The Wisconsin Policy Research Institute

The federal food stamp program—the proper name of which is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP—is an important element of the social safety net. For families and individuals that have fallen on hard times, SNAP provides an electronic benefits transfer card that works just like cash at most grocery stores. SNAP benefits can be used to purchase food items for consumption at home, and may not be used for such things as alcohol, tobacco, non-food items, and hot/prepared foods.

Knowing only this much, what would you guess happened to SNAP expenditures in Wisconsin between 2008 and 2009? Here are your choices: (1) they increased a lot; (2) they stayed more or less the same; (3) they decreased a little. Remember, SNAP is a program for low-income individuals and families.

If your guess was, “they increased a lot,” you are correct. As the national and state economies deteriorated sharply in late 2008, more and more families found themselves in need of public assistance. Accordingly, SNAP expenditures in Wisconsin rose from about $380 million in 2008 to $615 million in 2009 (in 2001 dollars).

Now let’s look at a different time period: 2004 to 2008. In 2004, the annual unemployment rate in Wisconsin was 5 percent. By 2008, it had dropped to 4.7%. The poverty rate in Wisconsin was fairly stable at around 10.8 percent from 2004 to 2007, but then dropped to 10.5 percent in 2008.

In light of these numbers, what would you guess happened to SNAP expenditures in Wisconsin between 2004 and 2008? You have the same choices as before: (1) they increased a lot; (2) they stayed more or less the same; (3) they decreased a little.

Did you guess, “they decreased a little”? If so, your answer is logical…but wrong. In fact, Wisconsin SNAP benefits increased by almost half between 2004 and 2008, from $260 million to $380 million (again, in constant dollars).

Why did SNAP spending increase while unemployment and poverty were decreasing? The answer is that in 2002, the federal government relaxed a number of SNAP program provisions, enabling states to expand the scope and reach of the program. (SNAP is funded by the federal government, but is administered by individual states.) Wisconsin responded by adopting some of the most liberal SNAP standards in the country, and by actively seeking to enroll more families. The perverse result was that while objective measures of need in Wisconsin were going one way (down), spending on the SNAP program was going the other (up, way up).

This is just one instance of a more general phenomenon: policymakers using your money to serve their own ends. The SNAP program expanded not because economic need had increased, but because elected officials and unelected bureaucrats thought the program ought to be more generous. What did the rest of us think? I don’t know. I’m virtually certain, though, that policymakers didn’t know, either—nor did they particularly care. This was something they wanted to do, and they did it. They didn’t need our approval or consent.

That, unfortunately, is the way government tends to work. When elected officials act, they typically claim to be addressing some public policy problem or other. It’s funny, though, how the solutions they proffer always seem to solve a political problem, namely, “How can I maximize my chances for reelection?” New programs and extensions of existing programs, like SNAP, allow politicians to distribute benefits to particular constituencies, while spreading the costs over a broad base of taxpayers. The political benefits are obvious; whether or not progress has been made on the underlying policy issue is almost beside the point.

Bureaucrats have a similar problem to solve: “How can I keep my job?” Negotiated civil service and union protections are part of the answer. Another answer, though, is this: “Make yourself indispensible.” New programs and extensions of existing programs mean that there’s always more work to be done, which makes the idea of bureaucratic downsizing a very hard sell.

The result is a public sector that sees its own unrelenting growth not as many Americans see it—that is, as an urgent problem—but as a solution; in fact, as the one solution that always makes sense.

-February 9. 2010

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