
things like that, but by and large, the market works
(07:22):
really well here. And then the benefits are in terms
of dollars. So you get to decide, you know, how
do I want to trade off, you know, given prices
and my family's tastes and preferences, and so you know,
this week, Gala apples might be on sale, and so
we're going to buy those instead of naval oranges or
et cetera.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
You know.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
So it's people get to make their own choices. They
face real prices, and it uses the best of the market.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
And it was started around the time of the Great Depression.
Has it, over the course of time faced political hurdles.
Have people said this is too expensive, We've got to
get rid of this SNAP program, or conversely, we need
to expand this SNAP program greatly.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
It was really launched in its current setting as part
of the War on Poverty in the early nineteen sixties,
and the program has been really very similar ever since then,
and up until really the last month, there's been great
bipartisan agreement that this is you know, a highly functioning program,
(08:24):
you know, uses the private sector. It addresses you know,
hunger and food and security, and really does it in
a very effective manner.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
So you've never seen it be taken away the way
that it was during the shutdown just now.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Oh no, it's never been not funded like it was
during the shutdown, and so you know, so we were
really experiencing something that's never happened before. And you know,
I think many of us will be unpacking what happened
as a result for you know, weeks and months and
probably even years to come.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Well what have you heard about that? I mean, just
even for a few days for people not to be
able to access these benefits. What was happening.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
I'm on the board of our local food bank in Chicago,
and we saw a week over week a forty percent
increase in the number of people who had to come
to our partner sites to get food. You know, like
I said before, a lot of people on this program
live either paycheck to paychecked or even really hand to mouth,
and any delay, any interruption, is going to come with
(09:30):
hunger and real hardship. And you know, that's what we saw.
And I'll say that the Feeding America Network and other
food banks. She saw this coming. We really worked hard
to try to do everything we could to feed our neighbors.
But SNAP is such a large scope and it reaches
so many people. Write one out of every eight Americans
that you're never going to be able to food bank
(09:51):
your way out of this problem. The reason that private
sector charity works is because we've got this strong program
underlying it.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
So now that it's restarted, what are you hearing, since
this has never happened before, what are you hearing about
the challenges of states restarting the benefits. I was reading
that it's more difficult for the states that actually paid
partial benefits because then they have to figure out how
much to give to the people that didn't get their
full benefits versus the states that didn't give any benefits
(10:20):
at all, and they can just fund the full card
now a little bit late.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
That's exactly right. I mean, we've never been in a
position where we needed to fund partial benefits, and so,
you know, I'm sure that they'll work it through. But
you know, they were certainly trying to do the right
thing by getting as much money out as possible to
try to, you know, help their citizens afford enough to eat.
But then this you know, start and stop, and all
(10:45):
the changing rules that were happening day to day during
the government shutdown really caused a lot of just both
unneeded stress and then unneeded administrative costs. And nobody likes
to burn money on administrative costs.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
And anybody that's on the other side of that, I
just can imagine, you know, somebody trying to log into
the website to get their benefits and if there's a problem,
like with all these people trying to do that at
the same time, it's not going to be easy if
there's an issue, and you.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Can imagine those parents who have hungry kids to feed
and they're you know, logging in and hoping that the
benefits will be loaded on so that can go to
the grocery store. And it's just really unthinkable that we
put so many Americans through such a tough time.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
We'll stay with us because in a moment we're going
to talk about some of the Trump administration's criticisms of
the program in general and also the issue of work requirements.
One thing Trump did with economist Diane Schanzenbach will be
right back. Welcome back to one thing Trump did exclusively
(12:03):
on the Middle podcast feed, I'm Jeremy Hobson. We are
talking about SNAP benefits and we are doing that with
economist Diane Shanzenbach at the mccurt School of Public Policy
at Georgetown University. Diane, the so called Big Beautiful Bill
had some changes to the work requirements for SNAP benefits,
and in fact, the Biden administration also tightened work requirements.
(12:26):
What has changed over the last several years when it
comes to what you have to do in order to
get these benefits?
