The roll-out Monday of the White House budget proposal revealed a $1.5-trillion infrastructure plan, the expected funding to address the opioid problem, and, of course, funding for border security initiatives, including the southern border wall. But it’s a controversial revision of a USDA program that may have upset the biggest apple cart.
The reform contains language that would redesign the way federal funds are used for SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, replacing part of each recipient’s benefits with actual food: “America’s Harvest Box.” According to Agriculture secretary Sonny Perdue, the amount would be established in proportion to household size and ultimately constitute something like half the recipient’s food benefits, with the remainder still provided on electronic benefit transfer (EBT) cards.
About three-quarters of households receiving SNAP support ultimately would be part of this arrangement, according to Perdue, who noted that states are to have “substantial flexibility” in planning distribution of the boxes, which will contain “staple, shelf-stable” foods such as pasta, beans, peanut butter, and canned fruits and vegetables.
The resulting outcry surely could have been foreseen: GQ called the Harvest Box proposal “inhuman,” for example, and the Washington Post says it “showcases the worst of the Trump administration.” Annie Lowrey of the Atlantic raised practical issues, tweeting a list of questions: “What if you’re homeless” or “don’t have a place to receive mail?” “What if you don’t receive your box one month?”
But there’s a different defect at the heart of the idea that should alarm conservatives: its plan to direct what people eat in their own households and in their own families. This is either a blind bit of foolishness and misdirected do-goodery or a monstrous arrogation of what should be individual agency.
White House budget director Mick Mulvaney described the new plan as being “a Blue Apron-type program where you actually receive the food instead of receive the cash.” Blue Apron, which delivers pre-measured ingredients to cook the recipes it provides, targets an upper-middle-class, often urban, demographic. Using it as a comparison to a box of baked beans, tuna, and elbow macaroni came across as clumsy, at best.
But the “at worst” implications of Mulvaney’s remark raise fundamental issues of personal choice. Since at least the Great Society there’s been concern among conservatives about the effects of long-term dependence on government assistance and of the power of big government to take over what ought to be independent agency. And the proud farmer or worker who refuses to “take any charity” is a cultural trope, admirable, foolish, or, like most things, a mixture. We understand why someone’s dignity requires that he not be known to be eating government cheese.
To suggest that it’s a good idea, morally or practically, to take over people’s choices—that it’s a good way, for example, to make sure individuals are getting nutritious food, as the Harvest Box’s backers have argued—is presumptuous. The implication of the giveaway is that it echoes of the sort of “charity” that requires acquiescence and gratitude to government; it forgets that the recipient is a fellow citizen. It is undemocratic and destructive to the dignity of all the parties involved. Even if you need to go to the food bank, you ordinarily have some options.
The SNAP program is enormously costly: In fiscal year 2016 it came to more than $70 billion. The Harvest Box idea is projected to save $129 billion over its first 10 years. A good deal of thought seems to have gone into the proposal—good, but not enough. Conservatives who are wary of dependency should hardly reinforce it by treating those in need of assistance with the offhand contempt implied by commandeering their grocery carts.
