Just In: Trump Announces Plan To Replace Food Stamps, Here Is How

More than 40 million Americans and countless illegal immigrants were on food stamps as of November 2017. In just that month alone, welfare costs rose to more than $5 billion.

The corrupt Obama administration barely did anything in order to stop the numbers from continuing to rise. It almost seems like he and his administration were working to push welfare on more and more people. It’s clear that they just wanted people to be more dependent on the government.

Now we have Trump in office, and he is ready to deliver a crushing blow to the SNAP program.

Fox Business reported further on the matter. They explained that the Trump administration has proposed that they would replace some of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program’s (aka SNAP) cash benefits with boxes of food instead. This way, the money could not be spent on things that are not necessities.

The new plan was outlined in the Trump administration’s budget plan for fiscal year 2019. The Department of Agriculture is now calling the plan “America’s Harvest Box.” This plan would give 16.4 million households food. This is roughly 81% of the total amount of Americans on food stamps currently. The food items in the boxes would be grown by United States farmers. These would replace some of their SNAP aid funds. The program that is being proposed would only apply to any households who receive more than $90 in food stamp benefits every month.

Things that might be included in one of these government-issued food boxes are things like peanut butter, grains, canned meat, canned fruits, and vegetables, shelf-stable products, and juice. The government would use nutrition guidelines in order to decide what food to include.

With the current SNAP program’s guidelines, people are able to spend their government money (meant for food) to be used on anything. Mick Mulvaney, Office of Management and Budget Director, compared the new proposal to a meal kit delivery service which gives their members the ingredients, but the customers do the cooking.

Using the America’s Harvest Box program could save our country $129.2 billion. Why would we not use this program? We are in desperate need of savings.

Townhall reported further saying that the Trump administration is trying to make sure that people who really need the assistance are the ones receiving food stamp benefits. They are looking to close any loopholes so that they are able to push the expectation that able-bodied adults who can work, should be working.

The Trump administration is hoping to achieve this by limiting eligibility to anyone who is receiving cash benefits from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families or cash benefits from Social Security Insurance. They will also modify income and benefit calculations to make sure that benefits are only going to families who are the neediest. They are also hoping to align working age definitions with other federal programs. Last but not least, they will get rid of certain exemptions that currently exist. They will limit the use of waivers so that more able-bodied adults will be forced to work.

Townhall reported:

In the proposal, the Trump administration said they plan to share relevant data with states while also holding them accountable. The administration wants states to focus on long-term employment for SNAP participants to get them off of the benefit.

The Food Marketing Institute — which represents major stores, like Walmart, Kroger, Albertsons — is doing everything in their power to advocate against this proposal. It’s no wonder why. Tens of billions of SNAP benefits are spent each year in their stores. And, of course, the grocery industry is arguing the food boxes would be inefficient.

If Trump’s plan goes through, we can expect to see a lot of savings in our country’s budget.