The Case for Expanding SNAP

Rebecca talks to Joel Berg of Hunger Free America about how Dems are changing the debate on SNAP to how to expand the program. PLUS: A first-person perspective on the emotional and economic consequences of lack of access to dental care. Subscribe to Off-Kilter on iTunes.

This week on Off-Kilter… A recurring topic on this show is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP, formerly known as Food Stamps — typically in the context of some new proposed cut to the program’s eligibility or benefits. Benefits are already incredibly meager, averaging a paltry $1.40 per person per meal in food assistance. Imagine that as your food budget. With benefits so low, it comes as little surprise that most SNAP recipients run out of food assistance before the end of the month.

Following years of on-again, off-again debate over how much to cut the program, a new bill gaining traction in the House, championed by Rep. Alma Adams (D-NC), and soon to be introduced in the Senate by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), finally has Democrats going on offense on SNAP, changing the debate to how to expand the program — so that SNAP can provide a realistic monthly food budget for a nutritious diet. To unpack the significance of the bill and explore what it would look like to finally turn the tide and go on offense on SNAP and nutrition, Rebecca talks with Joel Berg, CEO of Hunger Free America, and author of America We Need to Talk.

Later in the show… A subject that doesn’t get nearly enough attention in mainstream media is the so-called “dental divide” — and how lack of access to dental care can be both a cause and consequence of poverty. People living in or near the poverty line are twice as likely to have untreated tooth decay, relative to people with higher incomes. And the stigma associated with bad teeth in our society is significant: social science studies find that we judge one another — including making judgments about intelligence — based on the appearance of one’s teeth and mouth.

A big part of the dental divide is that most states’ Medicaid programs don’t include comprehensive dental benefits. Many provide little to no dental coverage at all. So as a bonus for this week’s episode, we wanted to share with you a reading of a recent first-person perspective on the emotional and economic consequences of lack of access to dental care: “Dental Care Was a Path to Opportunity. Then I Couldn’t Afford It Anymore,” by Katherine Morgan, an essayist living in Portland, Oregon.

This week’s guests:

• Joel Berg, CEO of Hunger Free America (@joelsberg)
• Katherine Morgan, essayist (@ohwowhellothere)

This week’s transcript:

♪ I work and get paid like minimum wage

sights to hit the class by the end of the day

hot from downtown into the hood where I stay

the only place I can afford ’cause my block ain’t saved

I spend most of my time working, trying to bring in…. ♪

REBECCA VALLAS (HOST): Welcome to Off-Kilter, powered by the Center for American Progress Action Fund. I’m Rebecca Vallas.

A recurring topic on this show is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP, formerly known as Food Stamps. Typically, it comes up in the context of some new proposed cut to the program’s eligibility or benefits. Benefits are already incredibly meager, averaging a paltry $1.40 per person, per meal in food assistance. Imagine that as your food budget. Now with benefits so low, it comes as little surprise that most SNAP recipients run out of food assistance before the end of the month. Following years of on-again off-again debate over how much to cut the program, a new bill finally gaining traction in the House, championed by Democratic Representative Alma Adams of North Carolina and soon to be introduced in the Senate by Kirsten Gillibrand, finally has Democrats going on offense on SNAP, changing the debate on how to expand the program so that SNAP can provide a realistic monthly food budget for a nutritious diet. To unpack the significance of the bill and explore what it would look like to finally turn the tide and really go on offense on SNAP and nutrition assistance, I’m joined by Joel Berg, CEO of Hunger Free America and author of America We Need to Talk. Joel, thanks so much for coming back on the show.

JOEL BERG: Oh, thanks for having me on what I always want to call the On-Kilter podcast because the rest of the world is off kilter, and you’re on it.

VALLAS: I appreciate that, Joel. And you actually do often call the show On-Kilter, which I take as a sort of a weird compliment for reasons that people now understand.

BERG: There you go.

VALLAS: So, I have to say it’s a rare pleasure to get to have you on this program to talk not just — and we’ll get to this at some point in this segment — but not just about oh my god, all the horrible ways that say, Republicans in Congress or the Trump administration are coming after nutrition assistance for people struggling to put food on the table. I finally get to have you on the show to talk about an effort to expand the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, to strengthen it rather than cut it. So, Joel, before we get into what this bill would do, why it’s so significant that we’re starting to have a conversation about expanding rather than cutting SNAP, it’s probably helpful to start with a little bit of 101. So, give us a little bit of a refresher as you do so well on what is the snapshot of hunger in America and where SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or more Food Stamps, comes in.

BERG: Well, right now there are about 40 million Americans living in households described by USDA as food insecure. And that is a very wonkish term that I could never even explain to my mother. But it basically means that people are struggling against hunger, rationing food, choosing between food and medicine, buying less-healthy food because that’s all they can afford. And so, there are 40 million people in that category as of 2017. And because of the continuing success of the Obama economy, in 2017, wages were finally starting to increase a bit. And part of that was because of the progressive push to raise the minimum wage, and unemployment was at a modern low, at least on paper. And even with all that, there were 40 million Americans living in households that couldn’t afford enough food: more hunger than before the start of the Great Recession.

And sometimes people really want to try to minimize the extent of hunger in America, the extent of food insecurity in America, and they really don’t explain what these numbers mean. 40 million Americans is more than the population of Florida, West Virginia, and all the New England states combined. And so, keep that in mind when we say there’s still over 40 million Americans getting SNAP benefits, what used to be called Food Stamps benefits. And people say, well, why are so many people needing this help in such a strong economy? Because there’s still so much hunger in the strong economy because people just don’t earn enough to feed their families, pay rent, pay for childcare, and pay all the other expenses they need to pay.

