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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 February 2023
This article traces the changing terrain of the food stamp program in the pivotal decade of the 1970s. In 1969, President Richard Nixon promised to put an end to hunger in America, “for all time.” However, in the fifteen years following this announcement, policymakers erected boundaries around the scope of public food welfare programs. In this article, the author highlights key continuities between earlier, modest attempts at program reform under Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Carter and the later Reagan-era assault on welfare spending of the early 1980s.
1 Robert Pear, “U.S. Hunger on the Rise Despite Swelling of Food Surpluses,” New York Times, 19 July 1983, 1.
2 Ronald Reagan, “Memorandum on Establishing a Task Force on Food Assistance,” 2 Aug. 1983, The American Presidency Project, at www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/262917.
3 Report of the President's Task Force on Food Assistance (Washington, DC: GPO, 1984), xiv–xv.
4 Ibid., xv.
5 On the evolution of the food stamp program up to the 1960s see Maney, Ardith, Still Hungry After All These Years (New York: Greenwood Press, 1989), 19–31Google Scholar; Moran, Rachel Louise, “Consuming Relief: Food Stamps and the New Welfare of the New Deal,” Journal of American History, 97, 4 (1 March 2011), 1001–22CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; and Poppendieck, Janet, Bread Lines Knee-Deep in Wheat: Food Assistance in the Great Depression (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2014), 177–204Google Scholar. For accounts of hunger as part of 1960s welfare rights movement see Berry, Jeffrey M., Feeding Hungry People: Rulemaking in the Food Stamp Program (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1984), especially chapter 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Orleck, Annelise, Storming Caesars Palace: How Black Mothers Fought Their Own War on Poverty (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2005), especially chapter 6Google Scholar.
6 Richard Nixon, “Special Message to the Congress Recommending a Program to End Hunger in America,” 6 May 1969, The American Presidency Project, at https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/239022.
7 Maney; Poppendieck; and King, Ronald Frederick, Budgeting Entitlements: The Politics of Food Stamps (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2000)Google Scholar.
8 Nixon.
9 For a few examples of the larger literature on the “mainstreaming” of racial prejudice in welfare, moving debates out from the South to national politics in the 1960s, see Gilens, Martin, Why Americans Hate Welfare: Race, Media, and the Politics of Antipoverty Policy, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Spitzer, Scott J., “The Emergence of Race in National Welfare Politics: The 1962 and 1967 Amendments to AFDC,” The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics and Culture, 5, 1 (2012), 75–112CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
10 See Bertram, Eva, “Democratic Divisions in the 1960s Road to Welfare Reform,” Political Science Quarterly, 126, 4 (2011–12), 580CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11 According to Maney, “During the 1980s [food aid policy] was second only to Medicaid and Social Security in its claims on the federal treasury.” Maney, 2.
12 For a comprehensive account of the early food stamp program, see Poppendieck.
13 Hilary Hoynes and Diane W. Schanzenbach, “The Introduction of the Food Stamp Program: Impacts on Food Consumption and Family Well-Being,” paper presented at the Center for Economic Performance, London School of Economics and Political Science, 24 July 2006, 21, at cep.lse.ac.uk/seminarpapers/13-10- 06-HOY.pdf.
14 See, for example, Joseph A. Loftus, “Johnson Is Asked to Rush Food Aid: 9 Senators Cite Mississippi Hunger and Malnutrition,” New York Times, 30 April 1930, 51; “Senators Ask Emergency ‘Delta’ Food,” Washington Post, 30 April 1967; Robert Sherrill, “It Isn't True That Nobody Starves in America,” New York Times, 4 June 1967, 12; and Nan Robertson, “Severe Hunger Found in Mississippi,” New York Times, 16 June 1967, 14.
15 US Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service, A Concise History of the Food Stamp Program, by Joe Richardson, 79-1244 EPW (1979), 3. Food stamp values were tied to the value of the Thrifty Food Plan, a basket of goods defined by the USDA “to be adequate for household members to obtain the recommended daily allowances of key nutrients, as specified by the National Academy of Sciences.” King, 40.
