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They also factored in the weather: The plan assumes that SNAP families will get 99% of their beans from a tin can. Other ready meals it includes include hard-boiled eggs, prepared salsa, baby carrots, boxed macaroni and cheese, and bagged green salads.
“It was a scientific and analytical process,” said Stacy Dean, a senior Agriculture Department official who oversees the program. “It wasn’t about approving an increase in benefits.
Fear of missing
SNAP users said the old budget imposed multiple constraints, especially fear of running out of food. “You have to have extra brain space” to manage anxiety, said Sheena Giles, an insurance agent in Columbia, South Carolina, with four children.
Many have also said that it leads to poor nutrition. Cynthia Williams, 67, a retiree from Las Vegas, said she often turned to high sodium canned goods that were bad for her diabetes. “I do with what I can get,” she said.
Dr Hilary Seligman, who studies nutritional assistance at the University of California, San Francisco, said a SNAP increase would dramatically improve health. “This is perhaps the most significant change in the history of half a century of the modern program,” she said.
But others note that there is no guarantee that the needy will buy healthy food. Ms. Rachidi of the American Enterprise Institute said that “to the extent that SNAP contributes to unhealthy diets,” an increase could even harm the health of poor people.
Anticipating the increase in benefits last week, Republicans on Capitol Hill have warned of a takeover. During the pandemic, Congress approved extraordinary, even temporary, increases in SNAP, with average benefits doubling. With those increases now starting to expire, some Republicans see the updated plan as a back door effort to support a major welfare expansion.
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