Speaker 1 (12:31):
All right, So the work requirement in SNAP is tied
to the number of hours that you work, and it
only applies historically to adults without children in the household
that aren't elderly and aren't disabled. So usually it would,
you know, for those ages eighteen to forty nine, and
some people like veterans and holos, folks and children who
(12:56):
just aged out of foster care were exempted from that.
It's really important to think about when you think about
work requirements, is it may be reasonable to ask someone
to work when the economy is good, but oftentimes the
economy gets soft, and because we've got such a large
and dynamic economy, you know, the overall unemployment rate might
(13:19):
be five percent, but in the area where you live
it could be ten percent. And of course, added to that,
because so many people on SNAP have lower levels of education,
they've got other characteristics that mean their you know, attachment
to the labor force is lower. They just generally face
higher levels of unemployment than the overall population. All of
(13:42):
this together means that in many, many cases, it's just
not realistic to ask someone to work twenty hours a
week in exchange for benefits. What happened as part of
the One Big Beautiful Bill Act was sort of twofold.
One is, they expanded the share of people on SNAP
who are subject to these work requirements, pushed it all
(14:03):
the way up to age sixty four. So even though
many of those older Americans you know are already retired,
they're collecting early Social Security benefits. According to SNAP, they're
subject to a work requirement, you know. They eliminated those
waivers for veterans and homeless individuals, et cetera, and then
also added some parents of older children, so more people
(14:25):
are exposed to the work requirements. But the second big
thing is that in bad economic times, it's much harder
now to waive the work requirements and such that. You know,
I'm quite worried that, you know, when we have another
economic downturn or in places where we still haven't seen,
(14:46):
you know, a full economic recovery, we're going to be
taking away people's food when they really have no reasonable
chance of getting a job. Well.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
And in fact, I saw that the largest number of
Americans on SNAP was right after the financial crisis. I
think it went up to like forty seven million or
something like that, and now I said, we're down at
forty two million. During COVID, the numbers were expanded as well,
and that's one of the things that President Trump has
been pointing to. Oh, they expanded the program during COVID,
(15:17):
We've got to bring it back down. What about that?
What about this criticism from the Trump administration. We just
heard Secretary Rollins say there's fraud, there's dead people on
the roles, et cetera.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
It's a really well run program. Certainly, there's you know,
there's always you know, some people that slip through the cracks,
but it's a program that takes you know, fraud and
program integrity extremely seriously. And you know, I just think
to a first order, no they're not dead people on
(15:50):
the roles. It is absolutely true that when the economy
gets soft, more people lose their jobs and lose income
and then become eligible for SNAP. And something that I
think we all get frustrated with is that the economy
doesn't recover at the same rate for all people in
all places, and so you know, whereas lots of people
(16:13):
lost their jobs at the same time, it varies and
how quickly they can regain their jobs. Now, another thing
that I want to add is we've seen an increase
in SNAP you know, enrollment SNAP roles in recent years,
and some of that's also being driven by the aging
of the baby boomers, because more and more of them,
(16:34):
you know, are you know, getting older and you know,
getting onto Social Security and have low enough incomes that
they qualify. And so I said a few minutes ago
that about twenty percent of people on SNAP are older Americans.
That used to be more like ten percent, and that's
increased dramatically recently. And we of course know what the
(16:57):
baby boomer generation looks like. You know, it's like you know,
the food going through the snake, right, they've sort of
just are getting an order.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Now. A lot of what the Trump administration has done.
