When Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-MA) said the quiet part out loud last week, it was a refreshing moment of honesty from the Democrats. Clark said during an interview, "Of course, there will be families that are going to suffer. We take that responsibility very seriously, but it is one of the few leverage times we have."
That, of course, has been the entire governing philosophy of Democrats for as long as I can remember: make American families suffer so Democrats can later swoop in and "save" us from their policies. We're watching it unfold with the Schumer Shutdown and the Democrats' increasing calls to pass universal socialized medicine — their political dream — as a "fix" for what they broke thanks to Obamacare.
The Democrats are banking that our anger at skyrocketing insurance costs will force us to let them turn every clinic and hospital into the DMV on steroids.
In the same vein, they're hoping that keeping the government shut down until the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) runs out of funds, leaving families in a sudden lurch for groceries.
The number of people who could be impacted by the SNAP snafu is about 40 million, or 13.3% of the population.
SNAP funding expiration set to hit 40 million peoplehttps://t.co/0SN5YDpYMr
— The Hill (@thehill) October 26, 2025
More than 40 million low-income food assistance beneficiaries are expected to receive less help with grocery bills — or no help at all — in the coming days.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is threatening to withhold billions of dollars in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) contingency funding, which Congress has already allocated for emergency scenarios, if the government shutdown stretches into November.
There is between $5 billion and $6 billion currently in that fund, experts say. That’s not enough to cover the estimated $8 billion in SNAP benefits due out next month, but it would allow for partial payments to help low-income Americans defray food costs.
On Friday, however, the USDA released guidance saying it won’t use those funds to cover SNAP benefits if the government shutdown extends beyond Oct. 31 — a move that appears designed to maximize the pressure on Senate Democrats to support a GOP spending bill to reopen the government.
While The Hill mentions Americans once, notice that I did not. That's because, while the cuts will impact some Americans, it seems those who are receiving welfare, including SNAP benefits, are largely immigrants:
— "Red" Baron 🎸🇺🇸 (@RedRobbyBaron) October 26, 2025
Who is getting their EBT cut pic.twitter.com/el8x9X5iVX
— The General (@1776General_) October 25, 2025
The blunt truth is this: America is broke, and this Schumer Shutdown is just a taste of what will happen if we don't right our fiscal ship soon. That means making some hard but necessary choices.
After controlling immigration and deporting illegal immigrants, the next priority must be entitlement reform. That battle will be politically bloody and fraught with drama. But it is one we must have. For far too long, America has used social welfare not to help keep people from starving and incurring undue harm, but as a lifestyle choice. Increasingly, the number of people working and paying taxes to support those who simply refuse to work is becoming unbalanced and unsustainable.
Over the summer, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) issued a letter that cited a study showing that many Medicaid recipients simply refuse to work and that they: "spend 4.2 hours per day watching television and playing video games, or 125 hours during a 30-day month. That is more than 50 percent higher than the 80 hours they would be required to work or otherwise engage with the community during at least some months under the reconciliation bill. They spend on average 6.1 hours per day, or 184 hours per month on all socializing, relaxing and leisure activities (including television and video games). In the average day they spend about 0.36 hours (i.e., 22 minutes) looking for work, 4.0 hours doing housework and errands, and 0.47 hours (i.e., 28 minutes) caring for others."
As I mentioned earlier, SNAP stands for SUPPLEMENTAL Nutrition Assistance Program. Supplemental means "provided in addition to what is already present or available to complete or enhance it," according to the Oxford Dictionary. It was never meant to replace a family's grocery budget. But as we saw in September, when the Trump administration's FDA passed new SNAP rules that limited or prohibited the amount of junk food SNAP users could buy. This led to several people posting meltdowns on social media, claiming they were entitled to buy junk food with our tax dollars.
To that end, how do we fix SNAP for good?
For starters, the rules limiting junk-food purchases don't go far enough. SNAP should be limited to very basic staples, including rice, flour, beans, fresh produce, and chicken/beef/fish. Whenever possible, those items should come from the government, and recipients should be required to pick them up in person.
one of the major issues is an EBT card basically looks like a debit card now. It can be used for payment of grocery delivery. People used to worry about being embarrassed if people saw them using it the store. There’s no way to tell now and you can even use it from the… https://t.co/NWpNRLkcRQ
— Just Mindy 🐊 (@just_mindy) October 27, 2025
We must outlaw using SNAP for DoorDash deliveries. Using SNAP needs to be unglamorous and require that people use their own income to supplement what SNAP provides. It is meant as a hand-up, not a hand-out.
There also needs to be a return to the social shame that comes with using SNAP.
And lest you think I don't know what it's like to be on SNAP, I do. I used it for a short time while I was going through nursing school and a divorce. But I also worked during that period, at multiple odd jobs, including at the college where I attended nursing school. I drove for Uber and picked up shifts in home health care. And as soon as I started working full-time as a nurse, I stopped using those benefits. But I always felt shame when I had to buy groceries with it. My job as an adult and a parent was to provide for my family — not outsource that responsibility to the government, and certainly not to receive benefits while I refused to work.
Lastly, there needs to be a sunset date on SNAP benefits for everyone except the genuinely disabled and needy. Whether that's six months or a year can be up to politicians, but perpetual benefits without justification needs to end.
"A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have" is a quote long attributed to Gerald R. Ford, and he's right.
The government promised SNAP recipients food, right up until a budget showdown left the money running out. What do people think will happen if the economy — God forbid — collapses? I'll tell you: this, but on steroids. The only way to avoid such a catastrophe is to make government smaller.
And fixing SNAP is a good first step.