1. United States
2. N.Y.
3. Letter

The government shutdown of October-November 2025 disrupted many services that the people relied on. One of these is the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), which many low-income and disabled individuals use to obtain food. During the month of November, funding for this program mostly ceased, forcing these people to seek other sources of food, such as food banks. Many establishments, including restaurants and food banks, stepped in to assist these people, which shows that the spirit of connection is strong within the United States. As food is necessary to survive and to maintain the general welfare of a person (which is protected under the Constitution), the SNAP program should remain. There, are, of course, problems with this as it stands now. The program does not have a buffer, unlike Social Security, which does and thus was not affected during the shutdown. Furthermore, SNAP is dependent on income and work requirements, which leads to a weird situation in which an able bodied person needs to work in order to receive the benefits, yet they can't work too much, otherwise the benefits are lost. This is the situation for both me and another housemate in the home that I live in. To this end, I propose a revamping of SNAP. This revamp would enable people to work full-time and still receive the SNAP benefit, yet at the same time, allow people to forgo the benefit and put the money back into the pool of funds allocated for SNAP, which would get distributed back to everyone else. Here's how this would work: • The SNAP payments would be given to all US citizens, regardless of income level, work status or any other statuses. • Each month, each citizen would receive $125, which can be used for either a) food, or b) towards the purchase of a house. • These benefits roll over every month, meaning, if a person does not use any SNAP funds for a month, it would be available for the following month. • During tax filing, a citizen can decide to either forgo half of their benefit ($62.50) or the whole benefit ($125). Any funds that a citizen decides to forgo returns back into the pool and distributed evenly to everyone else. • As an example, if 40% of the population decides to forgo the whole benefit, then the payment amount would be $208.33 per month, per this scheme. • To prevent persons from becoming rich under this scheme, hording money to buy multiple homes, the cutoff of the forgoing would be hit if 87.5% of the population forgo the full benefit. This would equivalate to a monthly payment of $1000 for those that don't forgo. Should more than 87.5% choose to forgo, the money forgone would not return to the pool, but would be used to address other issues within the country (examples include improving infrastructure, investing in schools, investing in scientific research, etc.) • This benefit should be funded in a way so that it will be paid out, regardless if the government is shutdown or not. There are several benefits from this. Firstly, people in general would be better fed, which improves the welfare of them. Secondly, since able bodied people would be able to work full-time without fear of having their benefits cut, economic output would increase. This increase in output could then be taxed on, which increases tax revenues for the government. Thirdly, this would increase the spirit of connection and goodwill amongst the citizens, something that was exemplified during the government shutdown. Fourthly, over time, this program would allow more people to buy their own home, which would help reduce the housing crisis. Lastly, this program would help to narrow the income gap between the poorest and richest Americans. This expansion of SNAP could easily be funded from the taxes from the increased economic output. The annual cost of this, sans administration costs and other programs covered under SNAP, would be approximately $513 billion. For comparison, during FY 2024, SNAP cost $100.3 billion, of which $93.8 billion went towards paying the monthly benefits.