To the extent that basic human rights entail the provision of essential food, clothing, and shelter to all of a country's inhabitants, the United States falls remarkably short of that standard. The Food Stamp program (now known as SNAP – Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) has for decades been one of the mainstays preventing the U.S. from diverging even further. Yet Food Stamps has always been controversial. Matthew Gritter's question in this brief volume is why the program has shown resilience despite its vulnerability, especially in the present era of neoliberalism, welfare austerity, and conservative ascendance.
His answer emphasizes three factors: the inclusion of Food Stamp authorization within the omnibus Farm Bill, facilitating logrolling; the portrayal of Food Stamp recipients as hard-working and deserving poor; and the role of Food Stamps as a safety net of last resort given the erosion of TANF benefits and the repeal of TANF entitlement status. Gritter correctly shows the importance of key Republican defenders of the program who, whether from strategic calculation or positive advocacy, at various times have worked to prevent benefit reduction and ensure coverage for needy families.
At the core of the volume are three case studies, extending the available scholarship. In 1996, under President Clinton, a major effort to transform Food Stamps into a block grant to the states failed to receive sufficient support in Congress. In 2002, under President Bush, Food Stamp coverage was actually restored for certain legal immigrants. In 2012, under President Obama, the House voted to divorce Food Stamp authorization from the Farm Bill, making the program potentially easier to attack, yet the final bill was enacted with only moderate changes.
The cases could have been more detailed and might have contained somewhat less repetition. The best segment addresses the George W. Bush administration's conscious inclusion of Food Stamps as an aspect of compassionate conservatism, using it as an illustration for the objective of regulatory simplification and pointing out the unfairness entailed by restricting eligibility only to citizens, despite objections from extremist critics insisting that this was mere pandering for votes and that it would encourage immigration for benefits. The section nicely demonstrates the combination of institutional structure and conceptual framing that has somewhat protected Food Stamps against sweeping anti-welfare attack.
Nevertheless, those attacks continue and Gritter concludes with a cautionary tale. Proposals exist from right-wing think tanks to fully devolve Food Stamps to the separate states, removing its entitlement status and its standing as a safety net of last resort. Proposals exist to emphasize work activation over nutritional support and to drug test recipients, weakening the ideological connection of Food Stamps and the deserving poor. Proposals exist to sever Food Stamp authorization from the Farm Bill and to relocate it from the Agriculture Department to Health and Human Services, effectively ending the institutional basis for political logrolling and denying to Food Stamps the appearance that it is not simply another welfare state program. A shift in the present partisan alignment in Washington might well portend ominously.
However, effective as this brief volume is, it misses the opportunity to delve somewhat deeper. In the introduction, the author notes the existence of some other means-tested U.S. programs, such as Medicaid and the EITC, that have generally escaped conservative attack. By considering Food Stamps as relatively unique, he leads away from a discussion of those systematic factors that help to provide welfare state defense. Comparing across programs, what has been the importance of targeted or in-kind assistance versus direct cash payments? What might be the explanatory significance of such factors, neglected in the text, as the perceived racial or gender composition of recipients. Methodologically, case studies have both value and limitations. Gritter's manuscript does not quite provide enough detailed process tracing or new empirical data for a stand-alone study, especially given that the research questions extend beyond the Food Stamp program, per se.
Even further, one must wonder what kind of country allows basic food provision for needy families to become an issue of highest controversy. As Gritter correctly understands, the politics of Food Stamps has largely been defensive. There has been little hint of a positive national comprehensive nutrition policy, addressing the sustainable, just, and healthy production and distribution of food. Is it that Americans simply care less about their fellow citizens than do individuals in other advanced industrial nations? Has the belief in the American dream blinded us to the socio-economic reality of poverty and near-poverty? Has our historic individualism gotten in the way of compassion? Alternatively, is the problem one of power, that the enormous rise of economic inequality in the U.S. has undermined our democracy? Does the U.S. political system no longer respond to the demands and interests of average citizens? The struggle to sustain even the partial U.S. social welfare state is a matter simultaneously for outrage and careful academic analysis. The story of Food Stamps can provide a critical starting point for insights about the current state of the American political character.
