A Brief History of Right-Wing Attacks on Food Stamps

"It should not have been surprising that the Trump administration would use the cover of a government shutdown to withhold food-assistance benefits from the 42 million Americans who rely on the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP). After all, Republicans have had it in for food stamps for nearly as long as the federal government has tried to address hunger. Federally funded food assistance was first introduced in the United States in 1939, with the twofold goal of helping farmers offload surplus"

"A classic New Deal initiative-partly the brainchild of Henry Wallace, Franklin D. Roosevelt's Iowa-born secretary of agriculture and later vice president who ran for president in 1948 on the Progressive Party ticket-the food-stamp program began as a way to connect people who needed food but couldn't buy it with people who had far too much food but could not sell it."

The Trump administration withheld SNAP benefits during a government shutdown, affecting 42 million Americans who rely on the program. Opposition to food stamps has been a recurring Republican stance throughout the program's history. Federally funded food assistance began in 1939 to help farmers offload surplus crops and feed Depression-era unemployed Americans. The original plan used orange stamps purchased by low-income households and blue stamps provided for free to buy surplus farm goods. Jane Whitbread praised the plan's simplicity. The program wound down in 1943 and reemerged in the 1960s under Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty.

Read at The Nation