Ron Jacobs's Blog
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Food, Not War
Bob Marley’s song “Them Belly Full(But They Hungry) has a lyric that goes “A hungry mob is a angry mob…” I quote the song because tens of millions ofpeople in the United States will lose their access to SNAP/EBT on November 1,2025. For those who don’t know, SNAP/EBTis how those people can afford enough food to feed themselves and theirfamilies. Not only do these folks dependon this program to supplement their income so they can buy food, so do thegrocery stores—big and small—depend on the income generated by those purchases. Those purchases came to almost 94 billiondollars in 2024. SNAP/EBT is not ahandout, it is an essential part of a US economy that is out of whack; aneconomy that continues to give more money to the wealthiest among us whileimpoverishing more and more hardworking people. Yes, most people who receive EBT subsidies work, just like most of thepeople who receive Medicaid and even more of the people who receive subsidiesto help pay their health insurance. Letme repeat, these subsidies are not handouts, even though it would be irrelevantif they were.
According to an October 26, 2025article on the The Hill website, the United States Department of Agriculture(USDA) has a five billion dollar reserve in its contingency fund. This fundingis there to be used when regular funding is not available. The USDA administers the SNAP/EBTprogram. It could use these funds tostave off what will certainly be a drastic increase in hunger, but it refusesto do so. There’s one main reason it isrefusing. The GOP and Donald Trump won’tlet them. It seems reasonable to saythat the GOP and Donald Trump want people to go hungry, even while theycontinue to collect their paychecks and eat good meals most likely prepared bysomeone else. Yes, letting people gohungry is a choice, just like deciding to send thousands of troops and sailorsto the Caribbean to kill people accused without proof of being involved in drugtrafficking while threatening sovereign nations with war is a choice. Letting people go hungry is a choice, justlike spending billions of dollars to build a gestapo-like police force withorders to kidnap people because of their skin tone and accent is a choice. I could go on, but I think I made mypoint.
The current government shutdown isan act of vengeance by Donald Trump and his minions. This becomes clear when one reads the text onthe websites of numerous government agencies blaming the “far-left” Democratsfor the shutdown. It becomes evenclearer when one goes beyond the alleged reasons given by the White House,reasons that include the lies that undocumented immigrants receive SNAP/EBT,Medicaid and ACA healthcare supplements. They don’t. Do I think theyshould be able to? Yes. But they can’t under current law.
I live in Vermont. A few days ago (10/23/2025), the newspaper VermontDigger reported that some Vermont legislators are looking for a way to provideemergency funding so tens of thousands of Vermonters will not go without foodsometime in November, the month we celebrate Thanksgiving. That same article also reported that Vermont’sGovernor Scott can order funds to be released that would cover thosepayments. I hope and expect Vermont willfigure something out. However, that willdo nothing for the tens of millions of other people in the US whose cupboardswill be bare without the funds they receive because of the SNAP/EBT program.
By the way, Happy Thanksgiving.
