The Policy and Politics of Food Stamps and SNAP

94 Pages·2015·0.836 MB·English

by  Matthew Gritter (auth.)

The Policy and Politics of Food Stamps and SNAP
DOI: 10.1057/9781137520920.0001
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DOI: 10.1057/9781137520920.0001
The Policy and
Politics of Food
Stamps and SNAP
Matthew Gritter
Angelo State University, USA
DOI: 10.1057/9781137520920.0001
THE POLICY AND POLITICS OF FOOD STAMPS AND SNAP
Copyright © Matthew Gritter, 2015.
Soffftcover reprint offthehardcover 1stedition2015978-1-137-2091-3
All rights reserved.
First published in 2015 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world,
this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN: 978–1–137–52092–0 PDF
ISBN: 978–1–349–57718–7
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the
Library of Congress.
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
First edition: 2015
www.palgrave.com/pivot
doi: 10.1057/9781137520920
Contents
1 Food Stamps and SNAP: History,
Policy and Politics 1
2 The Personal Responsibility and Work
Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996
and the Saving of Food Stamps 1995–2000 23
3 Big Government Conservatism,
Expanding and Reframing Food Stamps:
George W. Bush, Welfare Reform and
the 2002 Farm Bill 37
4 A New Right-Wing Consensus? Attacks on
SNAP and the Preservation of the Program 53
5 Conclusion 71
Bibliography 82
Index 87
DOI: 10.1057/9781137520920.0001 v

1
Food Stamps and SNAP:
History, Policy and Politics
Abstract: The program known as food stamps and SNAP
serves over 45 million people. After a brief incarnation
in the 1930s, the Food Stamp Program was revived in the
1960s and in 1973 was authorized under the Farm Bill,
allowing it to continue in part due to logrolling between
urban and rural lawmakers. In the past two decades, food
stamps and SNAP has endured despite massive changes to
the welfare system. Three factors have allowed the program
to continue without major changes: authorizing the
program within the Farm Bill, the characterization of the
program as a safety net of last resort and the construction
of the program as benefiting the deserving poor. Each of
these factors has preserved food stamps and SNAP in an
often difficult policy environment.
Gritter, Matthew. The Policy and Politics of Food Stamps
and SNAP. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
doi: 10.1057/9781137520920.0002.
DOI: 10.1057/9781137520920.0002 1
2 The Policy and Politics of Food Stamps and SNAP
Introduction
On November 20, 2014, an event was held at the US Department of
Agriculture to commemorate the 50 years since the Food Stamp Act of
1964, the program known previously as Food Stamps and since 2008 as
the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP. As noted in a
Food Resource and Action Center (FRAC) press release, “Audrey Rowe,
USDA’s Administrator for the Food and Nutrition Service, welcomed the
audience of nearly 100 advocates and spoke about the role SNAP plays
in putting healthy food within [the] reach of millions of individuals and
families.”1 Luminaries, including Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack,
saluted the program and its advocates. However, the story of food stamps
and SNAP2 includes many lawmakers and policymakers who were not
part of this celebration. While advocates against poverty and food inse-
curity have sought to support Food Stamps and SNAP, food stamps and
SNAP owes its resilience in great part to other factors, including many
corporate interests and conservative elected officials who were not
among the advocates and officials gathered. In this book, the resilience
of food stamps and SNAP over the past two decades is explored, show-
ing the unusual and surprising ways in which the program continues to
endure.
In recent years, increased attention has been devoted to food insecur-
ity. With growing wage stagnation, enduring poverty and a threadbare
safety net, policy responses to food insecurity and an increasing inter-
est in the study of food in the United States, it is worth turning to the
program traditionally known as food stamps to explore how these trends
are playing out in a contentious and polarizing political atmosphere.
After starting with fits and starts, persistent stigma and piecemeal initia-
tives, the program has become a key part of the American welfare state
and has endured in some surprising and indeed, at first glance, perplex-
ing ways.
After an early incarnation of the program in the 1930s, the contempor-
ary Food Stamp Program (which was changed in the 2008 Farm Bill to
SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program)3 was restarted
modestly by executive order during the Kennedy administration and was
codified in the Food Stamp Act of 1964. The program expanded rapidly
in the 1960s and 1970s and beginning in 1973 was included as part of
the Farm Bill. Subject to spending caps and reductions throughout the
many budget agreements4 negotiated during the 1980s and 1990s, food
DOI: 10.1057/9781137520920.0002
Food Stamps and SNAP 3
stamps remained intact. What protected a program that gained so much
negative media attention? How did a means-tested program5 focused on
the poor endure when other federal government programs were subject
to severe cutbacks or converted to block grants? This book focuses on
three factors to explain the durability of the Food Stamp/SNAP Program:
institutional factors embedded in the authorization of the program, the
construction of recipients as part of the deserving poor and the charac-
terization of the program as a safety net of last resort.
After the dramatic increase in enrollment in the Food Stamps and
SNAP Program beginning in 2001 reached a peak of approximately
47 million Americans in 2013, there has been an increased interest in
reforming the program, particularly among conservative policymakers.
The Food Stamps and SNAP Program has been authorized in a way
that shielded it from some of the pressures of other social programs.
Traditionally authorized under the Farm Bill, Food Stamps and SNAP
policy was largely made alongside farm subsidies and agricultural
support rather than traditional social programs, providing some insu-
lation from efforts to reform federal social policy since the 1980s. While
Food Stamp Programs hardly escaped scrutiny, they did not undergo
large-scale changes as did the welfare program.
Growing in force and strength as the Tea Party movement rose to
prominence around 2009, conservatives, including the vast majority of
the Republican Party, worked to limit funding and reform the program.
Proposals made over the past few years have gained increasing trac-
tion, despite the fact that the SNAP program was previously expanded
by several Republican-elected officials including Bob Dole and George
W. Bush. Two decades ago, the historic Personal Responsibility and
Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 converted the program
commonly referred to as welfare from Aid to Families with Dependent
Children (AFDC), an entitlement program based on a means test,
to Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), a block grant6
program where states were given an amount of money with certain
specifications but a great deal of room for experimentation and auton-
omy. Conservative policymakers are now seeking a similar outcome for
SNAP, leaving many without access to any safety net programs at all.
This book is an exploration of how food stamps and SNAP has
endured with a focus on three specific moments: the 104th Congress
of 1995–1996 that passed the Personal Responsibility and Work
Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 that resulted in the end of
DOI: 10.1057/9781137520920.0002