Beverage Companies Hope Trump Blocks SNAP Soda Bans

"If you like a McDonald's cheeseburger or Diet Coke, which my boss loves, you should be able to get them," Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said during one of his Senate confirmation hearings. The Health and Human Services secretary is, however, supporting a push to block people from buying soda under state food-aid programs. Sources tell the Wall Street Journal that soda companies opposed to the move plan a lobbying campaign to personally target President Trump, who is famously fond of Diet Coke. The companies and their lobbyists argue that the move would alienate many Trump supporters.

• States have been trying for decades to have items including soda and candy excluded from Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program—SNAP—benefits, but the US Agriculture Department, which oversees the program, has long said it would be "too complicated to implement," the Journal reports. The program is widely known as the food stamp program, though benefits have been delivered by card for many years.

• Kennedy and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins have signaled that changes are likely, Fortune reports. "When a taxpayer is putting money into SNAP, are they OK with us using their tax dollars to feed really bad food and sugary drinks to children who perhaps need something more nutritious?" Rollins recently asked.
• "The one place that I would say that we need to really change policy is the SNAP program and food stamps and in school lunches," Kennedy said last month. "There, the federal government in many cases is paying for it. And we shouldn't be subsidizing people to eat poison." In November, he described the food on Trump's campaign plane as poison.

• Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed Friday that the state is planning to seek federal approval to restrict certain items considered unhealthy, the Journal reports. "Nobody is anti-Diet Coke. Nobody is anti-soft drink. I like a soft drink, too. It's whether or not the government should be paying for it," the Republican governor said.
• Lawmakers in states including Idaho, Kansas, Wyoming, Indiana, and Arizona, backed by Kennedy's "Make America Healthy Again" movement, have also proposed excluding soda from SNAP benefits.
• In Texas, state Rep. Keith Self introduced the "FIZZ-NO Act" last month to prohibit the use of SNAP benefits to buy soda, the Austin American-Statesman reports. The American Beverage Association called it an "attempt to strip hard-working Americans and our veterans of the freedoms to choose foods that best meet their families' needs."

(More SNAP stories.)