This week, during a “Great American Farmers Market,” United States Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins signed waivers allowing six states — West Virginia, Florida, Colorado, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas — to restrict the use of SNAP benefits for soda and candy. These join six others — Nebraska, Iowa, Indiana, Arkansas, Idaho, and Utah — that have already had waivers signed this year.
The waivers usher in a new, if complicated, era in food policy. As states across the country, from Swig-guzzling Utah to the Mountain (Dew) state of West Virginia, adjust welfare purchasing categories, they highlight questions of health equity and personal responsibility and underscore a fascinating set of paradoxes that define the Trump era.
Paradox one: the legislators moving to restrict the purchasing power of SNAP (i.e., the federal government’s “Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program”) are mostly Republicans, but Democrats have historically been more willing to use the so-called “nanny state” to shape dietary behavior. (Think of Michael Bloomberg pushing for similar restrictions as mayor of New York.) Republicans, by contrast, have often leaned libertarian on interference in individual consumption choices.
Another paradoxical twist: on the one hand, taking soda off SNAP seems traditionally Republican, insofar as it limits what taxpayer dollars can fund, and promotes personal responsibility. After all, it’s not saying the poor can’t have soda; just that they should buy it with their own hard-earned money, reflecting “Yankee work ethic” conservatism.
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