Watching what you eat: why has the USDA been plumping up the food stamps program like a factory chicken?

• Author: Beato, Gref
• Position: Columns - Column

POSSIBLY THE ONLY cultural phenomenon that had a bigger year in 2010 than Justin Bieber was the needs-based entitlement program formerly known as Food Stamps. Now dubbed the Supplemental Nutrition Access Program, or SNAP, it enrolled more than 40 million people for the first time in March 2010. By August that number had grown to 41,836,300. At that point, nearly one in seven Americans were receiving monthly payments of approximately $133, for a monthly government outlay of more than $5.5 billion.

"Nothing tells the reality of this economy better than this," Bloomberg Television news anchor Margaret Brennan uttered solemnly in January 2010, setting the tone for a year's worth of coverage. In May, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution told the tale of an entertainment attorney who'd once earned $250,000 a year resorting to food stamps to feed his two kids. In June, NPR featured the story of a former restaurant critic who was now dining on Uncle Sam's dime. Even Newt Gingrich bought into SNAP's rapidly expanding girth as a telling metric of economic stagnation. "Which future do I want?" he wrote in an October memo sent to Republican candidates. "More food stamps? Or more paychecks?"

But the Great Recession isn't the whole story behind food stamps' Second Great Awakening. The Department of Agriculture's Food & Nutrition Service (FNS) has been engaged in a lengthy campaign to boost the program's enrollment rates. In 2000 just 16.9 million people were receiving food stamps, and only fro percent of those who were eligible participated in the program. Then FNS and the state agencies that administer SNAP began streamlining application processes and ramping up their outreach efforts. By 2007, 66 percent of "eligibles" had been converted into participants, and preliminary data suggests that that percentage continued to increase in 2008 and 2009. SNAP, it turns out, is a rare and increasingly cosily example of government efficiency.

SNAP'S growth was driven partly by the transition from paper-based coupons to electronic benefit transfer (EBT) cards, a process that was mostly completed by 2004. Every month, the government deposits funds into accounts established for SNAP recipients, who then draw upon these funds via magnetic-strip cards that work at point-of-sale devices in more than 190,000 retail stores. "The card is convenient, secure, and reduces the stigma sometimes associated with public assistance," a California EBT website advises.

Convenient...