“America’s Harvest Box” Captures the Trumpian Attitude Toward Poverty
“Currently, SNAP benefits are delivered in the form of cash added to an electronic benefit-transfer (E.B.T.) card, and they’re spendable at almost any store that sells food. The Department of Agriculture wants to dock about half of that money and replace it with an ‘America’s Harvest box,’ consisting of ‘100 percent U.S.-grown and produced food.’ Not freshly harvested fruits and vegetables or meat, mind you, but processed ‘American’ food in cans, tins, and jars. The Department suggests that the plan would encourage healthier eating habits and save taxpayer money, even though the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that ninety-three per cent of food-stamp dollars are spent on food for beneficiaries (making it one of the least wasteful federal bureaucracies) and, as the U.S.D.A. spokesman Tim Murtaugh admitted, to Politico, ‘The projected savings does not include shipping door-to-door for all recipients.’”