VALLAS: So, that’s where the SNAP program comes in. It underwent that name change. No longer Food Stamps; now called SNAP. It’s not the only nutrition assistance program in the country. There’s others that are really important that we talk about on this show sometimes too, like the Special Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for Women Infants and Children, better known as WIC. But SNAP is the largest program we have in this country that helps people put food on the table. And now, bringing that kind of overview to why this piece of legislation is so significant. One of the things that you’ve often talked about on this show, Joel, is how much benefits are and how far they have to go to be what people actually need to afford an adequate and nutritious diet, not to be hungry, right, being sort of not even where we are right now the way that benefits are so stingy. So, tell us a little bit about what benefit adequacy in the SNAP program looks like to help us have a little bit more of the context we need for understanding this bill.

BERG: Right now, the average SNAP benefit equals $1.37 per meal. That’s a dollar and 37 cents per meal. Twice, I lived on the SNAP budget for a week, not because it’s anything like really living under those conditions, but I just wanted to prove a political point. Even doing it just for a week was extraordinarily challenging. I just couldn’t afford healthy food, just couldn’t afford a full mix of foods, really couldn’t afford enough foods. And so, the SNAP program prevents tens of millions of Americans from starving, which is certainly a good thing, and it’s why even in the recession, we didn’t have mass starvation the way we did in the Depression. On the other hand, it’s not enough to have a truly nutritious, truly supportive diet that all Americans should have a right to access.

VALLAS: Now, tell us a little bit and get wonky here, because it feels like this is really helpful for people to understand.

BERG: Get wonky?! You might as well tell someone to go find Nemo in water.

VALLAS: [laughs] Well, this is why I brought you, Joel. So, get wonky with me. So, to understand how —

BERG: But wonky’s cool now.

VALLAS: Well, it is! So, I hope you take it as —

BERG: I wish someone had told me like 40 years ago that someday being a nerd would be considered cool. But continue.

VALLAS: Well, I’m sorry that no one told you that before, but now clearly, you you’ve learned it. And so, I intend wonk only as a compliment. I’m glad you’re taking it that way.

BERG: Well, yes.

VALLAS: So, to get wonky with me a little bit here, help us understand how are SNAP benefits calculated? Because that’s also part of what makes them as inadequate as they are, and it comes down to some — and this is where it gets wonky — some things called food plans that the U.S. Department of Agriculture maintains. Tell us a little bit about the food plans and how that fits in.

BERG: So, first of all, you have to understand that the SNAP program is extraordinarily complicated by design. Other countries on the planet, Western, developed countries just, God forbid, give poor people cash and say, guess what! You can determine how much this goes to rent and how much this goes to food. No, no, no! Not in America because we hate poor people here, particularly so. And so, first of all, they’re very complex determinations of who’s eligible based on income, based on immigration status, in some states based on how much money you have in the bank. And then there are complex calculations based on how much money you’re going to get based on the number of people in your household, based on their housing costs, and based on these food plans. And basically right now, it’s based on what’s called the Thrifty Food Plan, which is what USDA has determined is a very, very, very affordable — and cheap, may I say — food plan. But it’s really based on Ozzie and Harriet assumptions that at least one parent would stay full time at home and cook everything from scratch, which is ridiculous. That’s why we’re supporting moves that some members of the House, including Alma Adams, have introduced to improve SNAP benefits by replacing the Thrifty Food Plan with the Low Cost Food Plan. No again, this is wonky. But let’s put it in just non-wonky English: that the proposal is to make sure that the SNAP program would actually allow hungry families to get a more adequate diet that more realistically represents food costs and how people are able to cook and prepare food today.

VALLAS: So, and that’s what this legislation would do. Now so, to sort of to present day here of where I started, which was to say we actually have some good news to be looking at for once, which is the start of — not the start off because it’s been out there for some time as an idea — but in this Congress and in this political moment, the start of a conversation that’s not about cutting this program that’s been so villainized, that’s been this political football, that we just survived this farm bill negotiation. And then it was just not even minutes after President Trump had actually signed the farm bill that protected snap into law, then he turned around and announced that he was going to be attacking the program by fiat. And that’s a lot of what this year has already brought through a rule that would, if enacted, as you’ve described on this show, would end up taking away food assistance from somewhere upwards of about a million people in this country who are struggling to find steady work. So, thus the nature of the conversation around SNAP that we’ve been having for as long as I can remember in this political era of Trump and of the various makeups of Congress that we’ve had to date.

Now, here we are, finally actually looking at a piece of legislation that would not cut but would expand SNAP by doing what you’re describing: switching the way benefits are calculated so that they would be a heck of a lot more adequate and a lot closer to what people actually need to live. And so, that families wouldn’t be running out of their Food Stamps two and three weeks into the month as we’d routinely hear from them is the norm. So, talk a little bit about what would this bill do? How would it change things? And why is this an important piece of legislation to be seeing in this particular political moment?

BERG: Before I answer that, you mentioned that Trump’s doing this or trying to do this by executive fiat. And just for the record, that is a unilateral executive order, not the cool Italian auto company.

VALLAS: Very important clarification. Thank you for that.

BERG: And this is important because the Republicans, every time the Democrats are in office, harrumph how they’re trampling on the Constitution by going around Congress. Anyhow.

And so, this attempt to actually change the conversation about how the program is inadequate is absolutely vital. Any conversation we have about hunger in America that doesn’t include a conversation about ending hunger in America is a failed conversation. Anything that accepts as any sort of new normal or new status quo 40 million of our neighbors in the richest country in the history of the world, in a country that there’s so many billionaires, merely having a billion dollars doesn’t automatically get you on the Forbes 400 list, is a failed conversation. So, absolutely we all agree, at least on this podcast, that we need a broader conversation, not just about reducing or pushing back against cuts, but having the investments, having the economic policies to finally enter the rest of the civilized world in not having hunger. And so, this bill is part of that.