You can go right back in and look at Project
twenty twenty five from the Heritage Foundation and see what
the plans are they do talk about snap benefits. What
are you expecting the administration to try and do when
it comes to snap.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
The other piece and the one big beautiful bill Act
that I really think will fundamentally change this program is
for the first time ever, they're saying that states need
to contribute a substantial portion to the actual benefit levels
that's coming in very quickly over the next couple of
years and really shifts this large portion of money onto
(17:49):
state budgets. For a number of reasons, you know, states
aren't prepared to do that, and because this program gets
larger during bad economic times. There are some features of
state budgets, most of them have balanced budget requirements, which
means that states can't more freely spend during bad economic
(18:11):
times like the federal government can. And so we're as
an economist, I'm really worried about how the state share
of benefits, if we really do implement that in a
couple of years, will then undermine the effectiveness of this
program in terms of being you know, a countercyclical stimulus
(18:32):
and really catch people when they're hitting bad economic times.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Well, how bad could things get if the benefits really
do go away for a lot of people. Could we
see in this country in you know, twenty twenty five
or twenty twenty six or twenty twenty seven, the kind
of just out in public hunger that you see in
places like India and other countries around the world.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Boy, I mean, I hope not, but we just we've
never really had a situation where we didn't have SNAP
as this fundamental building block of the social safety net.
And you know, I certainly know that we will not
be able to replace what's lost with private charity. We
cannot food bank or way out of this problem, and
(19:16):
I'm really worried about.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
What we'll see.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Let me just finally ask you why, as an economist
you decided to become such an expert in this in
SNAP benefits.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Food is such an interesting thing to study. Everybody's got
different preferences, and you know, it's something that you have
to buy with high frequency. You know, anybody who's taken
econ one O one will maybe remember that if we
give you an inkind benefit instead of cash, it might
make you shift. How you purchase things. So I got
hooked on this more than twenty years ago as a
(19:48):
graduate student, and just as I've gotten deeper and deeper
into it, it just gets more and more interesting.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
When you're teaching your students about this. Is it difficult,
especially if they're at a school like Georgetown where they're
paying so much money. I mean every school is very
expensive now, but where they're paying so much money to go,
do they understand what it means to live in poverty
in this country and you know, need snap benefits to survive.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
You know, I always have at least one or two
students realize, Oh, when we had to move when I
was a younger kid, that was because dad lost his job,
and that's because of the economy. And you know, you'll
see sort of you know, lights go off in their
head on this.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
You know.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
I think that you're right though, that many of us
don't understand what it's like to live and poverty. You know,
one thing that they often challenge folks to do is
try to live for a week on a snap budget
and see how difficult it is. I mean, we're fortunate
that we don't have to make the tough choices that
(20:55):
so many of these families have to have to make
and I think, you know, developing some empathy, especially you know,
around the holiday season is a worthwhile exercise.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
That is Diane Schanzenbach, who's an economist and chair at
the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University. Diane,
thank you so much for coming on. Thank you so much,
and thanks to you for listening to One Thing Trump Did.
It was produced by Harrison Patino. Our next middle episode
is coming to your podcast feed later this week. We're
going to be discussing artificial intelligence again and talking about
(21:26):
whether it excites you or you're scared that it's going
to destroy us all. That is actually the title of
the show. Are you excited or You're scared It's going
to destroy us all? If you like this podcast, please
rate it and write a review. Our theme music was
composed by Noah ha I Do. I'm Jeremy Hobson and
I'll talk to you soon.
We've never really had a situation where we didn't have
SNAP as this fundamental building block of the social safety net,
and I certainly know that we will not be able
to replace what's lost with private charity. We cannot food
bank our way out of this problem, and I'm really
worried about woe we'll see.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Welcome to One Thing Trump did, available exclusively on the
Middle Podcast feed. I'm Jeremy Hobson, and each week on
this podcast, and you know this if you're a regular listener,
we pick one thing coming out of the Trump White
House and break it down in a nonpartisan way with
someone who knows what they're talking about. And this week,
our one thing is the federal program known as SNAP.
(00:47):
That's the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance program used to be called
food stamps. The program is administered by the US Department
of Agriculture and provides food assistance benefits to low income households.
Last year, almost forty two million people received SNAP benefits
each month. But as you've probably heard, the SNAP program
got caught up in the government shutdown, had to stop
(01:10):
for many recipients. Some eventually got partial benefits. Now that
the government has reopened, SNAP benefits are back, but the
White House has been saying that the program has problems
and needs to be reformed. Here's the Agriculture Secretary Brick
Rollins speaking on CNN.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
SNAP is a broken program. SNAP is full of corruption.
