Crystal FitzSimons, Food Research & Action Center President, is worried that reduced participation in SNAP is not an indication of reduced need for assistance.
[T]the law’s stricter time limits, administrative hurdles, and pending cost-shift to states, along with inadequate benefits, are pushing eligible households off the program.
She correctly outlined the benefits of SNAP (which, I claim, generalize to welfare programs in general):
When investments are made in SNAP, real progress is made toward lifting people out of poverty. …
When SNAP benefits better align with increasing food costs, more families stay above the poverty line. When barriers increase, the opposite happens.
But she proposed the wrong solution.
Through legislation, Congress should ensure that everyone has the nutrition they need to thrive rather than make it harder for families to put food on the table.
No.
In our federated republican form of government, the member States are responsible, each for its own internal affairs. It’s time for them to stop freeloading off the Federal government—freeloading off the citizens of the other 49 States—and start honoring their own obligations toward their own citizens. Each State has the money. It simply needs to reallocate its spending and stop taking ever more money away from its own citizens in the form of ever rising tax rates.