According to a new study, Joe Biden’s big increase in food stamp expenditures — the largest increase in history — is pushing average Americans to pay more at the grocery store since the SNAP program has had the impact of driving food costs considerably upward.
According to an August analysis from the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA), Joe Biden’s administration pushed through a significant increase in food stamp spending and even violated all of the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) own protocols in order to expedite the jump. And the price of food has risen for everyone, not just the government.
According to the FGA study, the Biden USDA implemented the largest permanent increase in food stamp benefits since the program’s inception following the passing of the 1964 Food Stamp Act in 2021.
Food stamp spending is expected to reach $119 billion by 2022, a “sixfold increase over the last two decades,” according to the FGA. To break it down, the FGA stated that the US government spent $4.5 billion per month on food stamps in 2019. However, by 2022, it had increased to an incredible $11 billion every month.
There was also an “emergency allotment” that temporarily raised food stamps during the pandemic, which FGA stated drove spending to the $11 billion threshold. Thankfully, that is no longer the case, but even when the emergency expenditure terminated in February, spending remained over double what it was in 2019 and settled in at $8.6 billion each month.
Furthermore, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that Biden’s food stamp spending will reach $1.1 trillion over the next ten years, a record high.
Under Stacy Dean, the woman Biden appointed as Deputy Under Secretary for USDA’s Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services, the department enhanced benefits by an average of 27 percent in 2022, a cost to taxpayers of $250 billion over the next decade.
The FGA, which was established in 2011 to analyze government overreach and propose solutions to limit federal spending, also stated that the spending rise was pushed through despite the department’s policy implementation methods.
“In her quest to rush through this massive welfare expansion, Ms. Dean and others in USDA leadership abandoned the department’s 45-year cost neutrality requirement, violated internal control standards, canceled formal peer-review processes, ignored the department’s chief economist, and forced the reevaluation team to cut corners and ignore best practices to meet Ms. Dean’s accelerated timeline,” the FGA wrote.
Worse, before unilaterally executing the modifications, the Biden USDA failed to submit the appropriate reports to Congress and the Government Accountability Office (GAO). According to the FGA, this makes Biden’s increases in food stamp spending illegal.
All of this has an impact on more than just government spending. In fact, the large increase in food stamp spending costs us every one, not just through greater taxes, but also through inflationary forces that drive up food prices.
Researchers at the World Bank, for example, gathered data from 2.6 million barcodes that recorded consumer costs between December 2019 and March of this year. According to the report, prices have risen by nearly 24%. According to FGA, this equates to a 1% rise for every 12.5 percent increase in food stamp spending.
The FGA concluded its analysis by stating that if Congress reverses Biden’s unconstitutional increase in food stamp expenditure and returns it to 2019 levels, taxpayers might save $193 billion over the following decade.
The FGA is completely correct regarding the dramatic surge in food costs. Just last month, it was reported that the price of a normal American breakfast had risen to levels not seen since Jimmy Carter’s Stagflation years.
Eggs, for example, have increased by 46.8 percent, butter by 23 percent, and fresh fruits by 26 percent.
Our Independence Day cookout expenditures have also risen this year.
Beer prices were up 8%, soft drinks were up 14%, bread was up 22%, ice cream was up 9%, processed cheese was up 10%, and potato chips were up 15%.
According to a National Retail Federation survey, our expenditure on July Fourth cookout materials will average $93.34 in 2023, up $9.22 from $84.12 last year.
Throughout Biden’s presidency, customers have been subjected to increasing pressures. Food commodities increased by 40% in February of last year, raising food prices for everyone.
The Biden administration may pretend that it is “helping” the poor with this large increase in food stamp spending, but in truth, he is harming the entire country. After all, as a result of Biden’s economically terrible policies, even his food stamp beneficiaries are receiving less food for their welfare payments.