We found one hundred and eighty six thousand dead people.
We asked for the SNAP data earlier this year. Has
never been turned over to the federal government.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Before.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
We had twenty nine states turn it over, mostly red states.
Twenty one states said no, thank you for litigation. From
just those twenty nine states, we have found again almost
two hundred thousand dead people. It's just it's remarkable.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Well, for more on SNAP, I am joined by Diane Shanzenbach,
who's an economist and chair at the McCourt School of
Public Policy at Georgetown University. Diane, it's great to.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Have you here, great to be here.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Well, so let's start with the basics. Forty two million
people on SNAP benefits. Who are they?
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Broadly, so SNAP goes to low income families. Generally, your
income has to be below one hundred and thirty percent
of the poverty line and that's the primary thing that
makes you eligible or not. And so you know who
is low income in the United States, well, about forty
percent of the people on SNAP are children, about twenty
(02:27):
percent are older Americans ages sixty and above, and then
the rest are some mix of adults with low levels
of education and very very low incomes. Parents working, parents
that you know are qualify for SNAP because they've got
relatively low incomes and lots of expenses, you know, things
like that. But it's low income Americans on this program.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Well, and just to give people an idea of what
that means, one hundred and thirty percent of above the
poverty level. The eligibility cut up off is forty one
seven and ninety five dollars for a family of four
per year.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
That's right. These are really, you know, low income Americans.
A lot of them are working, a lot of them
are retired, on fixed incomes, et cetera. But they're really
live in paycheck to paycheck or even in some cases
hand to mouth.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
And if you are that family of four on SNAP,
do you get just the one hundred and eighty seven
dollars a month for all four people?
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Now that's the average amount per person per month person, Okay,
and then the amount that you get you know that
we talked about one eighty eight is the average per
person per month. But there's a range from the maximum
benefit which is something like two hundred and two hundred
and forty maybe dollars per person down to a minimum
(03:50):
benefit for most household sizes of about twenty dollars per
person per month. And it's the Snap benefits get reduced
as your income goes up, and so it's really it's
designed to meet the gap between the resources you've got
for food and then the amount that the government says
(04:11):
it costs to have a healthy diet.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
And when you take that EBT card with your SNAP
benefits on it, you can use it at the supermarket?
Can you use it anywhere else? What can you buy
with it? Are there limitations? Can you go into the
supermarket and only buy certain things with that?
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Yeah, you should think about it, as you can purchase
most groceries at most grocery outlets. So in order to
be able to redeem your Snap benefits, the retailer has
to participate. But as you can imagine, a lot of
retailers have a big incentive to want to participate because
you know, in many places, you know, this is a
lot of grocery money that can be spent, so you'll see,
(04:53):
you know, other sort of stores. Convenience stores will often
say EBT or snap you know, can be deemed here
sometimes convenience stores like the wah Wah or seven to
eleven something like that. But then most of the benefits
are redeemed at what we think of as either grocery
stores or the bigger retail markets things like Walmart, Target,
(05:15):
et cetera.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
So when you say most groceries, like, what can you
use it to buy?
Speaker 1 (05:21):
So, according to the programmer rules, it's foods that don't
include hot foods intended for immediate consumption. You know. Also
you can't buy vitamins. You can't buy things that aren't food,
like you can't buy paper towels, things like that. I
encourage you not to eat paper towels. But also alcohol,
you know, tobacco, nothing like that. And a lot of
(05:44):
people don't know. Of course, the way that we've shopped
has changed over time, and a lot of families, you know,
I've got three teenagers myself, rely on things like rotisserie
chickens from the grocery store, and so they wonder, like,
why is it that you can't buy a rotisserie chicken
when that's such a useful ingredient for dinner, and that,
(06:06):
as I understand, it goes back to the nineteen seventies
when Kentucky Fried Chicken took the program to court and said,
you you know, it's unfair competitive advantage to let you
use these benefits only at grocery stores. And so my
understanding is that's when they drew that line. And of course,
you know then so much of you know, our ability
(06:28):
to buy partially prepared foods at the grocery store have changed.
