As The Longest Government Shutdown Ends, The SNAP Scam Returns

In the end, it was air travel, of all things, that ended the longest government shutdown in United States history. That was the point of failure. We just shut down the federal government for 43 days, which runs a budget of around $6 trillion a year, and nothing of value broke during that period — nothing at all — until the flight cancellations and delays started ramping up within the last few days. It wasn’t until the air traffic controllers walked off the job that a single American had any good reason to complain about the shutdown.

As much as I’m loath to talk about federal government shutdowns — they are, in every case, a waste of time that benefits no one — this one actually turned out to be a pretty interesting experiment. It was a stress test that exposed some key weaknesses in the conservative movement, as well as the way the federal government works. And before the next funding bill is voted on — which will take place at the end of January, apparently — it’s worth shoring up some of these weaknesses as quickly as we possibly can.

At a minimum, we need to answer some pretty basic questions that no one ever seems to talk about. Starting with: Why exactly is air travel a core function of the federal government? Why does air travel shut down when the government does? More specifically, why are air traffic controllers paid by the federal government at all?

Since the 1940s or so, the federal government has employed air traffic controllers in this country. Taxpayers have been responsible for their salaries and benefits, and everyone’s been okay with that arrangement. But there’s no clear reason we’re doing it this way. And indeed, several countries have a very different system. For example, Canada has a nonprofit called “Nav Canada” in charge of their air traffic control system. They generate their own revenue. They’re self-sufficient. Did you realize that? Did you know that, when it comes to aviation, we actually have more government bloat than Canada? In terms of efficiency, we’re being shown up by a country that’s put the government in charge of everything — from healthcare to Facebook to euthanizing people who miss rent payments. It’s embarrassing.

One of the many benefits of a private system, when it comes to air traffic control, is that government dysfunction doesn’t strand tens of thousands of travelers and shut down the entire aviation industry. The ability of the country to travel using airplanes isn’t contingent on appropriations bills in Congress. Additionally, in a private system, government bureaucracy (in our case, the FAA) isn’t in charge of operating the same system that it’s supposed to regulate. If a private entity is in charge of air traffic control, then the private entity can focus on directing traffic and upgrading its systems, and the federal government can focus on checking its work. They can supervise. That’s the ideal arrangement.

But we don’t have a privatized system for air traffic control — even though most major airlines in the United States want one — for a very simple reason: Air traffic control, like many other government-run industries, is designed to be as inefficient as possible. It’s essentially a jobs program that saps taxpayer money while sabotaging any potential for innovation. And indeed, there hasn’t been innovation in the industry for many years.

Air traffic controllers are still using paper strips, which they shuffle around by hand, to track flights in many control towers — even though it’s obviously a less efficient and more dangerous system. And this system has persisted despite the fact that the FAA has been working on a program called “NextGen” to update air traffic control systems (including the paper strips) for more than 20 years.

Yes, over more than two decades, the FAA has supposedly been working on a $15 billion project to modernize air traffic control. And they’re currently behind schedule and over-budget. Their plan to get rid of the paper flight strips has been delayed until 2030. They’re going to scale back the number of airports they update by 45%, and costs are over-budget by 20%.

A private, self-funded corporation could fix all of these problems virtually overnight. And they could probably do it with fewer employees, too. They could update the software in the control towers, take some of the workload off the controllers, and make everyone safer. But the unions wouldn’t like that change, for obvious reasons. And apparently, no one in Washington wants to privatize air traffic control either, because as far as I can tell, no politician is even broaching the subject at the moment. Even though the government shutdown just exposed a gigantic vulnerability in the aviation industry, the possibility of reforming the air traffic control system is going totally unmentioned.

Instead, one after another, Republican politicians have been posting videos celebrating the end of the government shutdown because SNAP benefits are being restored. That’s what they’re focusing on. They’re not talking about the fact that, other than air traffic control, we don’t appear to need the federal government at all.

Instead, they’re thrilled that billions of dollars will continue to flow to the 40 million Americans on food stamps, even though 40 million Americans clearly don’t need handouts to afford food. It’s an absurdly, comically fraudulent program, and yet, to Republicans in Congress, SNAP recipients are worth mentioning in the same breath as military servicemembers and federal law enforcement officers. Watch:

Tonight, we ended the Democrat shutdown so that we can fund programs like SNAP and WIC and pay our troops, federal workers, and air traffic controllers. pic.twitter.com/RdjMihaKeF

— Congressman Rudy Yakym (@RepRudyYakym) November 13, 2025

Credit: @RepRudyYakym/X.com

Just finished voting to end the 43-day Democratic-led shutdown. Tonight’s vote gets our troops and federal workers paid, restores SNAP, and lets us get back to legislating. And even while Washington was stuck, I kept working for #CO03, securing $450,000 for new,… pic.twitter.com/ztHJRjkVwu

— Rep. Jeff Hurd (@RepJeffHurd) November 13, 2025

Credit: @RepJeffHurd/X.com

One of those things is not like the others. We can all agree that law enforcement officers and military servicemembers, and air traffic controllers should be paid. That’s because they’re actually doing something. But SNAP recipients aren’t doing anything. They’re just taking handouts they don’t need. Seventy-five percent of SNAP recipients are overweight or obese. If you break it down, according to USDA data, 44% of SNAP recipients are obese, 28% are overweight, and only 2.5% are underweight. So at a minimum, we can cut this program by 75%, and no one would be affected. We’d be eliminating a massive amount of fraud, right off the bat, if we required SNAP recipients to step on a scale before we gave them their EBT card.

