States Ask to Ban Soda From Food Stamps / Sen. Dick Durbin’s Retirement
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Republican states seek waivers from the Trump administration to exclude certain junk food from the food stamp program. As Illinois Senator Dick Durbin announces his retirement after the 2026 elections, opening a Democratic primary that could become a frenzy.

Welcome. I'm Kyle Peterson with The Wall Street Journal. We are joined today by my colleagues, columnists Alicia Finley and Kim Strassel. Arkansas and Indiana are two of the states that have now formally requested permission from the Agriculture Department to limit food stamp purchases of soda and candy under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP,

as it is sometimes called. Let's start with a clip of Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders explaining what the intent of this is. - America is facing a chronic disease epidemic. President Trump and his secretaries like Brooke Rollins and RFK Jr. are putting a laser focus on chronic illness and Arkansas is here to help.

America spends $119 billion each year on food stamps, and nearly a quarter of that spending goes towards things like soft drinks, candy, and dessert. That's not a nutrition program. It's actively harming people's health. One-third of Arkansans have diabetes or are pre-diabetic. We need to make big changes if we're going to turn those statistics around. Food stamps are a great place to start.

One study showed that just by removing sugary drinks from food stamps, we could prevent obesity in 141,000 kids and type 2 diabetes in 240,000 adults. Arkansans can still buy soft drinks and dessert if they want to. They just can't do it on the taxpayer dime.

Arkansas has led the way on common sense conservative reforms over the past two years. And thanks to President Trump and his team, we're going to fix our broken system and make America healthy again. Alicia, some reports say that sweetened beverages and candy are about 11% of food stamp spending overall. More money than is spent on fruits, vegetables, eggs, pasta, beans, and rice combined.

And I know that because I read it in your column this week, which is under the headline, Do Food Stamps Make People Fat?

Unquote. So, Alicia, how do you answer that question? And what do you make of this move by these Republican governors to change the policy and the way that their state food stamp programs are operating? Right. So I was trying to be a little provocative with that title. I don't think we can ever know for sure whether food stamps are contributing or how much they're driving the obesity epidemic unless we were to do randomized controlled trials.

which is an option if the USDA actually wanted to do that. There have been proposals in the past that they do that within states and you separate one group of people who can receive food stamps and can spend on whatever they want and another that has more restrictions.

An alternative is to grant states waivers to restrict their food stamp spending on things like soda, sweets, and potentially other things, and see whether that could actually nudge people to eat healthier.

I think the argument is that people would still be able to use their money, as the governor of Arkansas mentioned, their own money, their earned income on buying soda or candy, Starburst, whatever. But they just couldn't use the government funds to do so. And maybe if they can't do that, they might actually use some of the food stamps to buy more healthy foods.

There have been a lot of studies that have compared people to the extent that it's possible, compared people who are on food stamps, low-income people, and those who aren't. And the reason why this is possible is because there are actually time limits for able-bodied people for food stamps. And so it's kind of possible to actually compare these groups. And they have found that low-income people who are on food stamps tend to eat less healthily or end up consuming more added sugars, refined grains, and such than people who aren't on food stamps.

And so the question here that I think some of these governors want to test is whether imposing these restrictions could actually propel better eating and potentially a reduction in some of these chronic health diseases that are related to diet and obesity.

Kim, some of the arguments against this idea that you hear floating around are a bit libertarian-ish, maybe is a word for them. One would be that this is complicated. It's adding friction into a system that is supposed to be a benefit to help people who are hungry to get food. The retailers are going to have to rejigger their point of sale systems with which barcodes are allowed or

We're not allowed. It's nanny state ish is another one. Isn't it Mike Bloomberg who famously wanted to crack down on soda sizes in New York and take away people's big gulps? Another would be that it opens up the system to external lobbying because there will be fights about whether this food that is maybe

borderline is a candy or whether it's not, if it contains flour, for example, is ketchup a vegetable? Is the pizza sauce a vegetable? Kim, what's your read of this debate and responses to those arguments? Well, I think a lot of these arguments are opportune, especially as they're coming from Democrats who don't tend to usually have a lot of libertarian persuasions or worry that much about the nanny state. So just bear that in mind.

I think you can knock down a bunch of these. The argument that this is government acting as a nanny state, I dismiss for this reason that, by the way, I am utterly opposed to the federal government banning certain types of food and telling people how they must eat as a general prospect, along the lines of what

Michael Bloomberg did in New York when he was mayor there, or saying you can't buy your soft drink in a cup this large. I don't need the federal government to micromanage my menu or my eating habits. That is very different from having a rule that says that federal taxpayers are not going to subsidize what is obviously unhealthy behavior in some ways. And I love listening to the studies that Alicia was putting out there. I think all of that's fascinating.

But at the same time, I think that it's pretty clear in drinking soda and eating Kit Kats is not necessarily good eating. These are nutrition programs. And I think when people bring them to mind, especially, you know, in early days where there was food assistance, I mean, people were thinking about receiving bread and cheese and milk and

and eggs and vegetables and fruit and the things that generally do contribute to nutrition. There is no nutritional value to a Mountain Dew. I mean, it might make you feel happy. It certainly makes me feel happy at times, but that's not what we're talking about here. Another argument you hear is that somehow this is unfair, that somehow you're depriving folks, that we have a hunger problem in the United States.

