Your impressions of the successes or failures of the Trump administration very likely correlate closely with the things that have been the focus of the news cycle: Russia!, immigration, the border, the Wall, the economy, unemployment, Supreme Court justices, etc.; and lately, Ukraine and Iran. But among the notable successes of the last few years, there are some that have been much less the focus of the news. One of those is food stamps. Of course, depending on your political views, you may not consider this a success.

The number of people enrolled in the food stamp program has undergone a significant and accelerating decline since Trump took office. Perhaps you think that that is and should be the norm for times of a growing economy. Maybe so, but such was definitely not the case under President Obama.

Here is a chart from the Department of Agriculture (I call them the DOA) with data on enrollment and costs for the food stamp (SNAP) program through December 2019. In 2016, just prior to Trump taking office, enrollment in the program was 44.22 million people. That went down to 42.23 million in 2017, 39.81 million in 2018, and 34.47 million in 2019. That most recent year saw a drop of over 5 million in the single year — a 12.5% annual decline.

Compare this to what happened during the Obama administration. Obama took office in 2009, at the depth of what we now call the Great Recession. SNAP enrollment soared from 28.22 million in 2008 (prior to Obama taking office) to 33.49 million in 2009, and then to 40.3 million in 2010. Perhaps that increase was justified by the contemporaneous spike in unemployment. But by 2010 the recession was over, and the economy entered a recovery that indeed continues today. Despite the recovery, SNAP enrollment continued to increase, all the way to a peak of 47.64 million in 2013, by which time Obama was in his second term. For the rest of his second term, despite the ongoing economic recovery, SNAP enrollment declined only marginally, by just over 1 million per year (about 2% per year) down to the 44.22 million in 2016.

Is the difference in SNAP utilization something that can be attributed to the incumbent presidential administration? Absolutely it is. The increases in food stamp enrollment during the Obama administration — and particularly the ongoing increases that occurred after the recovery got under way in 2010 — were substantially the result of aggressive, government-funded efforts to recruit new recipients into the program. Way back in April 2013, in the early days of this blog, I had a post that addressed those efforts. The title was “The Welfare State Aggressively Advertises To Expand Itself.” The post relied in part on a series about the food stamp program then running in the Washington Post, by a guy named Eli Saslow. One part in Saslow’s series covered government-sponsored efforts to grow the program in the state of Florida. From my piece:

In Florida we follow around a woman named Dillie Nerios, employed by “a local food bank that is funded in part by the state” of Florida. Her job: to recruit “at least” 150 seniors each month onto the food stamp rolls. Is it working? “Nowhere had the SNAP program grown as it has in Florida, where enrollment had risen from 1.45 million people in 2008 to 3.35 million last year [2012].”

And from Saslow’s article:

To help enroll more seniors, the [federal] government has published an outreach guide that blends compassion with sales techniques, generating some protests in Congress. The guide teaches recruiters how to “overcome the word ‘no,’ ” suggesting answers for likely hesitations.

Obviously, the Trump administration has taken a different approach. Most notably, Trump’s people have been pushing for an end to the “waivers” that have allowed states to evade program requirements under which (without a waiver) able-bodied adults without dependents are eligible for food stamps only 3 months out of any 3 years, unless they are either working or enrolled in a training program. Believe it or not, according to the New York Times here, those “waivers” are still in effect for about a third of the country, despite the strong economy. But Trump’s people are proposing to end all of the waivers come April.

Well, we can’t have that. The Times weighs in with that linked piece in today’s print edition, headlined “What Happened When a State Made Food Stamps Harder to Get.” I’ll bet you are expecting some heart-rending tales of starving children, and without doubt they would have led with that if they could have found any. But it appears that they did not find any. So instead, we are taken to Huntington, West Virginia, which recently lost its food stamp “waiver,” and where we learn that there has been a “spike” in demand at local food pantries. How much of a spike?

One of the first signs of the change [after loss of the food stamp waiver] came in the dining hall of the Huntington City Mission, about half an hour’s drive from little Milton. Suddenly, the hall was packed. “It was just like, ‘Boom, what’s going on here?’” said Mitch Webb, the director of the 81-year-old mission. In early 2016, the mission served an average of around 8,700 meals a month. After the new food stamp policy went into full effect, that jumped to over 12,300 meals a month.

They quote monthly statistics to make the increase seem much more than it is. Do you have the impression that we are dealing with thousands of people here? Actually, this Mission serves breakfast, lunch and dinner every day, an average of about 87 meals per month. That means that they have gone from serving an average of about 100 people per meal, to about 140. Forty additional people per meal is a noticeable increase, but a small number of people in a town of 47,000, where probably close to two thousand (assuming a decline proportional to the rest of the country) have been removed from the food stamp rolls since Trump took office. I’m sure there are other food kitchens there as well, but without doubt, the number of former food stamp recipients who now rely on food kitchens for most meals is a small fraction of the total removed from the rolls. (The Times does not give us these numbers of course.)

So which is better as a government policy, and for this population — food stamps, or food kitchens. My opinion is that food kitchens are far preferable. Food kitchens force the recipients to put in at least some effort to show up for each meal, and they come with a small amount of stigma. Both those things provide important incentives for potential recipients to go for self-sufficiency if they can, rather than relying on the handout. And sure enough, most former food stamp recipients turn out to be able to provide for themselves if given these small incentives. Food stamps (aka, an EBT card that is refilled automatically each month) are also notoriously subject to fraud. There’s no good way to defraud a food kitchen.

For a different take on the policy issue, see this piece from the Washington Post on January 3, headline and sub-headline: “Why Trump’s new food stamp rule is about cruelty, not responsibility. Work requirements degrade the poor, instead of helping them escape poverty.” Yes, it’s the usual epithet of “cruel.” It’s all a question of how you look at the world. Which is more degrading to the poor? — providing incentives toward self-sufficiency, or luring them into taking a life of handouts to support themselves? Obviously, the Washington Post/New York Times and I are on opposite sides of that question.

Finally, back to the DOA chart, and note this. Since that peak in 2013, beneficiaries have gone from 47.64 million to 34.47 million; benefit costs have declined accordingly, from $76.07 billion to $53.76 billion. But how about administrative costs? They have gone from $3.79 billion to $4.53 billion. The bureaucrats always make sure to take care of themselves.

UPDATE, January 18, 2020: The New York Times reports yesterday that on Thursday some fourteen states, plus the District of Columbia and New York City, have brought suit to enjoin the taking effect of the new Trump administration food stamp regulation. Of course they have. In the headline, the plaintiffs are described as “Democrat Attorneys General.”

Today, after all the reductions in food stamp usage under Trump, we still have some 34.47 million people on the rolls. In 2000, the last year of the Clinton administration, the number was 17.19 million. Do you recall anyone saying that that level of beneficiaries was “cruel”? Neither do I. How about we go back to that?