On Tuesday, 18 big-city mayors – including “Mr. Soda Ban” Michael Bloomberg – urged the federal government to force Americans to eat healthier.
Well, not exactly. The group of mayors, led by Bloomberg, wrote a letter to Congressional leaders Tuesday advocating for additional restrictions on what Americans can buy with food stamps – especially when it comes to sugar-laden items like candy and soda.
“We need to find ways to strengthen the program and promote good nutrition while limiting the use of these resources for items with no nutritional value, like sugary drinks, that are actually harming the health of participants,” Bloomberg said in a statement. “Why should we continue supporting unhealthy purchases in the false name of nutrition assistance?”
In most cases, the proper American response to someone like Bloomberg telling us what to eat is “back off.” But this is a special case, for a couple of reasons.
First, taxpayer dollars fund the federal government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, a.k.a. food stamps. Contrary to what Bloomberg et. Al. believe, we should all be able to eat what we want if we buy it with our own money. But SNAP users don’t have a right to force others to encourage their bad behaviors. In fact, there are already restrictions on the SNAP benefits put in place by the Department of Agriculture, including bans on buying alcohol, cigarettes and hot food with food stamps.
Second, not funding something isn’t exactly the same thing as banning it. Just because SNAP doesn’t fund the purchase of certain goods and products doesn’t mean that people using the program can’t purchase them – it just means that taxpayers wouldn’t directly fund such purchases. The argument that some people in the SNAP wouldn’t be able to afford necessary goods because of additional restrictions goes against the entire premise of the program. After all, food stamps are designed to be “supplemental” to one’s income, not instead of.
Third, placing increased restrictions on the SNAP would combat the out-of-control use of the program today – or at least make people think twice before enrolling. With 47 million Americans participating in the program at last count, it’s hard to tell anymore who’s in the program because they truly need it and who’s abusing the system.
But even these reasons aren’t sufficient enough to appease concerns about the rise of the “Nanny State” in the U.S. These worries will exist as long as Americans continue to eat unhealthy foods, sign up for food stamps in record numbers or fail to help each other through private charity – all of which invite increased government intervention.
Only personal responsibility, self-restraint, and civil society can truly ward off Bloomberg and the rest of his “Nanny State” cohorts.
