SNAP

Eligibility Background

The USDA administers the SNAP program. Below is a summary of who is eligible:

  • US citizens
  • Documented refugees
  • Documented non-citizens who have lived in the US for at least 5 years
Further, to be eligible for benefits one must meet several income based criteria (gross income less than 130% of the poverty line, net income below the poverty line, and total assets below certain limits) along with work requirements. After 90 days, the work requirements become more stringent.

Undocumented non-citizens are not eligible for the program under any circumstances.

Who Is On SNAP?

According to USDA statistics:

  • 95.6% of recipients are citizens
  • 1.1% are documented refugees
  • 3.3% are eligible documented non-citizens

According to a recent GAO report, 51% of SNAP recipients worked at least 36 hours per week for 50 weeks last year. Which means that 51% of SNAP recipients are working fulltime and are chronically underpaid.

Who Are The Largest Beneficiaries Of SNAP?

That 51% percent of SNAP recipients are working fulltime and their income still puts them below the poverty line, means that that largest beneficiaries of the SNAP program are the companies that chronically underpay their fulltime employees.  They routinely pay their fulltime employees so little that they are below the poverty line and therefore need government assistance. To eat.

Supporting detailed data from the USDA and GAO show that Amazon, Walmart, and McDonald's are perennially the largest beneficiaries. Cited in the GAO reports are also Target, Home Depot, Lowes, Dollar General, Dollar Tree, Kroger, Publix, among others, and the list of companies naturally varies by state.

There is something terribly wrong with a company's business model if it depends upon taxpayers paying its employees. Yes, I said it. If you pay taxes, you are subsidizing the messed up business model for Amazon, Walmart and McDonalds. Even if you don't buy stuff at Amazon, your tax dollars are going to food stamps for their fulltime employees.

Your tax dollars went to Amazon employees so they could buy supper and Jeff Bezos could rent Venice for his wedding.

If your business model depends upon your employees being on public assistance, then your business model is broken.

Solutions

I see several possible solutions.

  • Raise the minimum wage.
  • Enforce an employer SNAP fee where employers pay for the SNAP benefits of their employees.
  • Mandate an Executive Compensation Ratio where if any of a company's employees are on SNAP, then no one at the company can make more than 5 times that of the median of non-management employees.

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