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For perspective, SNAP constitutes somewhere around 1.5% of the total Federal budget[0], and provides supplemental income for over 41M Americans[1]. So they're
by CodingJeebus 11mo ago
For perspective, SNAP constitutes somewhere around 1.5% of the total Federal budget[0], and provides supplemental income for over 41M Americans[1].
So they're making everyone reapply because their disbursement headcount is off by less than 1% (180k vs 41M). It's hard not look at stuff like this and not see gross oppression.
0: https://usafacts.org/answers/how-much-does-the-federal-government-spend-on-snap-every-year/country/united-states/ https://usafacts.org/answers/how-much-does-the-federal-gover...
1: https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/a-closer-look-at-who-benefits-from-snap-state-by-state-fact-sheets#Alabama https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/a-closer-look-...
- deadeye 11mo ago[flagged]
- weird-eye-issue 11mo agoIt is always a wonder to me when people downplay something that is "just" 1.5% of nearly $7 TRILLION
- jeffbee 11mo ago[flagged]
- weird-eye-issue 11mo agoWho uses the caps lock key to only uppercase a single word?
- HeyLaughingBoy 11mo agoIt's always a wonder to me when people downplay keeping others fed and healthy.
- CodingJeebus 11mo agoYou added the "just", not me. But to your point, there are much, much larger and controversial line items in the budget to argue about than feeding the poor. Preventing starvation is important to a functioning society, as widespread hunger has ended many a government throughout history.
- 0_____0 11mo ago100B for SNAP vs 850B for defense in 2024. Interest on govt issued debt was 880B.
- phkahler 11mo agoImagine if the debt were 1 trillion dollars instead of 38! How hard is it to say "no budget increases this year"? And that wouldn't even eliminate the deficit and they can do it.
- weird-eye-issue 11mo agoWhat would be the value of the US dollar if we didn't have a military to back it up?
- esseph 11mo agoAhaha. Wait, did you mean this as ironic comedy, or are you serious?
- weird-eye-issue 11mo agoAnswer the question
- esseph 11mo agoOh at this point, with the way we've treated countries with military action, insane tariffs, masked deportations, embargos/blockades, threatening the sovereignty of a G8 country, threatening to annex another, supporting Israeli genocide, the list goes on... We're on the downward slope now, but it will take awhile. The future requires investments in education, infrastructure, healthcare, and energy generation (in particular, cheap energy), and we're simply not doing it. Being lonely sucks, and the US govt has alienated long standing allies. Economically they doesn't bode well.
- insane_dreamer 11mo ago
- Jtsummers 11mo agoLess than one percent of 1.5% of $7 trillion, around $1 billion. Which is a significant sum, no doubt, but that's also less than $3/person in the US. Given the much larger wasted sums by DOD and other parts of the government, it's an amount I can live with. I'd rather see the real waste and abuse get addressed first, but it won't be. Address this, but address it in a way that doesn't cause undue harm to the 40.8 million people that aren't abusing the system.
- spullara 11mo agosocial programs are 60% of the budget, defense is down to 13%.
- SigmundA 11mo agoWho would have thought health care and retirement is more expensive than wars, it seems like that should be telling us something about priorities.
- weird-eye-issue 11mo agoAgreed with everything you said, but people would say the exact same thing about some of the more wasteful programs that were shutdown. "It is only $50 million" etc got really old... It is not like you can expect to just find massive line items that can be easily removed
- SigmundA 11mo agoYeah I mean they could pay for the new ballroom or two and have some money left over by not feeding those scammy undeserving people. Or even better we could give some more money to Argentina.
- weird-eye-issue 11mo agoBrilliant logical fallacies
- 11mo ago
- exe34 11mo agoIt's an investment. Every dollar spent returns $62 to the economy[0]. [0] https://www.cbpp.org/blog/snap-food-assistance-is-a-sound-investment-in-our-nations-health-well-being-and-economy https://www.cbpp.org/blog/snap-food-assistance-is-a-sound-in... There are much bigger wastes of money. Tax cuts for billionaires for example. Even SNAP itself is effectively welfare for billionaires - it means they don't have to pay a fair wage.
- wakawaka28 11mo agoWe should just put a trillion dollars into it then, and the returns would pay off the national debt! Right?!
- exe34 11mo agoThere are a limited number of children/families in need of this help. Feeding them is great for the economy. There is no need to spend more than that on the program, although there are other social programs that do contribute to making them into more productive individuals in the future, like education and healthcare. May I recommend leaving out the snark in the future - it gives the impression that you are a heartless person who wants others to suffer. Your life is short - go outside and touch the grass, it'll do you some good.