And according to the Food Research Action Center, our wonderful colleagues at FRAC, last count there were 111 co-sponsors of this bill. That’s not a majority yet in the House, but that’s a very significant number when you have a few dozen people who say, “Oh, it’s just a message bill. They’re trying to make a point.” But when you have over a 100 million members, you say, “Oh, this is something that really could get momentum over time.” Now, as long as he didn’t call himself Darth Vader, what did the Senate majority leader call himself? Oh, the Grim Reaper.

VALLAS: The Grim Reaper, right.

BERG: Yeah, as soon as Grim Reaper Vader, as long as Grim Reaper Vader is there in the Senate, it’s going to be hard to do this unless people like Pat Roberts, the outgoing Chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, insists upon it. But I don’t know that that’s going to happen this year. Our top priority for the Agriculture Committee is passing a child nutrition bill to improve funding for things like WIC. So, I don’t know that it’s going to become law anytime soon, but it’s not inconceivable that there will be a Democratic president who takes office in January 2021. Or since we’re nonpartisan groups, I’d say a more progressive president or less reactionary president takes office on January 20th, 2021, and perhaps a more progressive or less regressive Senate. And so, I think setting the predicate now that House Democrats are saying no, we shouldn’t be just opposing cuts, but we’ve got to be pushing for a massive reduction in hunger, is exactly what needs to happen.

And for all this talk — I’m sure we’ll get into this — that low-income people just don’t know what’s good for them, they’re not shopping properly, because they’re too lazy: we know that they just don’t have the access to affordable, healthier food. And so, the best way to not only reduce hunger but to improve the nutritional status of low-income families is to — I know, shocking — give them more purchasing power for healthier food.

VALLAS: Well, and talk a little bit about that. What would you expect to happen? I mean you said that the politics around this bill are such that you’re not expecting it to be law, in the next 10 to 15 minutes. I’m probably there with you, although the co-sponsor count is impressive, particularly with so much else going on in this Congress and so many other progressive priorities that are getting a heck of a lot more attention than SNAP or anything to do with nutrition assistance. So, with that, if this bill were — so, pretend for a second that we had that political lineup that would be necessary, and we’ll actually talk about how we get to that point in just a minute, but pretend we had it tomorrow — and it were actually to take effect, what do you think the effects of this bill becoming law would be? It’s easy to say, oh, gee, it would take a bite out of hunger. But what would that mean? What does the research tell us would happen if we were actually putting more money into low-income people’s pockets through increased nutrition assistance?

BERG: Well, first of all, it would dramatically boost the economy. A bunch of years ago, and we could work to update this, but FRAC, I’m sorry CAP, Center for American Progress, your other job there, put out a report that said that hunger costs the American economy $167.5 billion a year. Billion with a B. Because hungry children don’t learn, hungry workers don’t work, and hungry seniors have a more difficult time staying independent. So, if we significantly reduce hunger, we significantly reduce tax dollars spent on dealing with the byproducts of hunger. That’s number one. Number two, there’s no question people would not only buy more food but would buy healthier food. We at Hunger Free America used to have a fresh produce distribution program that we subsidized heavily, and low-income people lined up for it. We had waiting lists for it because low-income people know what’s good for them. They just can’t afford it, and it just doesn’t exist in low-income neighborhoods. There’s been a huge problem with brick and mortar grocery stores going out of business everywhere in the country, but particularly low-income communities. If low-income people had more purchasing power for food, it would probably make it less likely for some supermarkets to go out of business. And I will say, if Congress did two things, significantly increase the purchasing power of the people currently getting SNAP and increase the number of people who should be eligible for SNAP, including low-income immigrants and including people who are temporarily unemployed and including people who make a little above the guidelines now, if you spend enough on that, you could entirely end hunger in America. And then the other end result is that I would retire and go run a nightclub in Dakar, if they’d have me.

VALLAS: [laughs] Well, I have to admit: I saw the other parts coming, maybe not that last one. But so noted. And thanks for that heads up.

BERG: You know, nothing would please me more than being able to retire after hunger was ended in America.

VALLAS: Well and —

BERG: Next year would be better than 40 years, but we’ll see what we can do.

VALLAS: And in fairness, I feel like these are the things we should be careful saying. Because on April Fool’s Day this year you ribbed me because I made an April Fool’s joke on Twitter that I was leaving CAP to go work for the Trump administration where I was going to be continuing my work to end poverty. But I was going to be doing it by cooking the books on the numbers. And then of course, that’s what the administration ends up showing their hand that they’re actually trying to do as we speak in the form of a proposal, I think we call it? It’s not a proposed rule but a proposal that the comment deadline is actually coming up on as we speak. It’s this Friday, June 21st. But just a reminder to folks paying attention to that, that the clock is ticking on commenting. We’ll put another link on our nerdy syllabus page so you can click through and make that easy. But this is that proposal that we’ve talked about on this show before that would actually reduce the number of poor people in the country by changing how we measure poverty, not by making anyone actually better off or improving anyone’s income or financial situation otherwise. So, I guess all that’s to say cautionary word to you, Joel, as you wish, as you say out loud what you wish for.

BERG: So, you’re not joining the Trump administration?

VALLAS: That turns out to have been just a little April Fool’s joke between me and Twitter.

BERG: Really good. So, the report I read that you’re taking Sarah Sanders’ job, that’s untrue.

VALLAS: This is how rumors get started. But I can’t, at this time, comment on that rumor.

BERG: Moving on.

VALLAS: [chuckles] So, Joel, you were walking through some of the many benefits that would come from this bill becoming law. I mean there’s also a tremendous body of research telling us that there are all kinds of long-term benefits as well, not just immediate benefits, that are economic. You were walking through some of those as well as economic on a very personal level. But there’s a whole literature out there telling us that when you improve kids’ nutritional situation in childhood, so kids who benefit from SNAP when they’re kids, they actually end up seeing long-term benefits that spell a tremendous amount of positive long-term consequences, whether that’s better school performance, better cognitive development, and actually, their brains develop more thoroughly when they’re not hungry in childhood and poor in childhood, better educational attainment. I mean it translates all the way up to like earnings and employment in adulthood is how long-term some of these benefits are. So, part of what we could end up seeing is not just that things would get a lot better for low-income and hungry people in the short-term and also all the economic benefits you were talking about, but we could actually be making an investment in the long run. Is that also some of what would happen?

