After the pandemic hit America, inflation immediately followed due to how much money was poured into the economy. This raised grocery prices through the roof, and so food stamp funds were increased to help people afford groceries. However, that's all coming to an end now, for the entire country. As of March 1, the federal government will be ending the emergency SNAP food benefits. In most places in America, this emergency benefit was $95 for families. Of course, at the grocery store, $95 will get you a few cartons of eggs, some milk, bread, and maybe some meat, if you can catch a sale. So, to be sure, it was never a lot of money. Nevertheless, the plug has been pulled and every American on food stamps will now have less money to spend monthly at the store.

Does the government have an actual plan to help Americans after ripping money away from them? Well, sure they do; this is the American federal government, after all. Their plan is for individuals and families to "make preparations now" for the adjusted budget, before March 1, so that being poorer doesn't take them by complete surprise. Imagine if the federal government said that to Ukrainian families, who benefit more from the government than American families. It really is amazing at just how little help Americans receive from their own government.

There is no preparation for this at a time when food is more expensive than it's ever been, and Americans are angry.
 

The FDA Was the One Good Government Organization

The SNAP program is operated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), one of the many organizations created by the federal government. They receive their budget from Congress's spending bills, and then the FDA works up an allotment per state in order to hand out money so that states can administer the SNAP program independently. This is done because it enables people to get their food stamps a lot quicker. If residents from all 50 states had to file for benefits federally, it might take years to complete the process. The federal government is a slow-moving machine, and it takes billions upon billions in extra spending every year just to keep the Postal Service running right, and you probably know that the Postal Service still doesn't really run right. Regardless, the FDA was the federal government's crown jewel, and they always ran a tight ship with food stamps and SNAP.

Millions upon millions of Americans are currently irate at the FDA, however. People who realized that their SNAP increases were being rolled back amid the highest food costs in history are very angry that the government would do this to them. Though you should be aware that the FDA doesn't really have anything to do with this. It's Congress that's not pushing to continue the funding for hungry Americans. It's Congress that calls the shots here when it comes to domestic aid. It's Congress that has decided foreign wars and international aid and giving Social Security income to undocumented immigrants crossing the border takes precedence over American families that cannot afford groceries. This is not a biased political observation; this is merely the objective truth. SNAP rolling back to its pre-pandemic-level funding is the doing of Congress and its inability to spend money on the very people it taxes to fund the government.

It really is sickening once you get into the details of what's going on. It's both parties; not a right or left thing. Republicans are bickering about the Speaker of the House and what sort of concessions McCarthy had to make to get the votes. Democrats are intently focused on more billion-dollar bills to send money to Ukraine, and Joe Biden has been calling for more money for race-based programs in America since giving a horribly incomprehensible speech on Martin Luther King, Jr.'s holiday. It's all just falling to pieces, with a federal government that can seemingly do nothing except blame American citizens for the state of the country, and this leaves the FDA with no choice but to roll back, because they can't afford to keep paying more.

This might change. There's no news on any new spending proposals, but the government may realize that this is angering tens of millions of Americans, on both sides of the aisle, and not just some small constituency for one representative. At some point, the government is going to have to increase the FDA's funding, or the government is going to look very different after the next election cycle.