16 Some historians of welfare have gone so far as to call Nixon the last Social Democrat, pointing in particular to expansion in the food stamp program by 1974. See, for example, Quadagno, Jill, The Color of Welfare: How Racism Undermined the War on Poverty (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 122Google Scholar. Marissa Chappell also discusses the expansion of the FSP under Nixon, but highlights that these gains were directed more towards the working poor than mothers on AFDC. Chappell, Marissa, The War on Welfare: Family, Poverty, and Politics in Modern America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 107CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also King, 54: “The new Republican administration of Richard Nixon was far more sympathetic to nutrition issues and more willing to advance a costly policy initiative than the outgoing Democratic administration of Lyndon Johnson.”
17 For example, see NKotz, ick, Let Them Eat Promises: The Politics of Hunger in America (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1969)Google Scholar; and Segal, Judith, Food for the Hungry: The Reluctant Society, Policy Studies in Employment and Welfare 4 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1970)Google Scholar.
18 For example, the CBS documentary Hunger in America aired in the midst of the 1968 Poor People's Campaign, an effort to bring attention to the needs of the poor where hundreds occupied the National Mall. Hunger in America, produced by Martin Carr and Don Hewitt, featuring Charles Kurault, aired on 21 May 1968 on CBS.
19 Memo, Andy Rome to Pat Moynihan; “Comments on Suggested Nutrition Programs and Their Financing,” 13 March 1969, folder “Health – Hunger and Malnutrition 3-1” (2) (2 of 3), Box 17, Staff Member and Office Files, John R. Price Papers, Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, Yorba Linda, CA (hereafter Nixon Library).
20 “Report of the Committee of the Urban Affairs Council on Food and Nutrition,” 17 March 1969, 1, folder “HE 3-1 Executive,” Box 13, White House Central Files; Nixon Library.
21 Recommendations were broken out across the following areas: FSP, commodity program, Special Supplemental Food Program, Child Nutrition (mostly school lunches), the role of private business, volunteers, a national food/malnutrition survey, and avenues for nutrition research and education.
22 James M. Naughton, “White House Food and Health Parley in Trouble,” New York Times, 14 Sept. 1969.
23 Jack Rosenthal, “6 Hunger Parley Delegates Rebuked,” New York Times, 5 Dec. 1969, 25. There were 307 counties with no food program, either commodities or food stamps, in December 1969.
24 US Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service, Background on the Termination of the Food (Commodity) Distribution Program for Needy Families and Individuals, by Joe Richardson, 73-195ED (1973), 1.
25 Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, “Food Stamp Program (in Accordance with S. Res. 58),” S. Misc. Doc. 54-735, at 7 (1975). While this program never entirely disappeared, by 1976 less than 80,000 people received commodities, mostly on reservations or in trust territories where direct distribution was preferred to the FSP. See Lipsky, Michael and Thibodeau, Marc A., “Domestic Food Policy in the United States,” Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, 15, 2 (Summer 1990), 319–39, 322CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
26 Rosenfeld, Sam, “Fed by Reform: Congressional Politics, Partisan Change, and the Food Stamp Program, 1961–1981,” Journal of Policy History, 22, 4 (2010), 474–507, 475CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
27 George McGovern, Robert Dole, and Hubert Humphrey to “Dear Colleagues,” 23 May 1977; folder “FS House-Senate Conf. 1977,” Box 4, Records of the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition, Food Stamps, Records of the US Senate Record Group 46, National Archives Building, Washington, DC.
28 Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, “Farm Program – Food Supply: Studies and Data on the Farm Program,” S. Rep. No. 98-351, at 25–26 (1983); Maney, Still Hungry, 117, 124; King, Budgeting Entitlements, 57.
29 King, 65.
30 Ibid., 43.
31 Ibid., 64.
32 Rosenfeld, 475–76. See also Bertram, “Democratic Divisions in the 1960s,” 584. These committees were key in the direction and funding of public assistance programs.
