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It’s been over three years since the start of the pandemic, 28 months since the peak of Wisconsin COVID deaths, about a year since deaths dropped down to a mere fraction of what they once were, and more than six months since our president told everyone the pandemic was over.
And all along, spending on what we used to call food stamps, the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) now known as FoodShare in Wisconsin, has gone up faster than the digits on the scale of a cheese curd addict.
Our most voracious appetite, yet again, appears to be for government spending.
In February of this year alone, more than 376,000 Wisconsin households were issued $193 million in SNAP benefits — over three times the total amount issued in February 2020, just before the pandemic formally began. Average issuances per household are two and a half times what they were three years ago and up 10% just since President Biden’s pronouncement.
The trend is just now starting to turn downward because Congress has finally ended so-called “emergency” allotments and waivers that allowed many Americans to get more federal money for longer periods of time with fewer requirements. But rarely has there been starker evidence of Thomas Jefferson’s old adage from 1788 that “the natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.”
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