This week Vermont Public reported that the administration of Governor Phil Scott is complying with a federal dictate requiring the state to disclose personally identifying information for its 64,000 SNAP recipients. SNAP, or the federal Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program.
The federal request for personal information is being appealed by 20 other states. But the Scott administration is voluntarily providing the names, dates of birth, social security numbers and addresses for all households (and all members) who have received SNAP benefits in the last five years.
Scott’s team defended the action, suggesting that it is a federal program and that it’s more important to keep money for food coming than to risk losing it because so many families depend on it. And that’s not wrong.
Here’s what is wrong though. Part of the federal dictate requires that states provide specifics on what people purchased with their SNAP benefits. Recall that there are already quite specific limits to what can be purchased with SNAP funds.
Does the Trump administration and the questionable health and human services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., really need to know what food people are buying to add judgment to the already difficult proposition of needing help with food insecurity?
Is it anyone’s business if someone facing food insecurity opts to use their SNAP benefits to buy a cake mix and frosting to celebrate their kid’s birthday? Really? Whose business is it what food people eat? As with every dictate from the feds these days, the cruelty is always the point. In this instance, the cruelty is served with a helping of judgmentalism.
The old trope of welfare queens no longer applies in a time when housing costs outpace wages for far too many families in Vermont and across the country, even for those with multiple full-time wage earners. The food insecurity crisis is less about what people are buying (and who they are and where they live and their Social Security numbers) and more about an economic and wage structure in our society that works for the few but not the many.
Shame on the feds and shame on Vermont. How disappointing.
