Leading VT Democrats advocate for letting SNAP beneficiaries waste over $25 million a year on junk food.

by Rob Roper

A collection of Vermont legislators led by Senate Majority Leader Kesha Ram Hinsdale (D-Chittenden SE) and Treasurer Mike Pieciak (D-VT) gathered in the Cedar Creek Room of the State House to decry and bemoan proposed reforms to the SNAP (Supplemental NUTRITION Assistance Program, aka Food Stamps) that would disallow taxpayer funded EBT cards from purchasing junk food and sugary beverages.

It makes perfect sense that a program with NUTRITION in its title would not allow people to access “foods” with zero nutritional value and well documented track records for negatively impacting people’s health – obesity, diabetes, heart disease…. This especially when we are dealing with a healthcare accessibility and affordability crisis in Vermont in which healthier diets – preventing disease instead of treating it is the path to sustainability, isn’t it – should be part of the solution.

But not so in this case! At least say so these comically hypocritical buffoons.

Allow me to justify that description. In defending her “let them eat cake” – literally – policy position here, Senator Hinsdale said:

Families using SNAP are already making hard, thoughtful decisions every single day about how to stretch limited dollars and put food on the table. The answer is not to police their choices or add new restrictions that make life harder…. There’s no reason for government to get involved in that decision about how families do their best to feed their kids.”

Pieciak even went so far as to declare, “Banning the sale of junk food using [SNAP] won’t make anyone healthier…. [And] it is out of step with Vermont’s values.”

When I heard that, the needle scrape across the vinyl record sound effect blasted through my head. Wait, what? No reason for government to get involved in decisions, police choices, and make life harder? Vermont Values? This coming from the people who are gleefully pushing for restrictions on home heating and motor fuels, policing our decisions in these areas and making life harder and more expensive for anyone who makes the “wrong” choices. The folks who are trying to ban internal combustion engine vehicle sales by 2035 and choose our cars for us. The same people who are viciously attacking school choice in Vermont because they believe government has every right to get involved in decisions about how families best educate their kids, and don’t think parents have a right to know if their child is gender transitioning. These the authors and advocates for Act 181 deciding and restricting precisely how a land-owning families can and mostly cannot use their own property…. I could go on and on. What appliances we’re allowed to buy, the kinds of lightbulbs, the ingredients allowed in our shampoo….

But disallow someone from using taxpayer dollars – not their own money, mind you — to purchase a soda with seventeen ounces of sugar in it and zero vitamins or minerals as part of program that is supposed to make sure people have access to nutrition – woah, hold on there, Hoss, we don’t want to compromise our values.

This is only where the hypocrisy starts. Because a little walk down memory lane and one might recall these same legislators – the ones who heaven forefend would never think of imposing their values, butting in on families’ decisions, or making life harder, at least regarding junk food purchases – have put forward bills TO TAX SUGAR SWEETENED BEVERAGES AND CANDY EVERY BIENNIUM GOING BACK OVER A DECADE! You see, it’s all fine and good when they are taking hard earned money from working people to spend themselves. It’s only when they’re giving your money away to potential voters (and, let’s be real here, the soda industry and grocery store lobbyists) that these “values” conundrums arise.

Here’s the record: in 2015, under Governor Peter Shumlin (D-VT) the Democrats ended sugary drinks’ exemption from the 6 percent sales tax. And before and after that they’ve tried to add an additional excise tax of one or two cents an ounce to these same products. In 2011 it was H.151. 2012 it was H.615. H.234 in 2013 sported sponsorship of then presumably valueless Representative Kesha Ram (it was before the Hinsdale). In 2015 they tried again with H.235, and again in 2018 with H.699, H.343 in 2019, H.37 in 2021, and yet again just this year with S.238.

And what has always been the proposed logic for these taxes on non-nutritional foods and drinks? To get people to consume less of this stuff because it is bad for you and society. As summed up by perpetual sponsor of these taxes, Senator Alison Clarkson (D-Windsor), though speaking here as a Representative from Woodstock in 2015, “I’d rather pay for prevention and rein in the [health] problem than continue to pay for the problem. Thoughtful people are increasingly aware of sugar’s impact on the public’s purse.” (To Clarkson’s credit, she was not at this press conference.)

So, I guess taxing sugary beverages at 6 percent and potentially adding a 1¢ or 2¢ per ounce tax will help lead to a healthier Vermont and cut down on healthcare costs, but prohibiting the over 60,000 Vermonters on SNAP from spending an estimated $25 million a year on junk food (20 percent of SNAP purchases) and instead ensure they use that money for healthier choices would not? Sure, Mike Pieciak. Wrap your head around that twisted thinking and watch your step around the intellectual cow pies.

Rob Roper is a freelance writer with 25 years of experience in Vermont politics including three years’ service as chair of the Vermont Republican Party and nine years as President of the Ethan Allen Institute, Vermont’s free market think tank.