By BEN R. WILLIAMS
Let’s look at some numbers on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.
In Virginia alone, 827,800 people receive SNAP. That’s one out of every 11 people. Nationally, the percentage is higher; about 42 million people receive SNAP in this country, which is 12% of the total population or one out of every eight people.
Of the people who receive SNAP in Virginia, 67% are in families with children; 33% are in families with members who are either older adults or disabled, and 36% are in working families. These are folks who are holding down jobs but still can’t make enough money to put food on the table.
Now here’s the kicker: in fiscal year 2024, people on SNAP received, on average, $177 per month. That’s less than six dollars per day.
Needless to say, that isn’t lobster money. It’s not even fast food money. It’s barely canned ravioli money.
These are folks who are struggling, and there are millions of them. We interact with them every day. They’re not “welfare queens.” They’re children, elderly people, disabled people, and people who are working hard jobs with little to show for it.
And by the time you read this, there’s a very good chance that they’ll somehow be struggling even harder.
Due to the government shutdown, those 42 million Americans will lose their SNAP benefits on November 1. The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced on Oct. 27 that “the well has run dry” and no benefits will be issued.
Who’s to blame for this failure of government? According to President Donald Trump’s administration, the guilty party is — you guessed it — the Democrats.
“We are approaching an inflection point for Senate Democrats,” wrote USDA head and Trump appointee Brooke Rollins. “They can continue to hold out for healthcare for illegal aliens and gender mutilation procedures or reopen the government so mothers, babies, and the most vulnerable among us can receive critical nutrition assistance.”
I don’t know how you can write something so cruel and patently false while still being able to look at yourself in the mirror, but I tip my hat to Brooke Rollins. And by the way, the USDA has a reserve of contingency funds that can be used to pay benefits directly, but they’re not going to use them. The party line is that the funds are “insufficient.” The real reason is that the Republican party is willing to starve American families if it makes Democrats look bad.
As I’ve written in this space before, the reason the Democrats aren’t relenting on the budget is because they want to extend tax credits to make health insurance premiums more affordable while the Republicans want to do away with the credits. It has nothing to do with “illegal aliens” or gender-affirming surgeries.
In his essay “Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt,” Umberto Eco wrote that fascist societies depict their enemies as being simultaneously too strong and too weak. Joe Biden is both a criminal mastermind and a feeble old man who doesn’t know what planet he’s on. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is both an existential threat to the American way of life and also some dumb bartender that no one takes seriously. JB Pritzker should be jailed for standing up to ICE but he’s also a buffoonish slob. The list goes on and on.
Right now, the Republican Party controls the White House, both houses of Congress, the Supreme Court, the vast majority of American media, and has its own secret police force to disappear dissidents off the streets. If the Republicans wanted to feed hungry families in America, no one would or could stop them.
And hey, it would be good PR right now, considering that as millions of Americans prepare to tighten their belts a month before Thanksgiving, Trump’s main interest is his $300 million golden ballroom that he’s building on the rubble of the White House’s East Wing. We can’t afford to feed children, but there’s no reason to stop the work trucks from pouring fresh cement on American history’s desecrated grave.
If our current events were a work of fiction, critics would say that the cruelty is too on-the-nose to be believable.
