Recollections of the 2012 Presidential Debates and the Politics of Food Assistance

Election years remind us of the impact social science holds in political debates. Political polls are inspired by social science research. The way opinion polls select people is socially driven. And, the manner at which social science is used to support candidate’s claims reminds us of how consciously we must work to research topics that are highly politicized. Now, with the inauguration upon us, we reflect on this election year and the issues that rose from the debates of food assistance programs.

Recall the presidential debates in October 2012. Both Romney and Obama gave point and counterpoint on the state of the US economy and welfare programs. In their attempt to guide us through the debates and promote public awareness, political analysts debated the accuracy of each candidate’s declarations and the statistical references they used to support their political positions. The Huffington Post ran live blog updates during the debates to dispel any inaccuracies during the campaign (coverage of the final debate here).

In the first debate, the candidates explored poverty-related issues by discussing entitlement versus welfare. Entitlement programs structure what people have a right to access. Social security, for example, is an entitlement. As citizens, we pay into social security, so we are entitled to receive it. Medicare is an entitlement because we pay taxes to support the program. Whether you need Social Security or Medicare is not the question, citizens are entitled to those programs and will receive the benefits because they have paid into these programs. Medicaid, on the other hand, is a welfare program. No one gets Medicaid unless they need it; the same holds for food stamps.

Medicaid and Food Stamps were among the welfare programs that were reiterated throughout the debates. Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity ran an editorial after the first debate titled, “Do words matter?” and tracked the number of times candidates discussed poverty-related topics in point and counterpoint of the debates. On the topics of poverty, Medicaid was the only issue discussed by both candidates in the first debate, and Romney discussed the Food Stamp Program while reflecting on the growth of poverty in the US and perceived failures by the President. This became a major point he carried throughout all the other debates.

In the final debate, Romney politicized the food stamp program. He stated that the policies under President Obama have driven more people to need food stamps. Romney viewed the growing need for food stamps among Americans as a failure of the Obama Administration. Romney’s case was mentioned by NPR as one of “five takeaways” from the Presidential debates. On October 22, 2012, during the final debate, Romney said:

The policies of the last four years have seen incomes in America decline every year for middle income families. Now down 4,300 dollars during your term. 23 million Americans still struggling to find a good job. When you came to office 32 million people on food stamps. Today, 47 million people on food stamps. When you came to office, just over ten trillion dollars in debt; now, 16 trillion dollars in debt. It hasn’t worked. You said by now we’d be at 5.4% unemployment. We’re 9 million jobs short of that.

In his closing argument, Romney took the moment to clarify his position on food stamps:

I’ll get people back to work with 12 million new jobs. I gotta make sure we get people off of food stamps. Not by cutting the program but by getting them good jobs. America’s gonna come back and for that to happen we’re going to have to have a President who can work across the aisle.

As anthropologists, we know that words matter because they shape the way citizens understand today’s economic problems. We know that food stamps provide a safety net. We also know that people in poverty are constrained when shopping for food which can lead to poor selection of processed foods. We know that food stamp users have experienced social stigma, which is one of the rationales for using the Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) card for those who are eligible. Curtis and McClellan, in 1995, discussed the history of food assistance programs in the US and the social stigma attached to people supported by those programs in an article titled “Falling through the safety net: poverty, food assistance, and shopping constraints in an American City,” published in Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural Systems and World Economic Development. Curtis and McClellan discuss the inadequacies of the current welfare and food assistance programs in the US – many of which still persist over a decade since their publication.

Anthropologists also know that many people are disqualified from receiving food stamps even when they need it. And, we appreciate that food stamps are not a solution to our nation’s hunger or poverty solutions. Despite this understanding, we have not been successful in changing the discourses and images of food assistance in the US. Morgan and Maskovsky published “The Anthropology of Welfare Reform” in the Annual Review of Anthropology in 2003. They claimed that anthropologists have “refused to analyze welfare ‘reform’ on the narrow terms set by the policy elite. This may account for the discipline’s relatively limited influence in the domestic policy arena,” (pp. 317). Perhaps, we should reevaluate our role as researchers and activists to consider the ways the politics of food diminish the right to food and dehumanize those supported by welfare programs. Is a right to food an entitlement? Should it be considered one? If political discourses describe “failure” through the examples of families on food stamps, then are they not perpetuating the stigma associated with food assistance programs? These are all questions that require scholarly consciousness when researching the US food system, particularly as we anticipate the next four years of reform.

Please send your news and items of interest to SAFN Contributing Editors Alyson Young (agyoung@ufl.edu ) or Meredith Gartin (Meredith.Gartin@asu.edu). Visit the SAFN blog space at http://foodanthro.wordpress.com .

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