33 King, 64.
34 Berry, Feeding Hungry People, 81–82.
35 Judith Cummings, “Food Stamp Applications Are Rising with the Prices,” New York Times, 16 Aug. 1973, 42.
36 Annual average wage growth is calculated from annual wage data collected by the Current Population Survey (CPS). I calculated the year-on-year percent change of the average annual wage based on the average annual income of all employees. Annualized unemployment rates are from Labor Force Statistics from the CPS, collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Food price inflation is a measure of the annual percent change in food costs, from December to December. Data is drawn from “CPS Population and Per Capita Money Income, All Races: 1967 to 2018,” US Bureau of the Census, at www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/cps/tables/time-series/historical-income-people/p01ar.xls, accessed 10 Sept. 2019; “Employment Status of the Civilian Noninstitutional Population, 1940s to Date,” US Bureau of Labor Statistics, at www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat01.pdf, accessed 10 Sept. 2019; “Food Inflation in the United States, 1968–2019,” US Inflation Calculator, at www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/food-inflation-in-the-united-states, accessed 10 Sept. 2019.
37 MacDonald, Maurice, “Food Stamps: An Analytical History,” Social Service Review, 51, 4 (1977), 642–58, 652CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
38 Maney, Still Hungry, 117.
39 One account of food program growth can be found in King, 46: “The story regarding the creation of the food stamp program in the early 1960s, its rapid growth over the next decade, and its establishment as a central component in the repertoire of the US welfare state has been told often, usually from the perspective of triumph of social justice over entrenched opposition and public apathy.”
40 Gerald Ford, Message to Congress, 27 July 1975, folder “Food Stamps (2),” Box 4, Spencer Johnson Files, Gerald R. Ford Library (hereafter Ford Library). Ford noted that food stamps had grown from $36 million in 1964 to $7 billion in 1975.
41 King, 67.
42 Memo, Dennis H. Wood to Dean Burch, Roy Ash, Ken Cole, Bill Timmons, Bill Seidman, Gary Seevers, “Possible Reforms in USDA Food Assistance Programs,” 23 Sept. 1974, folder “Alan Greenspan Files: Food (2),” Box 45, Council of Economic Advisers; Ford Library. The purchase price had been dropped to 25% following the White House Conference on Food Nutrition and Health in 1969.
43 Memo, Alan Greenspan to Earl Butz, Dean Burch, Bill Timmons, Roy Ash, Ken Rush, Bill Seidman, “Idea for Mr. Rush's Meeting on USDA Food Programs,” 30 Sept. 1974, folder “Alan Greenspan Files: Food (2),” Box 45, Council of Economic Advisers; Ford Library.
44 Lawrence J. McAndrews, “No Time to Heal: Gerald Ford, 1974–1977,” in McAndrews, The Presidents and the Poor (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2018), 59–77, 63.
45 Gerald Ford, Message to Congress, 27 July 1975, Textual Files, Spencer Johnson, Box 4, folder “Food Stamps (2),” Ford Library.
46 US Congress, Senate, To Reform the Food Stamp Act of 1964 by Improving the Provisions Relating to Eligibility…, S. Res. 2537, 94th Cong., 1st sess., introduced in Senate 21 Oct. 1976.
47 Berry, Feeding Hungry People, 89.
48 Letter, Gerald Ford to Herman Talmadge, 19 Feb. 1976, Senate Papers – Legislative Relations 1969–1996; Series 2, Box 18, Folder 5, “Committee on Agriculture + Forestry – Food Stamps, 1976,” Robert and Elizabeth Dole Archive and Special Collections, University of Kansas.
49 Letter, Sherman W. Tribbitt to Gerald Ford, 11 March 1976, folder “WE 10-4 Executive,” White House Central Files, Ford Library.
50 Jim Cannon, “Meeting Outline May 27, 1976, 3:30 pm, Cabinet Room,” folder “WE 10-4 Executive,” White House Central Files, Ford Library.
51 Nancy Hicks, “26 States and 3 Cities Sue to Enjoin Food Stamp Cuts,” New York Times, 27 May 1976, 51.
52 A.P., “Judge Delays Cutbacks,” Courier-Journal (Louisville), 19 June 1976, A2.
53 Southern members of Congress had a long-standing concern that any assistance, whether cash or in kind, would undercut the low-wage labor system in the South, particularly in the agricultural sector. See, for example, the interview in Harvest of Shame with the president of the American Farm Bureau Federation advocating that any work, even just for a few days per year, was better than none. Harvest of Shame, produced by David Lowe, featuring Edward R. Murrow, aired 25 Nov. 1960 on CBS.
