The Question Was posed: Who Truly Controls SNAP?

The Question Was posed: Who Truly Controls SNAP?

My interpretation:

By Brian Wilson, The Bipartisan Patriot

First and foremost: If the government isn’t running the way you think it should, don’t just sit there and stew about it. Vote your conscience next election. Not the party line. Not what your favorite talk host says. Just, you.

We’ve spent too many years pretending our mess comes from one man or one moment. Donald Trump isn’t the great evil some make him out to be, and he’s not the savior others think either. The problem sits deeper, baked into the marble, red and blue both. The permanent crowd in D.C. thrives on outrage, division, and noise while the rest of us fight over crumbs. They built the show. They feed it. They argue for the cameras, then shake hands behind closed doors while the country drifts toward apathy. We traded accountability for hashtags, debate for cheap shots, and patriotism for brand loyalty.

But democracy only works when the people running it are more afraid of the voters than the donors. So if you don’t like what’s happening, do something. Speak up. Show up. Vote. Silence is the grease that keeps the machine running. The ballot box isn’t sacred because of who’s on it, it’s sacred because it’s still yours.

That brings us to one of the most misunderstood lifelines in this country, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. It lives in that messy place where politics meets poverty. It keeps food on tables for more than forty million Americans every month, but you’d never know it from what you hear online. Everyone’s got an opinion; few actually understand the wiring behind it.

Here’s the truth, plain and unvarnished: a President can’t just wake up and take that money back. Once it’s issued, it’s gone. Locked in. Protected by law. It’s not a favor to hand out or a punishment to pull back. The Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse, not the Oval Office. Every SNAP dollar flows through the Farm Bill, the core structure that keeps the system upright. It’s not a command chain. It’s a handshake deal between Washington and the states. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, through its Food and Nutrition Service, sets the rules, watches for fraud, and tries to keep the pipes from bursting.

Meanwhile, the states are the ones doing the grunt work. They take the applications, check eligibility, and push out those EBT cards. The feds bring the funding; the states do the labor. It’s not pretty, but it works, like two mismatched gears that grind but still turn. Federal oversight, state execution, one can’t function without the other. When one coughs, the other wheezes.

So when some politician, doesn’t matter which color tie, starts talking about “taking back” or “returning” SNAP funds, don’t buy it. That’s not policy, that’s performance. Once the benefits hit someone’s card, they’re locked down under the law. Any president who tried to claw them back would get buried in lawsuits before their morning coffee was cold.

The Impoundment Control Act of 1974 made that clear. No President can withhold or reroute funds Congress already approved unless Congress agrees to it. The Senate Appropriations Committee even said it again in 2025: “The Constitution grants the President no unilateral authority to withhold funds from obligation.”

Here’s what that really means in human terms.

A sitting U.S. President can’t simply cut, freeze, or cancel a program like SNAP without Congress on board.

The rules are ironclad:

Power of the Purse: The Constitution (Article I, Section 9) gives spending authority only to Congress. No law, no money spent.

Impoundment Control Act (1974): Stops the President from stashing away or permanently freezing funds Congress approved.

Rescission Process: A President can ask Congress to cancel spending, but Congress has to vote yes. Meanwhile, the clock ticks, 45 days, and if lawmakers don’t agree, that money still has to go out.

Judicial Review: Every time a president has tried to sit on funds, federal judges have stepped in and ordered the money released.

Any attempt to bypass that process, to hold funds hostage for politics, breaks the separation of powers wide open. It’s not just wrong; it’s unconstitutional.

Johns Hopkins University put it simply: “SNAP is funded by the federal government via the Farm Bill and administered by the states, which distribute it to eligible residents under federal oversight.” Or, in everyday language: Washington pays for it, the states deliver it, and the system somehow limps along between them. Messy, sure, but built so no one can turn hunger into a political weapon.

Yet, every few years, some new candidate “discovers” hunger like it’s a brand-new disease, promises to cure it, then forgets once the cameras move on.

But here’s what people don’t see: SNAP isn’t about control, it’s about survival. I’ve seen it firsthand, from Boston firehouses to Worcester soup kitchens, how this program keeps families standing when the bottom drops out. Politicians use it like a poker chip. But for the people on the ground, it’s not politics, it’s dinner.

I remember standing in a Dorchester market once, watching a young mother juggle two kids, a buggy, and a pile of coupons that looked like a deck of cards. She wasn’t gaming the system; she was fighting her way through it. Most people using SNAP aren’t freeloaders. They’re working folks stuck in a rough patch. But that doesn’t make for catchy campaign slogans, so you don’t hear it.

Every election season, both sides turn it into a weapon. One screams “welfare abuse,” the other wraps it in moral glory. Neither actually gets how it works. You don’t just “get” SNAP, you crawl through red tape and prove you’re broke enough to qualify.

Ah control? That’s the punchline. Washington flexes until something breaks, then points fingers at the states. The states demand freedom, then blame D.C. when numbers look bad. Presidents come and go, each pretending to “fix” it until the lawyers remind them the law still applies.

The truth is, nobody fully controls SNAP. And maybe that’s the point. Shared control means shared accountability. No one person can wake up one morning and decide who eats and who doesn’t. Still, the system’s fragile. Budget fights delay checks. Shutdowns choke the pipeline. Local offices drown in paperwork while families wait days, sometimes weeks, for what should’ve been there yesterday. Meanwhile, the talking heads debate “policy” while kids go to bed hungry.

That’s the part nobody wants to face. It’s not about control. It’s about commitment. Are we, as a country, serious about feeding people, or just pretending to care until the next election cycle?

SNAP runs on one hard truth: hunger doesn’t care about politics. It doesn’t ask who you voted for, doesn’t care how big your government is. Hunger just wants an answer.

So when I hear talk about “taking back” funds, I think about empty cupboards in Gardner, in Worcester, in Springfield, and I wonder what kind of country we’ve become if that’s even a debate. If we can’t agree that people deserve to eat, what the hell is left to agree on?

Maybe the real control of SNAP doesn’t live in Washington at all. Maybe it lives with us, the taxpayers, the neighbors, the people who show up when someone’s down. Maybe Congress, by accident or design, got it right when they split the power, so no one can weaponize hunger.

We’ve turned compassion into a partisan sport for far too long. I don’t care what label you slap on it, SNAP, food stamps, the Farm Bill, I care that it works. That it feeds families. That it outlasts every ego with a microphone.

That’s not cynicism. That’s the truth from ground level, where the grocery line’s longer than the memory of the people in charge.

I’m all for keeping America great, but greatness starts with decency.

Feed your people first. Argue later.

“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.” —Franklin D. Roosevelt