This week, President Biden’s administration increased the benefit levels for recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or “food stamps,” by more than 20 percent, adding up to $20 billion per year to the program. To put this into context, the total cost of SNAP was just over $20 billion in 2000 in today’s dollars, meaning this change will result in a nearly five-fold increase to SNAP within the past two decades.

Not only is the growth curve of the program concerning, but increasing it through executive action (not Congress) is highly unusual. Here are at least five problematic aspects of the administration’s latest move.

1) Adds to growing work disincentives for low-income households

The latest move by the Biden administration continues a trend to increase government benefits for non-working households, resulting in substantial work disincentives for low-income families. A non-working single parent with two young children will receive $15,096 each year in SNAP benefits and the newly expanded Child Tax Credit alone. With another child, the same parent will receive more than $20,000 from the government with no expectation of work. The Democrats have signaled their intention to make the expanded Child Tax Credit permanent, suggesting that a larger CTC will combine with these SNAP increases to make large work disincentives a new cornerstone of US social policy.

2) Precedent of cost-neutrality ignored in latest SNAP changes

Congress authorizes SNAP periodically through the Farm Bill.
The 2018 Farm Bill included a provision to update the Thrifty Food Plan by 2023
and every five years thereafter. (Congress had not authorized an update to the contents of the plan since 2006,
although the cost of the plan
increases annually with inflation.) The USDA uses the cost of the Thrifty Food
Plan to set maximum SNAP benefits each year, which are intended to represent “the
cost of a nutritious, practical, cost-effective diet prepared at home for a
family of four.” Congress has periodically authorized the Department of
Agriculture (USDA) to reevaluate the contents of the Thrifty Food Plan, but
administrative policy has always been to conduct the reevaluation within the current
cost constraints of SNAP. The Biden administration ignored this historical
precedent of cost-neutrality and created a Thrifty Food Plan costing 21 percent
more than the previous plan, which required SNAP benefits levels to increase correspondingly.

3) New Thrifty Food Plan adds more calories to American diet

To come up with the Thrifty Food Plan, USDA researchers must make assumptions about how many calories the typical person needs based on average weights, heights and activity levels in their age profile. USDA researchers decided to add more calories to the diet of American adults and children in developing the Thrifty Food Plan, to “reflect current realities,” increasing the costs of the plan and therefore SNAP benefits. The new plan results “in an increase of about 600 calories per day for a family of four (200 calories each for the children and for the adult male) — from 8,600 to 9,200 total calories.”

This decision is highly questionable given that research shows Americans eat far too many calories already. Almost 40 percent of adults are obese, and low-income adults experience an even higher prevalence of obesity. The decision to increase the costs of the Thrifty Food Plan so adults and children can eat more will only exacerbate the negative consequences (and costs) of obesity in the US.

4) Thrifty Food Plan assumes people will purchase healthy foods

The typical SNAP household (like most American households) has a far from ideal diet. According to the USDA’s own report, SNAP household spend approximately 20 percent of their food and beverage budget on “sweetened drinks, desserts, salty snacks, candy, and sugar.” The new Thrifty Food Plan assumes adult women and men age 20-50 will spend less than 8 percent on miscellaneous items, which includes these sweets and prepared foods. In reality, increasing SNAP benefit levels without adding restrictions to purchases will likely increase households’ consumption of these unhealthy foods.

5) Process lacked Congressional scrutiny and public input

The substantial increases to the cost of the Thrifty Food Plan, and therefore the cost of SNAP, were the direct result of arbitrary decisions made by USDA researchers and executive staff — all done without Congressional scrutiny and absent public comment. Typically, rulemaking at the agency level requires public notice and comment. Moreover, major expansions to government assistance programs should come directly from Congress. If this sets a new precedent, decisions around the size of SNAP will be wholly at the discretion of the sitting President. This is not the way to operate the country’s largest food assistance program for low-income households.

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