The Two Twitter Threads You Must Read About Trump’s “Food Boxes For Poor People” Proposal

You might have missed this news yesterday—I know I did—but it seems as though Trump has the seeds of an idea for a way that he thinks could save the country billions. Here’s the idea, via Politico:

The proposal, buried in the White House’s fiscal 2019 budget, would replace about half of the money most families receive via the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps, with what the Department of Agriculture is calling “America’s Harvest Box.” That package would be made up of “100 percent U.S. grown and produced food” and would include items like shelf-stable milk, peanut butter, canned fruits and meats, and cereal.

Trump and his spokespeople are comparing it to Blue Apron, which is bogus because there’s no fresh food, no fruits or vegetables, no meat—those would be too expensive to ship. Nor would the federal government be responsible for shipping in the first place, as USDA spokesman Tim Murtaugh explained. That job would go to the states, and the $129 billion “savings” figure doesn’t include shipping.

But those are only the start of the problems. I could go on, but there are two excellent Twitter threads that you need to read to understand how cruel, ineffectual, and outright harmful this program would be, if it was ever implemented. The first comes from Annie Lowrey, economic policy writer for The Atlantic, who lays out the brutality of this program in a series of pointed questions:

1. What if you don’t receive your box one month?
2. What if you’re homeless?
3. What if you don’t have a place to receive mail?
4. What if you move frequently?
5. What if you have allergies?
6. What if the box gets wet, or animals get into it?

— Annie Lowrey (@AnnieLowrey) February 13, 2018

7. What if your kid is a fussy eater?
8. What if you’re a fussy eater?
9. What about the end of the month?
10. Will the value be the same?
11. What about the stores in your town?
12. What about fresh fruits and veggies?
13. What if you don’t have electricity or gas to cook?

— Annie Lowrey (@AnnieLowrey) February 13, 2018

14. Why?
15. No, really, why? What problem does this solve?
16. Is the value of the box the same as the value of the SNAP?
17. Okay, but isn’t the value of the box lower, given fungibility and all that?
18. Did folks on SNAP ask for this?
19. Did anti-hunger advocates?

— Annie Lowrey (@AnnieLowrey) February 13, 2018

20. Schools? Parents? Kids themselves? Social workers? Businesses? Grocery stores?
21. Do you have studies showing that such boxes would actually reduce hunger?
22. At what cost?
23. Any studies showing it’s more cost-effective than SNAP?

— Annie Lowrey (@AnnieLowrey) February 13, 2018

24. What about the cost of unwinding SNAP, as-is?
25. What about the time-cost of switching over, for low-income families?
26. Who makes the boxes?
27. Who decides what goes in the boxes?
28. What about packaging waste?

— Annie Lowrey (@AnnieLowrey) February 13, 2018

It goes on from there—Lowrey gets up to 60 questions, all of them pertinent, all of them unanswered. I won’t copy her whole thread, but you can access the rest by clicking on any of the tweets above.

The second thread comes from @hugwins, a 26-year-old with personal experience using food stamps and a unique perspective on the proposed food boxes.

So as someone who’s covered monthy food budgets with food stamps let me break a few things down for you b/c a lot of people haven’t https://t.co/SbwHFg8ijm

— please bread, no (@hugwins) February 13, 2018

Food stamps are incredibly limited. What I had to work with was a bit over 100$. No hot food. No prepared food. So even though rotisserie chickens are pretty similar in price to raw roaster chickens, they’re off-limits.

— please bread, no (@hugwins) February 13, 2018

And of course, it’s just food—not anything you’d need to buy at a grocery store in general. To quote Em, “goddamn food stamps don’t buy diapers.”

— please bread, no (@hugwins) February 13, 2018

So no toilet paper, no diapers, no toothpaste, no shampoo. Shit you absolutely do need and can’t effectively get by without. So food stamps as is are already lacking.

— please bread, no (@hugwins) February 13, 2018

And meal boxes selected by a govt agency?

Look. People know how to cook what they know how to cook. And they know what their families will and won’t eat (try convincing a toddler that the govt is making them eat a certain diet and actually getting the kid to eat it)

— please bread, no (@hugwins) February 13, 2018

And they know what people in their family are allergic to or have dietary restrictions for. From the sound of things in this article that hasn’t been addressed at all.

And that isn’t even starting to get into that this plan doesn’t include any fresh food.

— please bread, no (@hugwins) February 13, 2018

There is an incredible amount of shaming of people in this country for eating “junk” when on food stamps as though we don’t subsidize the components of the junk such that it costs way less than fresh food.

— please bread, no (@hugwins) February 13, 2018

And then it’s “ugh why are poor people so gross and unhealthy” when fresh food is financially out of reach and no one has any spare time to devote to full nights’ sleep or exercise. That’s not going to get better with cost-cutting _{delivery box} situation.

— please bread, no (@hugwins) February 13, 2018

Again, the thread goes on from there, and you should absolutely read it by clicking on the tweet above. But the conclusion is well worth posting:

to “be healthy”.

If we gave a shit about health—actually gave a shit—we would make fresh produce free on food stamps. Not that that would help people in food deserts much—where you have one or two things at the convenience store at best

— please bread, no (@hugwins) February 13, 2018

but it would be a start.

As is, we screw people over by design, and then lecture them when they take the options most available and pragmatic to them.

And then cut their benefits because they’re not conforming to our standards.

— please bread, no (@hugwins) February 13, 2018

So this idea of canned food drive by delivery as the way to deliver food stamps can go straight to hell.

We already punish poor people enough in the way we have designed our system without making it worse.

— please bread, no (@hugwins) February 13, 2018

Enough said. Let’s hope this gets erased from the 2019 budget and never rears its ugly head again.