But really where they draw the line is hot. So
you'll see sometimes at stores you can buy a cold sandwich,
but if you want us to toast it, you can't
use your snap benefits, and so you get some kind
of silly edge cases. But that's basically the idea is
just this normal stuff in your grocery cart.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Yeah. I mean, it's interesting that the way that this
program is set up, it's not like there's a national
food bank to give people food. That is, it is
relying on private businesses to make this work.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
This is one of the reasons as an economist I
love this program is because it uses our very efficient
private sector. You know, we're really good at getting food
onto shelves at grocery stores, you know, all over the nation.
Sure there are places where there are food deserts and
things like that, but by and large, the market works
(07:22):
really well here. And then the benefits are in terms
of dollars. So you get to decide, you know, how
do I want to trade off, you know, given prices
and my family's tastes and preferences, and so you know,
this week, Gala apples might be on sale, and so
we're going to buy those instead of naval oranges or
et cetera.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
You know.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
So it's people get to make their own choices. They
face real prices, and it uses the best of the market.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
And it was started around the time of the Great Depression.
Has it, over the course of time faced political hurdles.
Have people said this is too expensive, We've got to
get rid of this SNAP program, or conversely, we need
to expand this SNAP program greatly.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
It was really launched in its current setting as part
of the War on Poverty in the early nineteen sixties,
and the program has been really very similar ever since then,
and up until really the last month, there's been great
bipartisan agreement that this is you know, a highly functioning program,
(08:24):
you know, uses the private sector. It addresses you know,
hunger and food and security, and really does it in
a very effective manner.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
So you've never seen it be taken away the way
that it was during the shutdown just now.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Oh no, it's never been not funded like it was
during the shutdown, and so you know, so we were
really experiencing something that's never happened before. And you know,
I think many of us will be unpacking what happened
as a result for you know, weeks and months and
probably even years to come.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Well what have you heard about that? I mean, just
even for a few days for people not to be
able to access these benefits. What was happening.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
I'm on the board of our local food bank in Chicago,
and we saw a week over week a forty percent
increase in the number of people who had to come
to our partner sites to get food. You know, like
I said before, a lot of people on this program
live either paycheck to paychecked or even really hand to mouth,
and any delay, any interruption, is going to come with
(09:30):
hunger and real hardship. And you know, that's what we saw.
And I'll say that the Feeding America Network and other
food banks. She saw this coming. We really worked hard
to try to do everything we could to feed our neighbors.
But SNAP is such a large scope and it reaches
so many people. Write one out of every eight Americans
that you're never going to be able to food bank
(09:51):
your way out of this problem. The reason that private
sector charity works is because we've got this strong program
underlying it.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
So now that it's restarted, what are you hearing, since
this has never happened before, what are you hearing about
the challenges of states restarting the benefits. I was reading
that it's more difficult for the states that actually paid
partial benefits because then they have to figure out how
much to give to the people that didn't get their
full benefits versus the states that didn't give any benefits
(10:20):
at all, and they can just fund the full card
now a little bit late.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
That's exactly right. I mean, we've never been in a
position where we needed to fund partial benefits, and so,
you know, I'm sure that they'll work it through. But
you know, they were certainly trying to do the right
thing by getting as much money out as possible to
try to, you know, help their citizens afford enough to eat.