BERG: Oh, absolutely. So, hunger is both a cause and a symptom of poverty. I have to repeat that. Hunger is both a cause and a symptom of poverty. And it’s obviously a symptom of poverty that when people don’t have enough money, among the things they don’t have enough money for is food. But it’s also a cause of poverty. As you laid out the data, you’re just not going to do well in school. My Dr. Seuss line about this is to be schooled, you must be fueled. To be well read, you must be well fed. And green eggs and ham. But there’s a mountain of evidence that that’s all true.

A Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Fogel wrote about the industrial revolution, and he wrote about how one of the top reasons for the advancement of workers then was the improved nutritional status of workers. And so, there are long-term ripple effects on reducing economy, reducing poverty, helping the economy. We know so much now that we didn’t know 100 years ago about child development, physical and mental development. And while it’s never too late to have a life improve, the sad reality is, if you start life and your childhood a bunch of laps around the track behind other people, physically, emotionally, physiologically, nutritionally, it’s going to be very, very hard to ever catch up in life. And so, making sure kids have good food. You know, I know there are a zillion priorities under the sun, but it’s hard to imagine a higher priority.

VALLAS: So, Joel, in the progressive policy space — I’m speaking with Joel Berg. He’s the CEO of Hunger Free America. He’s also the author of the book America We Need to Talk. We’re talking about the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which currently, there’s actually now a proposal gaining steam among Democrats in Congress not just not to cut SNAP, but to expand it by making its benefits a heck of a lot more adequate for people who currently are really struggling to stretch what amounts to about $1.40 per person, per meal on average. Imagine that as your food budget.

Joel, I was about to ask in the context of progressive politics and particularly progressive policy, there’s a concept that often gets referred to that’s termed the “Overton window,” the idea of what’s the realm of the politically possible. And people often talk about shifting that Overton window. People like you and me like to think about shifting it left so that the realm of the possible becomes more inclusive of bolder economic policies like say, ending hunger as an outcome. But the Overton window probably most recently —

JOEL BERG: And I’d put it shifting it to the international center from where it is now, the far right.

VALLAS: No, I think that’s exactly right. Which is also a point that Senator Sanders has made in his role as Chair of the Senate Budget Committee, for example, is on just so many different levels, right? And we’ve heard this when it comes to paid leave; we’ve heard this when it comes to child care, education, health care, on and on and on: the U.S. is the one that’s out of step. The U.S. is the one that’s off kilter. Here you go, Joel.

BERG: There you go.

VALLAS: The reason we have this show called what it is. Nice to be reminded once in a while. It’s the U.S. that’s off kilter and that’s out of step, not the rest of the developed world. Well, here again, we’re the ones that have rates of hunger that other developed nations sneer at and don’t understand because we make these short-sighted choices about our investments for all the reasons we’ve been talking about. But back to the Overton window, perhaps most recently, the concept of the Overton window has been popularized in the progressive policy space as sort of an object lesson in the area of social security. People have talked at length, and deservedly so, about the incredibly successful move by activists and advocates and policy experts and others to take the conversation, which had for so long, been cemented around how much do we cut Social Security? How do we cut Social Security? Who do we take it away from, or how do we shrink benefits? That was privatized. That was the anatomy of this Social Security “debate” for as long as people could remember until it wasn’t. Which was the moment at which it started to shift, and really to be shifted, to a place of not how much do we cut the program, but how do we expand Social Security? And that shifting of the window took place over the course of the past several years but really started to show up during the Obama administration, and then was out in full force probably during the 2016 presidential election.

I raised all of that backdrop as a comparison because I’m really curious to hear you, Joel, talk about how do you think we get SNAP into that place to where we’re talking about not just food as a right in the context of platitudes or the Green New Deal, but in the context of a very real and substantial and vital program, that being the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program? How do we get the policy conversation around that program to a place of expansion like we’ve seen done with Social Security? And is this bill part of that? And if, so what are the other pieces we need to see?

BERG: This is part of that. And I think one thing Lyndon Johnson had right was understanding what we had to do about poverty was tantamount to what we had to do to wage a war. Now, he blew it [chuckles] in spending the money on Vietnam instead of completing the Great Society, but that’s obviously historical tragedy that will be debated forever. But the basic idea is when we go to war, we basically ask our generals, what resources do you need to meet this problem? And in general, Democratic or Republican administrations if we’re at war, we give them that money. We give them those resources. And so, as far as I’m concerned, the greatest way to make this country as secure is to make sure that everyone is well-housed, everyone is well-fed, everyone is provided health care. And that will make us stronger militarily and socially than any numbers of wars. And so, we should start the conversation with, what’s it going to take to end hunger in America?

Now, I’ve calculated it would be about $25 to 30 billion. Now that’s sort of an intellectual exercise. That’s the difference between how much food-insecure people spend on food and non-hungry people spend on food, so it’s not an exact policy prescription. But we could certainly end hunger in America every year for tens of billions of dollars, which sounds like a lot of money. But it’s basically 1/5 or 1/6, I don’t know the exact number, of what Jeff Bezos has in the bank. And so, literally, for a small portion of what one human being has in America, engaging in some fairly monopoly-like tactics, we could end hunger for 40 million Americans. That sounds simplistic, and it is simplistic. The only problem with calling it simplistic is it also happens to be true. And so, I think we need a whole different way of thinking about this that this is a serious threat to the nation like a war. And what do we need to do to to stop it? And what do we need to do to end it? And then I always say it’s not tens of billions of dollars of government spending alone. It could be tens of billions of dollars of higher wages. So, what do we need to do to create the jobs to raise the wages and ensure the adequate, you know, there’s a safety net to take care of this? And I think the vast majority of American people, if you put it that way, would strongly support this.

