Swapping food stamps for food boxes meets skepticism

The plan calls for the majority of households in SNAP to receive a package that would include items such as cereal, pasta, canned fruit and meat to replace a portion of the food assistance payments they currently receive.

A Trump administration plan to to replace food stamp spending with boxes of “100 percent American grown food” landed on Congress’ doorstep with a thud.

But the public attention heaped on the Agriculture Department’s plan to deliver “Harvest Boxes” to poor families also obscured the administration’s other efforts to cut the number of people eligible for the nation’s biggest food-aid program.

Those provisions, including changes to work rules, are likely to find a more receptive audience among Republican lawmakers looking for ways to broadly scale back the nation’s social safety net for the poor. That’s where the battle may loom as Congress takes up nutrition programs this summer.

The Department of Agriculture plans to keep pushing the proposal to save $129 billion over a decade by shifting from cash payments to recipients to directly providing food, even as congressional committee leaders who oversee food aid signaled disinterest.

The food box was part of Trump’s Feb. 12 budget proposal, which lawmakers view as more of a priority list than a blueprint for spending. USDA spokesman Tim Murtaugh said the food box would effectively serve the poor.

“Innovation has always been one of the keys to success, and innovation is what America’s Harvest Boxes represent,” he said in an email. “It is a favorite pastime in Washington to criticize new ideas and claim they don’t work.”

He said the administration will press its full agenda for revising food benefits. “We don’t intend to let one good idea distract us from proposing others,” he said.

The plan calls for the majority of households in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to receive a package that would include items such as cereal, pasta, canned fruit and meat to replace a portion of the food assistance payments they currently receive.

It would apply to all households getting more than $90 a month in benefits. For instance, a family now receiving the maximum $640 a month would get $340 on debit cards used for purchasing food, and the boxes would replace the rest of the amount, Murtaugh said.

The America’s Harvest Box was part of a proposed $216 billion in reductions to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program spending over a decade. Other savings come from tighter work requirements, expanding the age range of those covered under the rules, capping the number of people in a household eligible for assistance and eliminating the minimum benefit, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal-leaning group in Washington.

All are ideas with a longer history of consideration — and more proponents in Congress — than the Harvest Box. And Congress is set to consider a reauthorization of nutrition programs this summer.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., has long wanted to reshape the social safety net for the poor, including food stamps, as part of his effort to get people from welfare to work.

The food stamp program served 42.2 million people and 20.9 million households on average during the 2017 fiscal year. SNAP assistance cost $68.1 billion in 2017, with $63.7 billion given out as benefits.

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue has said he wants to reduce costs and have fewer people participate. Perdue said he wants to discourage a “lifestyle” of government dependence.