- wakawaka28 11mo agoFeeding families is a nice thing to do but economically speaking, these families are not very productive. I'm not a heartless person, but I'm also not brainless either. I should not need to nod along with a bunch of BS to be considered civil.
- jeremyjh 11mo ago> I'm not a heartless person, but I'm also not brainless either. You aren't making a strong case for either assertion. The fraud is 1% of 1.5% - that was already explained to you, and you are still trying to defend this garbage comment.
- Volundr 11mo ago1% of 1.5%, so ~0.015%. I think it's fair to question if the juice is worth the squeeze here. To say nothing of if the most efficient way to go about it is really to make 41 million people reapply and reprocess all those applications.
- derbOac 11mo agoThat's the thing. If they've identified some tiny percent of fraud, investigate that. Implement policy or protocol changes to prevent it from happening again in the future. Requiring everyone to reapply on top of whatever else they're doing is probably more costly than any gains. It seems the biggest fraud and waste here is in the administration.
- drweevil 11mo agoIt's always a wonder to me that someone can consider spending 1.5% of the federal budget on our own people, so that kids don't go hungry, as excessive (I take that interpretation from those scare quotes), when we spend at least $1 TRILLION of $7 TRILLION on defense spending, which in absolute numbers is greater than 9 of the next most powerful adversaries combined [1]. But where is all the concern over 'fraud and abuse' in that enormous sum? >“Can you imagine when we get our hands on the blue state data what we’re going to find?” she asked during a Thursday appearance on Newsmax’s “Rob Schmitt Tonight.” Forcing all SNAP recipients to reapply over such a small discrepancy (> 1% of the 1.5%) is cruel and spiteful. And the comment by Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins quoted above is disrespectful and unprofessional at best. But none of this is a surprise, given this administration's past history. [1] https://www.pgpf.org/article/the-united-states-spends-more-on-defense-than-the-next-9-countries-combined/ https://www.pgpf.org/article/the-united-states-spends-more-o...
- tomhow 11mo ago> $7 TRILLION Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, put asterisks* around it and it will get italicized.* https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- jjav 11mo ago> It is always a wonder to me when people downplay something that is "just" 1.5% of nearly $7 TRILLION If (assuming correct) it is 1.5%, then it is 1.5% Which is a tiny percentage. That's how percentages work. Adding that it is a large number out of a huge number doesn't change anything, it is still 1.5% which means not much at all.
- drob518 11mo agoA quibble… The 180k is just for the states that responded, if I understand correctly. They suspect that the rate of fraud could be much higher in other states. How much high? I have no idea. I don’t think anyone does. I think they want to reboot the program to try to remove the corruption.
- phkahler 11mo ago>> I think they want to reboot the program to try to remove the corruption. A reasonable thing to do - in principle. In practice that many people applying at once is going to cause all kinds of problems and delays for people. No big deal to inconvenience fraudsters, but delaying for people legitimately in need isn't good. Forced reapplication 5 percent at a time would be better. Or maybe thats what they're doing?
- SAI_Peregrinus 11mo agoThe goal may be to reduce overall spending on SNAP by starving some of the recipients.
- Esophagus4 11mo agoI would also keep in mind that the 180k number is almost certainly inaccurate, if we go by this administration’s behavior during the DOGE efforts of manufacturing false claims of “fraud” out of benign circumstances as an excuse to tear down the social safety net systems.[1] > Bobba [DOGE engineer] had sorted people with a Social Security number by age and found more than 12 million over 120 years old still listed in the agency’s data. Bobba said he knew these people weren’t actually receiving benefits and tried to tell Musk so, to no avail, according to SSA officials. Dudek [SSA employee] watched in horror as Trump then shared the same statistics with both houses of Congress and a national television audience, claiming the numbers proved “shocking levels of incompetence and probable fraud in the Social Security program for our seniors.” [1]https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-doge-social-security-takeover-leland-dudek https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-doge-social-securi...
- 11mo ago
- insane_dreamer 11mo agoHalf of my tax dollars (excluding SS/medicare taxes) go the military and subsidizing an entire defense industry, companies like Boeing, Lockheed etc. So some of my tax dollars going to a few people who aren’t eligible for SNAP benefits is the very least of my concerns.
- mcsonka 11mo ago> a few people 41M is more than population of Poland, Canada, or Ukraine
- insane_dreamer 11mo ago41M is the _total_ number of people receiving SNAP. 180K is the guesstimated number of people getting it but _possibly_ ineligible for it.