And to get further wonk-ish on you, I remember we were told years ago that oh boy, if we ever get a farm bill, we’ll never, ever, ever, ever get more than a billion dollars extra a year for SNAP. And I always said, well, that’s just a arbitrary number. You just pulled that out of a hat and said, OK, everyone now agrees you can’t get more than a billion dollars. And they said, well, no. That’s all you can get. And then all of a sudden, we had the collapse of the economy in 2008. There were, before that, tens of millions of hungry people, 35 million, but because some middle-class people were now worried about this, it shot up. And all of a sudden, in the stimulus package, the recovery package, there was $10 billion a year for SNAP. So, there was 10 times as much money as just a year before we were told was, oh, that’s the most you could ever get. And so, again, all this is sort of arbitrary, based on whoever makes these decisions about what conventional wisdom is, makes these decisions. But there’s no intrinsic worth to these numbers. As far as I’m concerned, the only thing that really matters is how many people are suffering, and how can we stop their suffering?

VALLAS: And to do bring us back to this particular bill, one of the things that I think might’ve been befuddling to some people in the context of the farm bill fight was, it was a little bit — it was a lot — different actually, in some ways than health care because what was happening in the then-Republican House was very different from what we were watching happen in the still-Republican and also then-Republican Senate at the time, which was we had a partisan attack on SNAP coming from House Republicans, led then by Paul Ryan. Boy, do I not miss him in the role of speaker. And then in the Senate, we had this bipartisan Kumbaya kind of happening around protecting SNAP. Is there anything to the fact that SNAP has a long bipartisan history, and the farm bill that authorizes that program has a long bipartisan history? Is there anything to that, that could change the set of what’s possible around the politics of expanding SNAP?

BERG: Yes and no. And I don’t want to dampen our Kumbaya moment about the Senate. And it was extraordinarily hopeful that the Republican share of the Senate Agriculture Committee supported cuts. But there was an amendment in the Senate to oppose these cuts, and 2/3 of the Republicans voted for it. And so, that’s better than 100 percent of them voting for it [chuckles] the way they did with Obamacare cuts, or nearly 100 percent. But I think we can’t overstate what’s happening today, that even though there are some people like Pat Roberts wanting to stand up for these programs, 2/3 of the Republicans in the House voted for the cuts. And I think 80–90 percent of the Republicans in the — I’m sorry. 2/3 of the Republicans in the Senate voted for the cuts, and 80–90 percent of the Republicans in the House voted for them. And out of the some in the House that voted against them, is they did so because they weren’t high enough. They weren’t mean enough. They weren’t deep enough. And the fact of the matter is, every single Democrat in the House of Representatives voted against these cuts even every single Democrat in the Senate, including some Democrats representing very conservative states like Joe Manchin voted against these cuts.

So, we need to go back to a time when we have true bipartisan support for these programs. But I don’t think we’re there yet even though there’s some still flickers of hope in the Senate. So, I hope that Pat Roberts, as one of his outgoing legacy actions, works to increase funding for this, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. I think the farm bill is settled, at least to the Republicans’ mind, for the near future, and the best we can hope for is some more money for child nutrition. Boy, I hate to be Debbie Downer, as the Daily Show once called me, Mr. Frowny Pants, but I do try to deal with reality.

VALLAS: No, and the clarification, I think, is important and helpful. I certainly don’t mean to paint an overly rosy picture of what went down with the [inaudible; cross-talk].

BERG: That’s how low we’ve set the bar. [laughs]

VALLAS: Yep. Well, the fact that we had Republicans in the Senate going to bat for this important program was a very different situation than what we had in health care, and so, thusly, my very different recollection. But you are absolutely right. It was a lot more complicated.

BERG: That’s right. And in fairness, McConnell wasn’t whipping. I don’t think he was whipping the amendment to get Republicans to vote for it. Although as you may recall in the floor vote, he switched his vote mid-vote. Because he originally wanted to help Pat Roberts ensure that this amendment failed, but then he probably didn’t want to deal with Tea Partyers or Trump supporters back home voting against this. So, McConnell actually ended up voting for these massive billions of dollars of cuts in SNAP, but everything’s relative. So, a Senate where 1/3 of Republicans vote to preserve food is better than a Senate where none of them vote to preserve health care.

VALLAS: And it’s worth also kind of thinking a little bit here not just about what’s happening in Washington but also comparing some of the dots or connecting some of the dots of where members of Congress have been and their votes also to then what the public thinks. And so, just it feels whenever we had these conversations, I would be remiss not to mention that when it comes to the public’s opinion of SNAP, for example, it’s not really a partisan issue in the way that you might think. And actually 2/3 of Americans oppose cuts to SNAP, and that that does actually cut across party lines. So, not surprising, especially looking at the health care fight or the tax fight or other contexts where we’ve seen Republicans in Congress be totally comfortable being way out of step with anyone who’s not their donor class. And this is a variation on that theme.

So, I guess, Joel, my question to you then, for people who are sort of listening to this and thinking fine, but how do we get to a place where this isn’t just something in between a message bill and a marker? How do we get to a place where we’re having a real conversation about expanding this program? A big part of why we haven’t been at that place is — and people are probably thinking about this, no doubt — there’s a very real difference between the way that say, the media covers Social Security and the way it covers SNAP, which has a lot to do with public perceptions which still don’t translate into the majority of the country wanting to cut the program. It’s the opposite. The majority of the country, and actually 2/3, as I said, opposes cutting this program. But at the same time, you still have these myths and these misperceptions that continue to, in a lot of ways, drown out the basic facts that people know a lot less of than they do the myths because of where the media has sort of its hobby horses. And whether that’s been the Food Stamps surfer or other variations on that theme, it’s not just FOX News that we see this stuff come. From its mainstream outlets as well. And I should note a lot of it is very racialized, as often these conversations are and media portrayals are in the poverty space.

