The cost of filling up our grocery carts is rising. Store shelves are empty. It’s getting more difficult to find Christmas trees — and workers.
How did we get here? We all know about the COVID-19 pandemic’s inevitable supply chain disruptions. And we all know about the federal unemployment bonus that kept workers at home for months even as the economy struggled to restart.
But what many Americans and political leaders missed is that the unemployment bonus, which has since expired, has not been the only cause of the worker shortage or more recent inflation.
BidenStamps, the Biden administration’s permanent, 25% unilateral increase in food stamp benefits, continues to drive both. And, unlike the unemployment bonus, BidenStamps is just getting started.
With a new maximum monthly benefit for a family of four ($835) significantly higher than what the average household of that size spends on food ($537) and the primary work requirement in food stamps suspended for the foreseeable future, our worker shortage may get worse before it gets better. And prices, especially for food, may not be going anywhere but up for some time.
Add this massive welfare expansion — a 25% increase in a program that serves more than 40 million people, the biggest permanent welfare expansion since Medicaid expansion under Obamacare — to the big government spending machine we’ve watched over the last two years, and what else can we expect?
Sure, the unemployment bonus has gone away. But don’t forget the toll already taken by the moratorium on evictions, the pause on student loan payments, the issuance of multiple stimulus checks, the suspension of work requirements in food stamps, the massive expansion of child tax credits without work requirements, and the denial of work requirements in Medicaid and mandates that the program cover ineligible, able-bodied adults.
If victory has a thousand fathers and defeat is an orphan, America’s millions of open jobs and rising inflation have a rich family history.
Together, these policies read like a “what not to do during a recovery” playbook. Intentionally or not, America is no longer fighting a war on poverty. We’re fighting a war on work.
Frankly, it’s surprising there were enough employees left at the U.S. Department of Agriculture to work on BidenStamps.
Like the Biden administration’s other policies, BidenStamps will, in the name of compassion, push more workers into dependency, more communities into despondency, and more businesses into bankruptcy.
What might be most surprising is that conservative state leaders haven’t done more to push back against BidenStamps like many did when they opted out early from the federal unemployment bonus.
Many seem content to see how this experiment in social engineering plays out. They just have to sit back and dole out the federal dollars.
But as state leaders search for solutions to empty shelves and emptier checkout counters, they may need to take a second look at the sheer scale of BidenStamps in our present economic moment.
It wouldn’t be an easy fight. BidenStamps’ rapid ramp-up and long-term costs make it look as politically unstoppable as it is fiscally unsustainable.
But unless and until states stand against making welfare pay more than work, a new and dangerous divide will grow wider across America.
State leaders are beginning to see the political fallout from that divide. Every day, they hear from the workers who are still showing up. They’re tired. For months, they’ve picked up the slack with long hours and big tax bills. They understand what our next debate needs to be, and they’re ready to drive that debate.
It’s not “haves” versus “have-nots.” We’re long past that. It’s government handouts versus paychecks for real work.
Scott Centorino, a senior fellow at The Foundation For Government Accountability.