But then this you know, start and stop, and all
(10:45):
the changing rules that were happening day to day during
the government shutdown really caused a lot of just both
unneeded stress and then unneeded administrative costs. And nobody likes
to burn money on administrative costs.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
And anybody that's on the other side of that, I
just can imagine, you know, somebody trying to log into
the website to get their benefits and if there's a problem,
like with all these people trying to do that at
the same time, it's not going to be easy if
there's an issue, and you.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Can imagine those parents who have hungry kids to feed
and they're you know, logging in and hoping that the
benefits will be loaded on so that can go to
the grocery store. And it's just really unthinkable that we
put so many Americans through such a tough time.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
We'll stay with us because in a moment we're going
to talk about some of the Trump administration's criticisms of
the program in general and also the issue of work requirements.
One thing Trump did with economist Diane Schanzenbach will be
right back. Welcome back to one thing Trump did exclusively
(12:03):
on the Middle podcast feed, I'm Jeremy Hobson. We are
talking about SNAP benefits and we are doing that with
economist Diane Shanzenbach at the mccurt School of Public Policy
at Georgetown University. Diane, the so called Big Beautiful Bill
had some changes to the work requirements for SNAP benefits,
and in fact, the Biden administration also tightened work requirements.
(12:26):
What has changed over the last several years when it
comes to what you have to do in order to
get these benefits?
Speaker 1 (12:31):
All right, So the work requirement in SNAP is tied
to the number of hours that you work, and it
only applies historically to adults without children in the household
that aren't elderly and aren't disabled. So usually it would,
you know, for those ages eighteen to forty nine, and
some people like veterans and holos, folks and children who
(12:56):
just aged out of foster care were exempted from that.
It's really important to think about when you think about
work requirements, is it may be reasonable to ask someone
to work when the economy is good, but oftentimes the
economy gets soft, and because we've got such a large
and dynamic economy, you know, the overall unemployment rate might
(13:19):
be five percent, but in the area where you live
it could be ten percent. And of course, added to that,
because so many people on SNAP have lower levels of education,
they've got other characteristics that mean their you know, attachment
to the labor force is lower. They just generally face
higher levels of unemployment than the overall population. All of
(13:42):
this together means that in many, many cases, it's just
not realistic to ask someone to work twenty hours a
week in exchange for benefits. What happened as part of
the One Big Beautiful Bill Act was sort of twofold.
One is, they expanded the share of people on SNAP
who are subject to these work requirements, pushed it all
(14:03):
the way up to age sixty four. So even though
many of those older Americans you know are already retired,
they're collecting early Social Security benefits. According to SNAP, they're
subject to a work requirement, you know. They eliminated those
waivers for veterans and homeless individuals, et cetera, and then
also added some parents of older children, so more people
(14:25):
are exposed to the work requirements. But the second big
thing is that in bad economic times, it's much harder
now to waive the work requirements and such that. You know,
I'm quite worried that, you know, when we have another
economic downturn or in places where we still haven't seen,
(14:46):
you know, a full economic recovery, we're going to be
taking away people's food when they really have no reasonable
chance of getting a job. Well.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
And in fact, I saw that the largest number of
Americans on SNAP was right after the financial crisis. I
think it went up to like forty seven million or
something like that, and now I said, we're down at
forty two million. During COVID, the numbers were expanded as well,
and that's one of the things that President Trump has
been pointing to. Oh, they expanded the program during COVID,
(15:17):
We've got to bring it back down. What about that?
What about this criticism from the Trump administration. We just
heard Secretary Rollins say there's fraud, there's dead people on
the roles, et cetera.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
It's a really well run program. Certainly, there's you know,
there's always you know, some people that slip through the cracks,
but it's a program that takes you know, fraud and
program integrity extremely seriously. And you know, I just think
to a first order, no they're not dead people on
(15:50):
the roles. It is absolutely true that when the economy
gets soft, more people lose their jobs and lose income
and then become eligible for SNAP. And something that I
think we all get frustrated with is that the economy
doesn't recover at the same rate for all people in
all places, and so you know, whereas lots of people
(16:13):
lost their jobs at the same time, it varies and
how quickly they can regain their jobs. Now, another thing
that I want to add is we've seen an increase
in SNAP you know, enrollment SNAP roles in recent years,
and some of that's also being driven by the aging
of the baby boomers, because more and more of them,
(16:34):
you know, are you know, getting older and you know,
getting onto Social Security and have low enough incomes that
they qualify. And so I said a few minutes ago
that about twenty percent of people on SNAP are older Americans.
