The government shutdown is now officially the longest in history, and millions of Americans are starting to pay the price.

The more than 40 million Americans on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) rely on taxpayer dollars to buy groceries, and the Trump administration has announced that only half of these “food stamp” benefits will be paid out.

Meanwhile, arbitrarily enforced bizarre rules by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) are preventing grocery stores from helping out SNAP shoppers with temporarily-reduced prices. It’s critical for Congress to not only end the shutdown but also reexamine the SNAP eligibility rules and USDA restrictions on grocery stores that are fueling debts and deficits. Without the rule of law, food insecurity will never bite the dust.

A pivotal part of the problem with the current food stamp program is the “Thrifty Food Plan,” which according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is “a basket of foods selected by the [USDA] to provide a nutritious diet for a household of a particular size. The maximum benefit under SNAP is based on the number of people in the household and the cost of the TFP for a group of that size.”

SNAP benefit allotments had been fairly stable in the ten years following the Great Recession, and annual payments even declined from $75 billion in 2012 to $55 billion in 2019.

But President Biden dramatically reversed these taxpayer savings. As a 2024 CBO analysis notes, “The reevaluation of the TFP published in 2021, combined with the annual adjustment for inflation, increased the TFP’s cost by about 23% over the year before.”

And while annual food stamp payments declined as the COVID-19 pandemic receded further into the rearview mirror, the $97 billion in SNAP payouts in 2024 was still significantly higher than the program’s previous high water mark of $75 billion in 2012 and 2013.

One might think that, instead of going deeper into debt by increasing SNAP benefits far above baseline, the government would encourage grocery stores to voluntarily help their struggling consumers. Unfortunately, bureaucrats are instinctually hostile to the idea of voluntary community-driven assistance — especially when there are cheap political points to score.

According to USDA regulations, “Coupons [i.e., food stamps] shall be accepted for eligible foods at the same prices and on the same terms and conditions applicable to cash purchases of the same foods at the same store except that tax shall not be charged on eligible foods purchased with coupons.”

The agency recently cited this rule as a reminder to grocers not to treat SNAP consumers any differently than other consumers. This includes offering them lower prices. It seems convenient that the agency has a new-found urgency in enforcing this rule right as food stamps take center stage in the shutdown showdown.

Nevertheless, the rule makes little sense as written. The intention was undoubtedly to prevent grocers from responding to the introduction of SNAP benefits by hiking the base price of food and effectively pocketing food stamp dollars.

The truth is that SNAP expansions increase the price of groceries regardless of bureaucratic micromanagement. According to a 2023 analysis by the Foundation for Government Accountability using retail scanner data from the World Bank, food prices increase 1% for each 12.5% increase in per-capita food stamp spending.

The USDA should admit the futility of stamping out supposed “price discrimination” and allow grocery stores to cut struggling consumers a break. And Congress should end the shutdown while returning SNAP spending to pre-COVID levels. Struggling households deserve a better approach to ending food insecurity that doesn’t involve reams of red tape and red ink.

Ross Marchand is a senior fellow at the Taxpayers Protection Alliance.