Replies

SNAP/Food Stamps is a good example of a fully vouchered welfare program. Recipients get a benefit but then have freedom of choice of how to use it in the private economy. It has to be spent on food or food related products, but beyond that, it's your choice.

If food assistance were reorganized along the lines of Obamacare, government would own every farm, food processing plant, grocery and restaurant. All citizens would get a ration card specifying exactly what they are allowed to purchase and eat, and at what price. Liberals would think this is an excellent idea and an opportunity to impose the tofu diet.

The problems with SNAP/Food Stamps are well known. In any program, people will cheat to access benefits to which they are not entitled. The system should be better policed. The left also tries incessantly to expand dependency, so they make more and more people eligible when they get the chance. These problems are endemic in any welfare system that involves more than a pick and shovel, with a check at the end of a long, sweaty day. They are not unique to SNAP. They are more visible in SNAP because everyone sees the results of cheating in the checkout line at the grocery store. But that's an argument for better policing, not for the elimination of vouchered forms of assistance.

Better policing: if it were up to me, I'd treat all income transfers, including welfare benefits (and fringe benefits, btw), as taxable income. (The exception would be personal gifts, since that money has already been taxed when earned by the gift-giver.) To maintain eligibility, recipients would have to file a tax return on April 15, just like working people. The welfare folks would have to add up their SNAP, WIC, TANF, housing and other benefits and pay taxes if they are above the zero bracket amount, which would be adjusted in light of the expansion of the definition of income proposed here. As a practical matter, welfare recipients would be paying little if any taxes, but the reform would at least show them how much they are costing the taxpayers. And it would be an efficient means of cross-checking benefits with tax and other records, and policing fraud.