54 Notably there is not a single mention of race in this report. Ronald Reagan, “California's Blueprint for National Welfare Reform: Proposals for the Nation's Food Stamp and Aid to Families with Dependent Children Programs,” Sept. 1974, Sacramento, CA, i, ix, folder “Welfare Reform – Ronald Reagan Letter and Report,” Box 13, Richard B. Cheney Files, Ford Library, digitized at www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/document/0005/1561608.pdf.
55 Digitized letter, Governor Ronald Reagan to President Gerald R. Ford, “Welfare Reform,” 20 Dec. 1974, folder “Welfare Reform – Ronald Reagan Letter and Report,” Box 13, Richard B. Cheney Files, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, at www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/document/0005/1561608.pdf, original emphasis.
56 Memo, Dennis H. Wood to Dean Burch, Roy Ash, Ken Cole, Bill Timmons, Bill Seidman, and Gary Seevers, “Possible Reforms in USDA Food Assistance Programs,” 23 Sept. 1974, folder “Alan Greenspan Files: Food (2),” Box 45, Council of Economic Advisers, Ford Library.
57 “Trim Welfare Errors, Mandel Warns,” The Sun, 5 Dec. 1973, n.p.; and Sharon Dickerson, “Group Doubts Error Rate in Welfare,” Evening Sun, 1 Dec. 1973, n.p., folder “Welfare 1973 December,” Box 67, Series 75, Record Group 48, Department of Housing and Community Development, Baltimore City Archives.
58 Memo, Dennis H. Wood to Dean Burch, Roy Ash, Ken Cole, Bill Timmons, Bill Seidman, and Gary Seevers, “Possible Reforms in USDA Food Assistance Programs,” 23 Sept. 1974, folder “Alan Greenspan Files: Food (2),” Box 45, Council of Economic Advisers, Ford Library.
59 Reese, Ellen, Backlash against Welfare Mothers: Past and Present (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2015), 40–45Google Scholar.
60 Ibid., 63–66.
61 Ballantyne, David, “‘A Public Problem … Rather than a Question of Social Welfare’: Ernest F. Hollings and the Politics of Hunger,” The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics and Culture, 8, 1 (2015), 75–98, 86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
62 Jong, Greta de, You Can't Eat Freedom: Southerners and Social Justice after the Civil Rights Movement (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2016), 33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
63 Reese, 85.
64 Berry, Feeding Hungry People, 82.
65 King, Budgeting Entitlements, 64.
66 Ibid.
67 Lands, LeeAnn B., “Lobbying for Welfare in a Deep South State Legislature in the 1970s,” Journal of Southern History, 84, 3 (2018), 652–96, 668CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
68 “One-Fourth,” Pittsburgh Press, 2 Marcgh 1975, n.p.; “Fiscal Albatross,” San Diego Union, 9 March 1975, WE 10-4 Executive, White House Central Files, Ford Library.
69 “Food Stamp Furor,” Newsweek, 20 Oct. 1975, n.p., folder “WE 27 Executive,” White House Central Files; Ford Library. The copy of this article in the Ford Library has “The President Has Seen” stamped across the top in red block letters.
70 Over fifty pages of Secretary of the Treasury William Simon's testimony addressed food stamp fraud, including an annex of excerpts from selected fraud cases. These thirty hand-selected examples demonstrated the myriad ways the program could be abused. See Annex to William E. Simon, Testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, 21 Oct. 1975, folder “Welfare (1),” Box 12, Spencer Johnson Files; Ford Library, original emphasis.
71 Letter, anonymous to Robert J. Dole, 28 Oct. 1975, Robert J. Dole Senate Papers – Constituent Relations, 1969–1996, Series 4, Folder 11, “Subject – Agriculture, Food Stamps, 1975–1976,” Box 229, Robert and Elizabeth Dole Archive and Special Collections, University of Kansas.
72 See Reese; and Kornbluh, Felicia, The Battle for Welfare Rights: Politics and Poverty in Modern America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007)Google Scholar, on the demise of FAP and benefit cuts to AFDC.
