Source: Paul Niehaus and Michael Faye, POLITICO, 2/15/18



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It was a marriage of “the best of the humanitarian instincts of the American people [and] the best of the free enterprise system,” said President Lyndon Johnson in 1964, a way to combat hunger that would give recipients the ability to make their own food choices while avoiding a giant, Soviet-style food distribution scheme: food stamps. Today, some 46 million Americans with low incomes receive food stamps’ modern incarnation — electronic benefits transfers from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. EBT cards in hand, recipients have some choice in the food they will eat instead of the government deciding for them.

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