Had the government shut down in 1958, when Dwight Eisenhower was in office, how many people would have been at risk of losing their federal food stamp benefits? None.

There was one good reason for this: There was no federal food stamp program at that time.

Now, America is a nation where politicians in both parties argued during this year's government shutdown that politicians in the other party were guilty of depriving people of receiving food stamp benefits from the federal government's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

House Speaker Mike Johnson held a press conference on the last day of October in which he blamed Senate Democrats for blocking funding for the food stamp program by refusing to approve a continuing resolution to fund the government.

"If there was any way to fund SNAP during the Democrat shutdown, you can be assured that your commander in chief would do it," said Johnson. "But we are now reaching a breaking point thanks to Democrats voting no on government funding, now, 14 different times.

"SNAP benefits for millions of Americans are drying up," Johnson said. "It's about one in eight people in this country who rely upon this to literally put food on their table. And the blame for this lies 100% with the senators sitting over there in the Democrat Party.

"And now I want you to think about that," said Johnson. "You're going to have real people, real families, you're going to have children who will go hungry beginning this weekend when those resources dry up."

Three days after Johnson made this argument, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer — who led his party into causing the government shutdown — joined most Senate Democrats in proposing a resolution demanding that President Donald Trump resume full funding of the SNAP program despite the shutdown.

"The Trump administration should stop weaponizing hunger for 42 million Americans and immediately release full — not partial — SNAP benefits," Schumer said. "As the courts have affirmed, USDA has and must use their authority to fully fund SNAP. Anything else is unacceptable and a half-measure. The Senate must pass this resolution, and Trump must end his manufactured hunger crisis by fully funding SNAP."

As Schumer noted, the food stamp issue was also being fought out in the federal courts — with the Trump administration appealing to the Supreme Court to overturn the ruling of a federal district, which an appeals court had let stand, that would require the government to pay full food stamp benefits even during the shutdown.

The real problem here is that the food stamp program has made a substantial number of Americans dependent on the federal government for one of their most basic needs.

For most of this nation's history there was no federal food stamp program. The first such program was started in 1939 during the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt. "The program ended in the spring of 1943," says an online history page posted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, "'since the conditions that brought the program into being — unmarketable food surpluses and widespread unemployment — no longer existed.'"

In 1959, Congress enacted legislation authorizing a second temporary food stamp program. "On Sept. 21, 1959, PL 86-341 authorized the Secretary of Agriculture to operate a food stamp system through Jan. 31, 1962.

"The Eisenhower Administration never used the authority," says the USDA history of the program.

But, it says, "President Kennedy's first Executive Order called for expanded food distribution and, on Feb. 2, 1961, he announced the initiation of Food Stamp pilot programs."

Then came Lyndon Johnson. "On Jan. 31, 1964, President Johnson requested Congress to pass legislation making the (Food Stamp Program) permanent," says the USDA history.

When the House debated this legislation on April 8, 1964, an amendment was unsuccessfully offered to put the program under the Department of Health, Education and Welfare rather than the Department of Agriculture. The argument for this was simple: Food stamps are welfare.

"This food stamp plan is a welfare measure and should not be mistaken for an agricultural program," said former Rep. Mark Andrews (R-N.D.), who supported the amendment.

Former Rep. Harold Cooley (D-N.C.), who opposed the amendment, nonetheless agreed that the proposed food stamp program was welfare. "I am not going to argue with anybody who says it is a welfare program, because largely it is a welfare program," said Cooley. "It is a program to feed hungry Americans, poor people."

Johnson signed the bill on Aug. 31, 1964.

By 1969, there were 2,878,000 people participating in the SNAP program, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In 2013, SNAP participants hit a peak of 47,636,000. In 2024, there were 41,703,000. That exceeded the 2024 population of California (39,431,000, according to the Census Bureau) by more than 2 million.

Nor is participation in the food stamp program evenly distributed around the country. In Speaker Johnson's Louisiana, according to USDA data, 17.4% of households participated in SNAP in 2023. In Schumer's New York, it was 16.2%.

But in Iowa only 8.7% of households participate; in Kansas, only 6.8%.

Moving people into government dependency through programs like SNAP has not been a positive trend for America.

A free and independent people who want to remain free and independent should not depend on the government for something as fundamental as the food they eat.

To find out more about Terence P. Jeffrey and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: Franki Chamaki at Unsplash