President Donald Trump’s push to nudge loafers off food stamps and back to work looks to be working even faster than hoped.
In the wake of reforms instituted by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, enrollment in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program fell 13% over the past year: As of May, 36.6 million people got food stamps, down from 42.2 million in May 2025.
Last year’s figure was double the figure of 20 years ago; now the rolls are back to pre-COVID levels — an improvement the Congressional Budget Office had predicted it would take until 2030 to achieve.
Lefties, of course, are horrified; they’d have everyone on SNAP if they could.
But studies have shown such subsidies discourage employment: Why work to earn food money when the government will foot the bill?
That’s precisely why SNAP has long required able-bodied Americans to work, train or volunteer, at least part-time, to qualify for benefits.
The 2025 OBBBA expanded those requirements slightly, raising the upper age limit for adults who had to meet them from 55 to 64 and roping in parents with kids 14 or older (rather than 18) as well as able-bodied homeless adults.
It’s not clear how much of the 5.6 million-recipient drop is the result of people finding jobs and earning too much money to qualify for food stamps — as opposed to being deemed ineligible after failing to meet the requirements or for other reasons.
But powerful evidence shows time limits and other requirements imposed by President Bill Clinton’s 1996 welfare reforms sparked huge gains in employment — particularly among single, low-income mothers — and poverty dropped.
So it’s fair to assume much of this drop is driven by rise in people earning enough to pay for their own food.
In any case, American taxpayers surely have a right to ask adults who are perfectly able to work, train or study to do so, at least part-time, if they’re to get government handouts.
As Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman John Boozman (R-Ark.) noted last year, SNAP was always meant to be a “bridge to independence, not a long-term lifestyle.”
Even then-Sen. Joe Biden insisted, during the debate on the 1996 reforms, “The culture of welfare must be replaced by the culture of work.”
Oh, and another Team Trump change to SNAP is yielding other welcome results: weaning recipients off sugar.
The change lets states bar food stamps from paying for candy, soda and other sugary drinks, and a new National Bureau of Economic Research study found that soda sales fell by 12% among SNAP recipients in states that adopted the ban.
Amazing: The Trump SNAP reforms are doing what they were supposed to: pushing Americans to lead more productive, independent and healthier lives.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
