How Food Industry Lobbyists Keep the Food-Stamp Gravy Train Going10/29/2025 • Mises Wire • Ryan McMaken
Unless members of Congress intervene to prevent it, the food stamp program—also known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)—will be suspended beginning November 1. If the federal partial “shutdown” ends before then, the program will likely send out the usual billions of dollars to the nation’s 41 million recipients on schedule.
Needless to say, lobbyists and activists who favor the food stamp program have been working furiously to make sure that the program is not interrupted.
Much of the narrative around food stamps has focused on the fact that millions of low-income households receive more than eight billion dollars in food stamps per month in the United States. The narrative usually works well given that total spending on food stamps has risen significantly in recent years with total inflation-adjusted spending up by nearly 100 percent since 2008, and up by six percent over the past twelve months.
While the media narrative has focused on low-income recipients, it often ignores the role of corporate and industry lobbyists who work to increase food stamp spending and to ensure the program remains permanent. Farmers, “Big Ag,” grocery retailers, beverage companies, and other industry players are very active in lobbying members of Congress to ensure that food-stamp dollars keep flowing.
This should not surprise us when we consider that food stamps subsidize food and drive up demand for the sorts of products manufactured and sold by a variety of food-related industries.
Consequently, food stamp programs enjoy support from a well-funded alliance of industry lobbyists and “anti-poverty” pressure groups that ceaselessly push for ever larger amounts of tax-dollar funds to be spent on food stamps.
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Source:
https://mises.org/mises-wire/how-food-industry-lobbyists-keep-food-stamp-gravy-train-going