That used to be more like ten percent, and that's
increased dramatically recently. And we of course know what the
(16:57):
baby boomer generation looks like. You know, it's like you know,
the food going through the snake, right, they've sort of
just are getting an order.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Now. A lot of what the Trump administration has done.
You can go right back in and look at Project
twenty twenty five from the Heritage Foundation and see what
the plans are they do talk about snap benefits. What
are you expecting the administration to try and do when
it comes to snap.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
The other piece and the one big beautiful bill Act
that I really think will fundamentally change this program is
for the first time ever, they're saying that states need
to contribute a substantial portion to the actual benefit levels
that's coming in very quickly over the next couple of
years and really shifts this large portion of money onto
(17:49):
state budgets. For a number of reasons, you know, states
aren't prepared to do that, and because this program gets
larger during bad economic times. There are some features of
state budgets, most of them have balanced budget requirements, which
means that states can't more freely spend during bad economic
(18:11):
times like the federal government can. And so we're as
an economist, I'm really worried about how the state share
of benefits, if we really do implement that in a
couple of years, will then undermine the effectiveness of this
program in terms of being you know, a countercyclical stimulus
(18:32):
and really catch people when they're hitting bad economic times.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Well, how bad could things get if the benefits really
do go away for a lot of people. Could we
see in this country in you know, twenty twenty five
or twenty twenty six or twenty twenty seven, the kind
of just out in public hunger that you see in
places like India and other countries around the world.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Boy, I mean, I hope not, but we just we've
never really had a situation where we didn't have SNAP
as this fundamental building block of the social safety net.
And you know, I certainly know that we will not
be able to replace what's lost with private charity. We
cannot food bank or way out of this problem, and
(19:16):
I'm really worried about.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
What we'll see.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Let me just finally ask you why, as an economist
you decided to become such an expert in this in
SNAP benefits.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Food is such an interesting thing to study. Everybody's got
different preferences, and you know, it's something that you have
to buy with high frequency. You know, anybody who's taken
econ one O one will maybe remember that if we
give you an inkind benefit instead of cash, it might
make you shift. How you purchase things. So I got
hooked on this more than twenty years ago as a
(19:48):
graduate student, and just as I've gotten deeper and deeper
into it, it just gets more and more interesting.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
When you're teaching your students about this. Is it difficult,
especially if they're at a school like Georgetown where they're
paying so much money. I mean every school is very
expensive now, but where they're paying so much money to go,
do they understand what it means to live in poverty
in this country and you know, need snap benefits to survive.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
You know, I always have at least one or two
students realize, Oh, when we had to move when I
was a younger kid, that was because dad lost his job,
and that's because of the economy. And you know, you'll
see sort of you know, lights go off in their
head on this.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
You know.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
I think that you're right though, that many of us
don't understand what it's like to live and poverty. You know,
one thing that they often challenge folks to do is
try to live for a week on a snap budget
and see how difficult it is. I mean, we're fortunate
that we don't have to make the tough choices that
(20:55):
so many of these families have to have to make
and I think, you know, developing some empathy, especially you know,
around the holiday season is a worthwhile exercise.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
That is Diane Schanzenbach, who's an economist and chair at
the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University. Diane,
thank you so much for coming on. Thank you so much,
and thanks to you for listening to One Thing Trump Did.
It was produced by Harrison Patino. Our next middle episode
is coming to your podcast feed later this week. We're
going to be discussing artificial intelligence again and talking about
(21:26):
whether it excites you or you're scared that it's going
to destroy us all. That is actually the title of
the show. Are you excited or You're scared It's going
to destroy us all? If you like this podcast, please
rate it and write a review. Our theme music was
composed by Noah ha I Do. I'm Jeremy Hobson and
I'll talk to you soon.
Host
Jeremy Hobson
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