Now Joel, recently — and we were e-mailing a little bit about this before — but recently, one of the sort of media drumbeats that we’ve seen recur, and one of the reasons I was excited today to talk with you this week, which is a little bit less of a good news story but feels like it’s part of the conversation here as we think about the obstacles that need to be overcome to getting to a place where we’re really having an expansion conversation. And that resurgence of that theme was around obesity and a lot of the kind of shame and stigma frame that often accompanies what could be somewhat neutral, fact-based reporting about research and its findings. And so, there’s sort of a flurry of studies that came out in the course of the past few weeks looking at processed food and the relationship between processed food and the risk of obesity, the risk of chronic disease. And the coverage on those studies was sort of predictably accompanied by media making the leap to, oh my God! All those bad poor people eating all those bad processed foods and making bad choices that now they’re paying for! So, would love to hear your response to some of those stories and some of the myths that they continue to put out there and what we know about whether that kind of a narrative is missing anything we might need to know.

BERG: Well, first of all, I think it’s important to note that Americans often have contradictory views on topics. And so, Americans would probably say the SNAP program should not be cut to make people go hungry, but they probably say we’re spending too much on food welfare. Even though we don’t consider SNAP to be welfare, and it’s not welfare. They probably say government should be doing more for people not to go hungry, but there’s too much fraud and waste and abuse in the program. Even though there’s microscopically small amounts of that. So, there are contradictory impulses in America, and the way to overcome this is to build a broad-based political movement necessary to end hunger by engaging low-income people as leaders in their own destinies, convincing people in the middle to change their minds to understand their self-interest, and isolating and discrediting the opposition in a respectful, democratic, peaceful manner.

Now, as to your specific question about blaming poor people for the supposedly bad food choices they make, unfortunately, this is a uniting factor between the right and the left. Many of the arguments I have with people on this topic are often with upper-middle-class white people who consider themselves liberals, dare I say, progressives who think oh gee, it’s these evil food companies that low-income people need to be saved from. And they have very patronizing language that boy, low-income people who are brainwashed by the food companies, such as they have no agency whatsoever, ignoring the fact that sometimes food with a little more calories is actually pleasurable and denying the even concept of low-income people, God forbid, could have pleasure on their own. And really, the sanctimony on it that 150 calories in a Coke is just immoral. And people have said to me, oh, it’s worse than heroin. And meanwhile these are people who have no problem themselves eating like a 1200-calorie artisanal pork belly dish, you know? Who are just aghast that a low-income person would drink something. And they go, well, it’s not government money. Well, in fact, all the foods everyone eats, including rich people eat, is subsidized by the government, through government agriculture subsidies, government subsidies for roads and ports and airports that deliver this food. So, let’s get off this high horse.

But then as a practical matter, banning one or two types of food is not going to reduce obesity in America. Taxing them isn’t going to. Depriving people the SNAP program isn’t going to do it. The only thing that’s going to do it is Americans of all incomes changing their lifestyles, eating more healthfully, exercising more, and basically allowing low-income people to do that by making healthier food more affordable and more physically available and more convenient. That’s a harder thing to do than this simplistic message of take away this one thing from the low-income person, but it’s absolutely factually true. And this goes back to the Middle Ages. You may be familiar with sumptuary laws, which in the Middle Ages actually barred non-noble people from wearing clothing that looked like nobility or eating fancy foods that could be confused with foods that nobility would eat. And there’s still that sanctimonious patronizing attitude among a lot of people, and I hate to say it, some of my fellow progressives. And I once wrote this line, “The only thing that right wingers and left wingers agree on, if they’re upper-middle-class white people, is that low-income people should live more virtuously than they do.”

VALLAS: And I really —

JOEL BERG: What was your question? [chuckles]

VALLAS: [laughs] I appreciate so much you’re bringing in both ideologies to this because, I mean and that’s part of what I bang my head against the wall most in response to, I guess I’m sort of inured more to the conservative tropes because of the frequency with which they arise in the space that I care about. But when it comes to the progressive tropes on this that are all well-intentioned and that are so, as you said, sanctimonious and not even evidence-based, that’s when I bang my head against the wall the most. There was sort of this moment a couple years back where the New York Times — I feel like you and I banged our heads against the wall together about this one back then — but the New York Times had done like a front page, above the fold with a huge picture story about families. And it was about SNAP households allegedly making unhealthier choices or buying more soda specifically than other families. And it was like this big image on the front page of the paper that had a grocery cart and nothing in it except for a whole bunch of Coke. It was all soda.

BERG: The soda Coke!

VALLAS: It was the story — the soda Coke — and the story was supposed to be coverage of a report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture that actually found, as its centerpiece finding, that the purchasing habits at the grocery store of households that are helped by SNAP aren’t actually really different than other households not helped by SNAP. And yet that was the New York Times coverage of that study with that finding, choosing that imagery. And just the whole way it was framed was was all to actually make people think the opposite, even though ironically, it was literally reporting on a study that had found the exact opposite thing.

BERG: There’s a lot of junk science and social science around this. I remember when then-Mayor Bloomberg wanted to ban people from using SNAP benefits to buy sugar flavored beverages. They had this chart showing these are the neighborhoods were high consumption of sugar flavored beverages. They’re also high neighborhoods where they have high use of SNAP participation and neighborhoods with high poverty, I’m sorry, high obesity. And they basically said ipso facto correlation equals causation: that the reason these people are overweight in these neighborhoods disproportionately is because they’re drinking soda funded by SNAP. It’s ridiculous. There are a zillion more variables. The most important variable was poverty, not SNAP, and not their drinking habits. There are a lot of additional risk factors for obesity. And I pointed out those were also neighborhoods that overwhelmingly voted against Bloomberg, so I’m not sure drinking soda led you to vote against Bloomberg. And so, there’s stuff that sounds right, as we say in the social science business, confirmation bias: a fancy way of saying you can create data or jury-rig data to make it seem like everyone agrees; the facts agree with your predisposed notion. But that’s not always accurate, and there’s just a lot of junk science and social science around this really driven by sanctimony, not science.

