A pivotal figure in the expansion of government food stamps, which give low-income citizens financial aid for buying food, wasn’t a community organizer, philanthropist or far-left politician. It was Richard Nixon.
In the early 1970s, the Republican president was facing an eventual reelection campaign against George McGovern, a Democrat from South Dakota and a champion of expanding federal aid. But unlike many of today’s post-Reagan conservatives, Nixon made a robust social agenda one of his hallmarks.
“Nixon was not going to be outflanked by anybody on domestic policy,” says Chris Bosso, a professor of public policy and political science at Northeastern University. “He had a remarkably liberal social agenda on the environment by today’s standards, on consumer safety, on food programs.”
With food stamps, Nixon nationalized the program and required states to participate, “essentially doubling it overnight,” Bosso says. Later that decade, another well-known Republican — Bob Dole from Kansas — would team up with McGovern on legislation eliminating a rule that required people to purchase food stamps before use, a bureaucratic hoop that made the benefits less accessible for the elderly and physically disabled.
Nixon as food-security champion is one of many counterintuitive tidbits that Bosso chronicles in his book “Why SNAP Works: A Political History — and Defense— of the Food Stamp Program”, released by California University Press in October. Via a comprehensive account of the program’s near-century in various forms of existence, Bosso makes the case for SNAP as the most vital, sturdy social welfare program in the country, and offers up suggestions to make it even more effective.
“How did SNAP evolve [into] the nation’s foundational food-assistance program, not to mention an essential antipoverty program?” Bosso asks in the preface. “And why does SNAP survive, despite efforts in recent decades to pare back all forms of ‘welfare’? This book answers those questions by tracing SNAP’s long journey.”
Source: northeastern.edu
Photo Credit: gettyimages-valentinrussanov
Categories: South Dakota, General