Like a warlord in the Sudan, Donald Trump is trying to use food as a weapon. Even after two courts said on Friday that his administration had broken the law by not releasing money for the SNAP progarm (food stamps), Trump still blamed the Democrats and played for time. Meanwhile, millions of people won’t get the food stamps that the law says they are entitled to, even amid a government shutdown.
Each week, Princeton professor Julian Zelizer and I try to shed a little historical light on the insanity of today’s events with our five minute conversation, Then and Now. Today, we’re talking about the history of what began as a small program. Here’s an edited transcript:
JULIAN:
In 1939, FDR’s Secretary of Agriculture, Henry Wallace, began a temporary New Deal program involving the issuance of stamps that could be used to feed the hungry. President John Kennedy in 1961 turned it into a pilot program allowing people to purchase these stamps for little money and then use the stamps to buy food.
In 1964, LBJ, pushes this through a Democratic Congress as part of his broad Great Society. And it’s a important program. States still have a lot of authority at the outset in determining how this would work. When he signs the bill in August of 1964, Johnson says it is “one of many sensible and needed steps we have taken to apply the power of America’s new abundance to the task of building a better life for every American.” That’s the essence of the Great Society—to use the wealth of the country to alleviate poverty and to make the nation better. By April of 1965, over a million people are taking part, and in the ‘70s and ‘80s, the program expands significantly. So here’s this program that became ingrained into our social safety net and became the food many people count on. Now, with this government shutdown, it’s on the line.
JON:
In the 1960s, this involved a much, much smaller group of hungry Americans. The program now helps 42 million people and has basically ended hunger in America. It’s, a major social support program, almost like Social Security in its reach.
Just a little bit more on the history of it: Before the name of the program was changed from food stamps to the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), it began expanding rapidly as a result of a bipartisan effort spearheaded by two farm state senators, one on the left, George McGovern, and the other on the right, Bob Dole, of South Dakota and Kansas, respectively. They figured out that this could be a win-win program, really good for American farmers, as well as for Americans who needed help in paying their grocery bills. Again, this went from something that aided very poor people, to something that helps large numbers of people who just aren’t able to make ends meet.
There’s still a little bit of a stereotype that this is for poor minorities. Actually, most food stamp recipients are white. Most of them do not live in dense urban areas. This is a huge program that helps 15 percent of the American people, and so when it goes dark, as it’s about to do, these members of Congress are going to be hearing from their constituents.
JULIAN:
Well, Lyndon Johnson would be pretty devastated to see where we have reached right now. Let’s hope it doesn’t happen.
