The individual states could immediately stop any possibility of food stamp riots by buying surplus crops from farmers, which benefits the farmers, then distributing the surplus to food stamp recipients.
If they really wanted to sweeten the deal, instead of using the federal cards, they could issue state cards, so no matter what happened to the federal system, food could still be distributed to the poor, uninterrupted by Washington’s petulance.
And the way to do this is through existing organizations that feed the poor. They already have the infrastructure and the personnel to distribute the food as needed.
All told, it would cost the states far less than the federal program, and though it wouldn’t provide the food diversity of using retail grocery stores, it would still forestall a sudden, huge number of hungry and dangerous people.
/johnny
Crops? EBT'ers don't eat Crops...:)
That’s kinda what they used to do in the 60s. Schools got some of the commodities too. They had the best cheese there was available. Much better than you could get in the grocery.