USDA head says 'everyone' on SNAP will now have to reapply • Hacker News Board

Re: USDA head says 'everyone' on SNAP will now have to reapply

#21

Post by 0_____0 » Fri, Nov 14, 2025, 11:25 PM UTC

CodingJeebus wrote: post #18

weird-eye-issue wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is always a wonder to me when people downplay something that is "just" 1.5% of nearly $7 TRILLION

You added the "just", not me. But to your point, there are much, much larger and controversial line items in the budget to argue about than feeding the poor. Preventing starvation is important to a functioning society, as widespread hunger has ended many a government throughout history.

100B for SNAP vs 850B for defense in 2024. Interest on govt issued debt was 880B.

Re: USDA head says 'everyone' on SNAP will now have to reapply

#22

Post by ethin » Fri, Nov 14, 2025, 11:25 PM UTC

This is utterly disgusting. It took me 6 months to actually fully apply to SNAP (and I count the time it took for me to actually get a card). I seriously can't imagine this is legal, but if it somehow is ruled to be so, I can't imagine the idiots doing this actually have a plan for processing the millions and millions of applications. This is the same government who thought putting a bunch of teenagers in charge of making the government more "efficient" was a smart idea, so I imagine this will go just as badly, if not worse.

Re: USDA head says 'everyone' on SNAP will now have to reapply

#23

Post by Calavar » Fri, Nov 14, 2025, 11:26 PM UTC

CodingJeebus wrote: post #18

weird-eye-issue wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is always a wonder to me when people downplay something that is "just" 1.5% of nearly $7 TRILLION

You added the "just", not me. But to your point, there are much, much larger and controversial line items in the budget to argue about than feeding the poor. Preventing starvation is important to a functioning society, as widespread hunger has ended many a government throughout history.

> there are much, much larger and controversial line items in the budget to argue about than feeding the poor.

For example, the 40 billion dollar bailout of the Argentine economy.

Re: USDA head says 'everyone' on SNAP will now have to reapply

#24

Post by weird-eye-issue » Fri, Nov 14, 2025, 11:26 PM UTC

jeffbee wrote: post #14

weird-eye-issue wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is always a wonder to me when people downplay something that is "just" 1.5% of nearly $7 TRILLION

[flagged]

Who uses the caps lock key to only uppercase a single word?

Re: USDA head says 'everyone' on SNAP will now have to reapply

#25

Post by Volundr » Fri, Nov 14, 2025, 11:28 PM UTC

weird-eye-issue wrote: post #12

CodingJeebus wrote: post #8

For perspective, SNAP constitutes somewhere around 1.5% of the total Federal budget[0], and provides supplemental income for over 41M Americans[1]. So they're making everyone reapply because their disbursement headcount is off by less than 1% (180k vs 41M). It's hard not look at stuff like this and not see gross oppression. 0: https://usafacts.org/answers/how-much-does-the-federal-gover... 1: https://www.cbpp.org/res…

It is always a wonder to me when people downplay something that is "just" 1.5% of nearly $7 TRILLION

1% of 1.5%, so ~0.015%. I think it's fair to question if the juice is worth the squeeze here. To say nothing of if the most efficient way to go about it is really to make 41 million people reapply and reprocess all those applications.

Re: USDA head says 'everyone' on SNAP will now have to reapply

#26

Post by weird-eye-issue » Fri, Nov 14, 2025, 11:28 PM UTC

Jtsummers wrote: post #19

weird-eye-issue wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is always a wonder to me when people downplay something that is "just" 1.5% of nearly $7 TRILLION

Less than one percent of 1.5% of $7 trillion, around $1 billion. Which is a significant sum, no doubt, but that's also less than $3/person in the US. Given the much larger wasted sums by DOD and other parts of the government, it's an amount I can live with. I'd rather see the real waste and abuse get addressed first, but it won't be. Address this, but address it in a way that doesn't cause undue harm to the 40.8 mill…

Agreed with everything you said, but people would say the exact same thing about some of the more wasteful programs that were shutdown. "It is only $50 million" etc got really old... It is not like you can expect to just find massive line items that can be easily removed

Re: USDA head says 'everyone' on SNAP will now have to reapply

#27

Post by selectodude » Fri, Nov 14, 2025, 11:29 PM UTC

jeremyjh wrote: post #11

lokar wrote: post #6

Ugh, this again? I bet it's the same thing with all the "voter fraud" they find. They get two lists of people (list of votes/program enrollees and one of "dead" people, etc) that were not designed/cleaned for this, and do a very loose match and then declare just based on that it must be fraud. Are there some that are fraud, probably, a bit of that is just the cost of dealing with the public. Private companies get it…

Certainly there is some fraud; any system that gives out money will have fraud. But the reason they are doing this is simply to make people suffer.

Of course. They’re doing all this over $52 million dollars per month. It’s going to cost more than $52 million to have everybody reapply. They want these people to starve to death. It’s a death cult.

Re: USDA head says 'everyone' on SNAP will now have to reapply

#28

Post by Difwif » Fri, Nov 14, 2025, 11:30 PM UTC

qgin wrote: post #16

Anyone who has ever worked on any sort of sales funnel knows: every time you ask someone to take an additional action, you lose people. Ask everybody to reapply, you'll end up with fewer people. You can say that's evidence of previous fraud, but it's largely just going to be people who didn't make it through the additional friction.

[removed]

Re: USDA head says 'everyone' on SNAP will now have to reapply

#29

Post by spullara » Fri, Nov 14, 2025, 11:30 PM UTC

Jtsummers wrote: post #19

weird-eye-issue wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is always a wonder to me when people downplay something that is "just" 1.5% of nearly $7 TRILLION

Less than one percent of 1.5% of $7 trillion, around $1 billion. Which is a significant sum, no doubt, but that's also less than $3/person in the US. Given the much larger wasted sums by DOD and other parts of the government, it's an amount I can live with. I'd rather see the real waste and abuse get addressed first, but it won't be. Address this, but address it in a way that doesn't cause undue harm to the 40.8 mill…

social programs are 60% of the budget, defense is down to 13%.

Re: USDA head says 'everyone' on SNAP will now have to reapply

#30

Post by aeternum » Fri, Nov 14, 2025, 11:31 PM UTC

CodingJeebus wrote: post #18

weird-eye-issue wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is always a wonder to me when people downplay something that is "just" 1.5% of nearly $7 TRILLION

You added the "just", not me. But to your point, there are much, much larger and controversial line items in the budget to argue about than feeding the poor. Preventing starvation is important to a functioning society, as widespread hunger has ended many a government throughout history.

[flagged]