But really, the scale of the fraud is much greater than that, because pretty much every SNAP recipient is taking advantage of many other welfare programs too, including WIC, which, for many Americans, duplicates what the SNAP program does. (Actually, there’s one important difference. WIC only offers a list of pre-approved items like milk and bread. SNAP, on the other hand, will happily pay for your Oreo cookies and your two liters of Coke.)

And on top of that, grocery stores and so-called “bodegas” often defraud the SNAP program in plain sight. A few years ago, The Daily Wire’s Luke Rosiak spent a week standing around in various stores, writing down what people bought with food stamps. It turns out that the “bodegas” — whose trustworthiness the SNAP program is 100% reliant on — were openly selling ski masks in August, pipes for smoking crack, and cigarettes. They’re just criminal one-stop shops. In some cases, as Fox’s Will Cain reported, cashiers will run EBT cards for $100 in food, but return $50 cash to the customer instead of groceries. And then the SNAP recipient will sell the EBT card balance to someone else. Additionally, of course, many SNAP applications are simply fraudulent and include incorrect information about income, household members, and so on.

For her part, the Agriculture Secretary just disclosed that 5,000 dead people are getting SNAP, and half a million people are getting SNAP benefits twice under the same name. And that’s just the data they’ve been able to gather from conservative states. Left-wing states aren’t turning over the data at all, because obviously, the fraud is even worse there. Watch:

🚨 BREAKING: In a jaw-dropping revelation, Sec. Brooke Rollins found 5,000 DEAD PEOPLE getting SNAP, and 500,000 PEOPLE getting SNAP “2 times under the same name.”

And that’s just what they’ve confirmed…

“This light has now been shined one of the most CORRUPT, DISFUNCTIONAL… pic.twitter.com/GfCN49yAwN

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) November 13, 2025

Credit: @EricLDaugh/FoxNews/X.com

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins: “We found one guy [collecting SNAP benefits] in 6 states… under the same number… These are the red states that turned their data over. It’s the blue states that we’re trying to get data on.”

“Can you imagine if this fraud is happening in… pic.twitter.com/iFbKI8zHO2

— RedWave Press (@RedWave_Press) November 13, 2025

Credit: @RedWave_Press/FoxNews/X.com

The Agriculture Secretary is promising some future action, which is all she can really do in her position. But that’s simply not good enough. The action that should’ve been taken, by every single Republican in Congress, was to abolish the SNAP program entirely. Don’t throw billions more dollars into the fire. Get rid of it. Keep the government shut down if you have to.

The fact that Republicans caved on this issue, by itself, makes this shutdown an abject failure for the party. Yes, Democrats didn’t get the Obamacare subsidies they wanted — at least not yet. And yes, if that holds, it’s going to save taxpayers money that would’ve gone to healthcare for illegal aliens and other loyal Democrat voters.

But there’s really no reason to think that this stopgap is going to hold. After all, Republican lawmakers have just demonstrated that they’re willing to tolerate billions of dollars in fraudulent handouts every year. Roughly 60% of these fraudulent SNAP handouts go to illegal alien households. And yet, Republicans won’t even condemn that fraud or mention it. Instead, they’ll celebrate the payment of SNAP benefits as if it’s some great win for the country because, at long last, the flight delays will end. We’re supposed to accept the proposition that your ability to fly on an airplane in this country — the world’s greatest superpower — is contingent on the ability of tens of millions of people to receive fraudulent benefits. That’s the position of the Republican Party. Give them about three months, and they’ll be rolling out healthcare subsidies for illegal aliens as well. Everyone knows it.

At this point, it’d be shocking if you could find anyone in this country who’s excited to vote for any of these Republican lawmakers in the midterms a year from now. They have refused again and again to take a principled stand on anything — from codifying the DOGE cuts in the federal government, to restricting H1-B visas, to impeaching federal judges who are flagrantly violating their oaths of office. And now, predictably, these same Republicans have decided to waste yet another opportunity with this government shutdown. Once again, nothing will change. Air travel will continue to be dependent on the federal government. Illegal aliens will get more of your tax money. And in January, when the next funding showdown is supposed to take place, we’ll probably get rolled all over again. That’s what millions of Republican voters have to look forward to. They can look forward to being taken advantage of, time and time again. The GOP majority can either address these voters directly and give them what they voted for, or they won’t be the majority for much longer.