Now, let me be clear: for the record, I think Americans of all incomes should drink less soda, should eat less junk food. But there are heavy people of all incomes. There are plenty of very nutritiously-eating — bad English but — low-income people who use their meager resources to somehow eat very nutritiously. So, let’s look at this society-wide, and let’s not just pick on poor people. I talk to blogs or write memos for a living. I don’t move boulders around. That’s going to use a lot less calories. Most people in the modern world are eating more processed food. There are complicated, multifaceted reasons why obesity’s gone up for people across the income spectrum. Let’s stop blaming the victim and stop shaming low-income people because they can’t afford healthier food, or they don’t have all the time to prepare healthier food.

I love the writings of Michael Pollan, great guy. But he once wrote, “Rich people have more money than time. Poor people have more time than money. The rich people should spend more money for food. Poor people should spend more time preparing food.” As you know, poor people work in one or two or three jobs, they’re traveling by public transportation, they’re taking care of their grandparents without a home health care attendant, they’re taking care of their kids without a nanny. When they have this magical time to cook all their food from scratch is beyond me.

VALLAS: And you know, Joel, to actually provide a resource to folks who are hearing you say a lot of these things and wondering, yeah, but is there evidence to any of this? There’s actually a book that just came out, written by three sociologists who study food, families, and inequality. There’s a review their book, which is called Pressure Cooker: Why Home Cooking Won’t Solve Our Problems and What We Can Do About It. And it actually really looks at the link between poverty and processed foods. You can find a link to more on this in the New York Times review that I’m referencing on our nerdy syllabus page. And I want to reference the sociologists Sarah Bowen, Joslyn Brenton, and Sinikka Elliott. They actually looked at 168 poor and middle-class families in North Carolina, a state where one in three adults is obese, and a tenth of the state’s population has diabetes. They followed the families for five years, profiled them in depth. And what they ended up finding in their research really challenges that conventional wisdom that somehow, if we could just ditch processed foods, we would solve everything, and that somehow we would all get back to the American dream, if we were just making everything from scratch in the kitchen. It’s a lot more, as you said Joel, complicated than that. And low-income folks who have limited time and money may not actually have the option to avoid processed food much as they want to.

And bringing it back to where this conversation started in the first place, one of the ways to help low-income families afford more nutritious options would actually be to expand the SNAP program, make their benefits more adequate, just like Representative Adams’ bill would do so that low-income families could make the choices at the grocery store that might cost a little bit more than say, processed foods that are typically cheaper, but avoid some of those health risks in a way that we also should not be blaming them for not being currently able to afford to do.

So, Joel, in the last couple of minutes that I have with you, it feels like much as most of the conversation we’ve been having has been thinking about how we get to the conversation we should be having around SNAP nationally and how we get to expansion, how we shift that window, we’re also on the precipice as we speak of yet another attack on the SNAP program that would be by fiat. Again, not the sports company but, excuse me that not the sports car, but unfortunately, the means by which the Trump administration wants to do another end run around Congress. And this particular thread actually could, in a lot of ways, be the thread that if you pull on it, unravels the entire sweater of the SNAP program. It’s about repealing something that sounds wonky as hell called categorical eligibility. But it’s really important for folks to be aware of because this could be coming down the pike any day now. So, give us a little bit of a preview, Joel. What’s coming in terms of this attack? And help us understand what could be so devastating if we were to take away something that people might not even know what it is yet because it’s just a wonky-sounding term.

BERG: So, let’s again, point out the hypocrisy of conservatives who say that states should, decide localities should decide. They’re always better than the federal government in deciding these issues, and that’s why we ought to block grant programs to the states. And now, every time there’s actual policies regarding states helping low-income people, they want to restrict the flexibility among states to be able to do unique things to help low-income people. So, there’s a provision in federal law called categorical eligibility that states use for a number of ways. They use it to help more working people access the benefits. They use it to allow low-income people to save while they’re working to get out of poverty and continue to get the benefits. And there’s rumblings that the Trump administration is going to restrict that as well or try to restrict that as well. Although, I think categorical eligibility’s pretty clear in the law, and so I can’t imagine there wouldn’t be some lawsuits. And we’ll see whether they prevail, although the way they’ve stacked the federal judiciary, who knows. But again, it’s hypocrisy that the very people who say they’re all about empowering states are only against states having flexibility when it helps poor people. Their only ideological consistency is shafting low-income people. And it’s generally states have use it to help people get more food, their food, and save their way out of poverty.

VALLAS: And what is it that we expect this rule to do? So, folks, I think, are very familiar with the rulemaking process because we just lived through it with the so-called ABAWD rule that I was referencing before that would’ve taken SNAP away from upwards of a million people struggling to find steady work. What can we expect? What should people be looking for? What would this particular rule do?

BERG: I’ve heard different ideas of what it might be, but I think generally, yet another proposal that would restrict access to low-income people for food benefits. And so, with the Trump administration, I never go on rumors. I wait to see what they do or do not put in writing. But you can pretty well predict it’ll be awful.

VALLAS: And we’ll have lots more to talk about on this show when that proposal does see the light of day. I think what we’re expecting, as Joel was describing just a little bit about, could really be incredibly far-reaching and be something that could impact not just the SNAP program but because of the way categorical eligibility works — Let me pause here for a second. Joel, is there a reason you don’t want to go into Cat El? Do you feel like it’s just too wonky and not good radio?

BERG: No, no. Truth is I don’t know about what they’re proposing.

VALLAS: Oh. OK, got it. So, I’m literally asking you a question that you’re dodging intentionally, and I didn’t realize that.

BERG: Yes. So, what are they proposing?