73 See Chappell, The War on Welfare, 186-187.
74 Lands, 670 n. 4.
75 Ballantyne, “A Public Problem,” 83–84.
76 US Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service, How the Food Stamp Program Works: A Resource Paper, by Kathryn Michelman and Joe Richardson, 74-232ED (1975), 15.
77 “A Short History of SNAP,” at www.fns.usda.gov/snap/short-history-snap, accessed 21 March 2014.
78 King, Budgeting Entitlements, 67; Maney, Still Hungry, 131.
79 US Congress, House, To Reform the Food Stamp Act of 1964 …, HR 6052, 95th Cong., 1st sess., introduced in House 5 April 1977.
80 Nancy Hicks, “Carter Asks End to Requirement That Poor Pay for Food Stamps,” New York Times, 6 April 1977, 1.
81 George McGovern, “1977 Food Stamp Bill,” n.d., folder “S. 275 Senate Floor,” Box 4, Records of the US Senate, Record Group 46, National Archives Building, Washington, DC.
82 Beth Osborne Daponte and Shannon Bade, “How the Private Food Assistance Network Evolved: Interactions between Private Responses to Hunger,” Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 35, 4 (Dec. 2006), 668–90, 675.
83 King, 81.
84 Ibid., 83.
85 Memo, Kathleen Bishop and Marshall Matz to George McGovern, “Food Stamps – Title XII,” 1 Aug. 1977, folder “FS House-Senate Conf 1977,” Box 4, Records of the US Senate, Record Group 46, National Archives Building, Washington, DC, original emphasis.
86 King, 83.
87 Ibid., 93.
88 Ibid., 67.
89 Maney, Still Hungry, 134.
90 USDA, “Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Participation and Costs,” at https://fns-prod.azureedge.us/sites/default/files/resource-files/SNAPsummary-1.pdf.
91 Ronald Reagan, “Message to the Congress Transmitting the Proposed Package on the Program for Economic Recovery,” 18 Feb. 1981, The American Presidency Project at www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/246570, quoted in King, 116.
92 This language comes from a Florida rally for Reagan's unsuccessful bid for the 1976 Republican presidential nomination. See Carter, Dan, From George Wallace to Newt Gingrich: Race in the Conservative Counterrevolution, 1963–1994 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1996), 64Google Scholar.
93 Ronald Reagan, “Address to the Nation on the Program for Economic Recovery,” 24 Sept. 1981, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, at www.reaganlibrary.gov/research/speeches/92481d.
94 O'Connor, Alice, Poverty Knowledge: Social Science, Social Policy and the Poor in Twentieth-Century U.S. History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 242CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
95 Maney, 134.
96 USDA, “Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Participation and Costs,” at https://fns-prod.azureedge.us/sites/default/files/resource-files/SNAPsummary-1.pdf; Mike Shedlock, “The Food Stamp Recession,” Finance.townhall.com, at http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/mikeshedlock/2011/12/08/the_food_stamp_recession, accessed 14 April 2014.
97 Maney, 132–36.
98 Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981, Pub. L. 97-35, 95 Stat. 357 (1981).
99 Food Research & Action Center, “Alert – Reagan Budget Cuts,” 19 Feb. 1981; Records of the Center for Poverty Studies, Series I, Box 6A, Folder “FS Hist/Fed Budget Cut Effects,” University of Baltimore Special Collections and Archives.
100 Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981, Pub. L. 97-35, 95 Stat. 357 (1981).
101 Ibid.
102 Food stamp values are calculated based on the cost of the Thrifty Food Plan, not pegged to the more general measure of the consumer price index (CPI), which was used in calculating benefit values for many other welfare programs.
103 Pierson, Paul, Dismantling the Welfare State? Reagan, Thatcher, and the Politics of Retrenchment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 118Google Scholar.
104 USDA, “From Food Stamps to the Supplemental Nutrition Program: Legislative Timeline,” at https://fns-prod.azureedge.net/sites/default/files/timeline.pdf, accessed 21 March 2014.
105 Prasad, Monica, The Politics of Free Markets: The Rise of Neoliberal Economic Policies in Britain, France, Germany, and the United States (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006), 13Google Scholar.
106 Berry, Feeding Hungry People, 151.
107 Steven R. Weisman, “Reagan Abandons Proposal to Pare School Nutrition,” New York Times, 26 Sept. 1981, 1.