VALLAS: Well, they’re going to propose repealing Cat El. And so, I think what we’re expecting to see is, I mean it could be just as bad as some of the versions we’ve seen introduced in legislative text before. But it could be the thing that means no longer can states set their own asset limits or adjust income limits for phase outs when people are earning more over the federal income limits. School lunch would be impacted for kids. All those different kinds of things, if you eliminate broad-based categorical eligibility.

BERG: And there have been media reports about this? Have they said they’re going to do this?

VALLAS: They have definitely said they’re going to do it, and there are enough conversations going on behind the scenes to get ready for the rule that I think people feel it’s almost in any day now territory and has been there for a little while.

BERG: And they think they can do this, or they’re claiming they can do this administratively without Congress.

VALLAS: They are claiming they can do this administratively without Congress. Then again, they said the same thing about Medicaid work requirements.

BERG: Right, which courts have ruled unconstitutional.

VALLAS: Exactly.

BERG: Yeah. They can restrict what states categorize as a broad-based categorical eligibility, they can make it more difficult for them to implement some of the things, they can count it more strictly, but it’s in the law. So, I do not believe administratively, they have any legal leg to stand on just eliminating it.

VALLAS: Well, and that’s, I think, why we’re all waiting to see what it’s going to look like. But that is indeed what they have intimated that they’re planning to do.

BERG: Well, let’s wait to see this last set of evil.

VALLAS: Amen. So, I definitely don’t mean to push you to talk more about that if that’s not where your head is.

BERG: Yeah, I’m Googling it now. And I don’t…. Has there been anything in the media about it?

VALLAS: I don’t think it’s media or public really. I mean there is a hearing on Thursday that Dems are holding because they know it’s coming. But I think it’s really been a lot more rumor level, and so groups like, we’ve been talking to FRAC. We’ve been talking to Center on Budget. Other folks have all been kind of reaching out, and there will be another big comment push similar to what there was with ABAWD.

BERG: Well, I do think it’s critical to not only attack the substance but their hypocrisy in restricting what states and localities do.

VALLAS: Yep. I totally agree. And there will be lots more to come on that on this show once that rule is released, and we know more about what exactly it would do. And you know what will be asked of you, and it rhymes with shmomment. And that’s what we’ll be talking about plenty on this show down the road when that that rule is a reality.

Joel, thanks so much for taking the time to come back on the show. Always appreciate you on these issues so much. Joel Berg is the CEO of Hunger Free America. He’s also the author of the book America We Need to Talk. Joel, thanks so much for taking the time.

BERG: Thank you, Rebecca, for trying to get this country on kilter again.

VALLAS: Oh, I appreciate it.

Don’t go away. More Off-Kilter after the break. I’m Rebecca Vallas.

[Hip Hop music break]

You’re listening to Off-Kilter, powered by the Center for American Progress Action Fund. I’m Rebecca Vallas.

A subject that doesn’t get nearly enough attention in mainstream media is the so-called dental divide and how lack of access to dental care can be both a cause and a consequence of poverty. People living in or near the poverty line are twice as likely to have untreated tooth decay relative to people with higher incomes, and the stigma associated with bad teeth in our society is significant. Social science studies find that we judge one another, including making judgments about intelligence, based on the appearance of one’s teeth and mouth. One area where this has immediate economic consequences is, of course, the workplace. Roughly one in three poor adults say the appearance of their teeth affected their ability to interview for a job. On the flip side dental care can be a path to opportunity. For example, studies indicate that fluoridation, which prevents tooth decay, increases women’s earnings, particularly women with low incomes.

A big part of the dental divide is that most states’ Medicaid programs don’t include comprehensive dental benefits. Many provide little to no dental coverage at all, so the population eligible for Medicaid, some of the poorest people in this country, end up being the people most in need of dental care and the least likely to be able to access it. So, as a bonus for this week’s episode, we wanted to share with you a reading of a recent first-person perspective on the emotional and economic consequences of lack of access to dental care. It’s entitled Dental Care Was A Path To Opportunity. Then I Couldn’t Afford It Anymore. Its author, Katherine Morgan, is an essayist living in Portland, Oregon. The piece was published by Talk Poverty and can be found on our nerdy syllabus page, and the author reads in her own voice. Let’s take a listen.

KATHERINE MORGAN: I spent every morning as a child in the bathroom, brushing my teeth — stained yellow as if they had been dipped in melted butter — as hard as I could. My grandmother blamed the fluoride in the water that we drank. I didn’t know if she was telling the truth or not; in the end I was still ashamed of my smile. My classmates would gleefully shout “Butterteeth” whenever I crossed their paths, and the boys called me ugly. When I talked to other students, they would stare at my mouth and remark that I had something on my teeth. My face would turn hot and red, my sentence trailing off as they made a brushing motion; after realizing their mistake, they too would grow quiet and the air would be filled with shame.

I lived with that smile for 16 years. My family constantly struggled to stay afloat, and even though my single mother worked a full-time job, she couldn’t always afford health care. We went to the doctor when we were sick, not for checkups. Sometimes important issues got pushed to the back burner to make room for the day-to-day necessities, and one of those issues was dental hygiene. The appearance of my teeth felt like a declaration of my family’s lack of wealth. There are photos of me smiling brightly throughout that time, though, because even though a sense of shame followed me, I tried not to allow myself to be defined by what I looked like.

VALLAS: And that does it for this week’s episode of Off-Kilter, powered by the Center for American Progress Action Fund. I’m your host Rebecca Vallas. The show is produced by Will Urquhart and David Ballard. Find us on Facebook and Twitter @offkiltershow, and you can find us on the airwaves on the Progressive Voices Network and the We Act Radio Network or anytime as a podcast on iTunes. See you next week.

♪ I want freedom (freedom)

Freedom (freedom)

Now, I don’t know where it’s at

But it’s calling me back

I feel my spirit is revealing,

And now we just trynta get freedom (freedom)

What we talkin’ bout…. ♪