We don't have a hunger problem in the United States. We do have, as Alicia was noting, a lot of very concerning behaviors, which range from hyper that get you into conditions that range from hypertension to diabetes to

And again, I think the federal government doesn't need to be in the racket of doing this. The obligation aspect to this and the lobbying, I get it. But that's one of the benefits of having a state waiver situation where states can craft some of this along different lines, see what works. Some things will work

better than others. Put me in the camp that thinks that some of these calls will be a lot easier than people are suggesting. It's pretty obvious that a Kit Kat is a Kit Kat and that a Coke is a Coke. Twinkies, not so awesome, nor ding-dongs. There's a lot of things that shouldn't really be very difficult to say, this is not really adding to nutritional value. If you have that common sense,

approach in mind, I think you could sort through this with a lot more ease than the critics are suggesting. Hang tight. We'll be right back in a moment. The spirit of innovation is deeply ingrained in America, and Google is helping Americans innovate in ways both big and small.

The Air Force Research Laboratory is partnering with Google Cloud, using AI to accelerate defense research for air, space, and cyberspace forces. This is a new era of American innovation. Find out more at g.co slash American innovation.

Welcome back. Alicia, on the point about the complications, some of those, it seems to me, are already built into the system because, as I understand it, alcohol is excluded from food stamps. There are some places in the United States where you can buy beer, for example, or wine at grocery stores, some places that you can't. But in the places where you can, that

exclusion already has to be built into the system somehow. Same with hot foods and prepared foods, which I believe are excluded from the food stamp program. You can have a separate argument about the rationale for that and whether it really makes sense to exclude the hot food bar in the grocery store from the food stamp program. Maybe that would be a trade here, get rid of the Kit Kats and allow the rotisserie chickens. But Alicia, it seems like some of these issues

are already being handled and you would just have to adjust the codes in order to make this change. And do you think that the Trump administration is likely to grant these waivers? I mean, I take the point that you were making earlier about the confounding factors in trying to determine the real effect on nutrition and obesity, given that people who are on food stamps might be less inclined

to spring for the healthier foods and more inclined. They're busier, they're working two jobs, they're trying to grab what they can, more inclined to maybe opt for some of those less healthy food options. But here, if we have laboratories of democracy and these waivers go through, then we will have a kind of a real experiment about what happens in Arkansas and Indiana. Right. And I think that's what the administration has actually been promoting and

You have RFK as well as Brooke Rollins and Mehmet Oz, the CMS director, have been going around to these states supporting these waivers. And this is actually one thing where I actually support RFK on it, as the editorial page has long supported state experimentation. And I think it would be helpful if these states actually follow up and actually measure outcomes to see what is the actual fact.

One other point is that you mentioned, well, the compliance costs. They should be fairly minimal for grocery stores. In fact, the benefits that grocery stores get from the food stamps will, increasing food stamp payments, vastly outweigh any kind of administrative burden. As you mentioned, they already have to exclude tobacco, alcohol, all kinds of toiletries that people sometimes buy at supermarkets. And so this would just be having to add more

various other things and separate out what they can and cannot spend on candy, ice cream or whatnot. So that shouldn't be unduly burdensome. One other thing that you often hear from, I don't want to say the junk food lobby, but a lot of these food manufacturers is that, well, this is going to

Trump voters. I was actually on the phone with someone with one of the industry groups, and that was an argument that he was making, is that you're denying these Trump voters, many of whom are on food stamps, the ability to buy what they want, and you're doing that same with the Republicans are now attacking Medicaid and people are on

Medicaid. And if you start going down that road, then you're not going to be able to make any kind of reforms to these programs. And that's kind of the shtick that a lot of the industry groups are making or trying to make with Republicans is that if you want to change anything about these programs, it's going to end up hurting the MAGA voters, which I think is simply not

true to the extent that you do in this case restrict these kinds of sugary foods and such and could lead to better health outcomes for these same people and i think that that's why it's broadly popular among republicans and conservatives is because people don't understand

why federal taxpayers should be subsidizing unhealthy behavior. And there is a broader movement to at least use these subsidies, at least to encourage more healthful behavior. I mean, in my ideal universe, I think we should reduce the food stamp program. I think we're spending way too much. We need to better enforce work requirements, which have been waived in a lot of states.

better enforce also eligibility requirements. And the Indiana governor, actually, Mike Braun, has proposed various ways to do that in addition to these restrictions on junk food. But I think Republicans shouldn't shy away from making reforms to these programs just because this kind of political argument that, oh, you may be hurting Trump voters. Hang tight. We'll be right back in a moment.

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Welcome back. Meantime, the big news in the U.S. Senate this week came from Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, the number two Democrat who announced that he is retiring after the 2026 elections. Here he is on MSNBC on Thursday explaining why. If you're honest about yourself and your reputation, you want to leave when you can still walk out the front door and not be carried out the back door.

And I've said, whatever your interest may be, whatever issue you want to focus on in Congress, in the Senate, if you stick around a couple terms, your minor is going to be aging. You can see it. You can observe it. And you have to make that choice, that decision. I've made mine. Kim, before we get to the primary, I mean, good for Dick Durbin for calling it a career. He is 80.

So he could have probably stuck around for another term. He's younger than some of his colleagues. On the other hand, he was elected to the House in 1982 and the Senate in 1996. So call it a career. Yeah. I mean, he spent more than 40 years in Congress.

I think that that is a decent amount of time. And I give him credit. Look, it's a good precedent. I wish we saw more of it because the typical approach, as you well know, especially among senators, is just to not leave until you are carried out on a stretcher. So I think that this is a good move.

And we could all benefit as a nation, I think not only for some more frequent turnover in the Senate, but maybe even a little bit more youthful general demographic at times. Look, he was under enormous pressure to go. He had rattled some people and annoyed some people. The left in general is on a tear to get rid of what they claim are all the oldies in their party, and they want a new generate.

I think that this is going to be a really big test, though, a bit of a bellwether and watch this space really closely as to whether or not Democrats have learned anything from the trouncing they got last fall. Part of the reason the left was pushing him to get out is because they want a primary. And among those youthful faces, that is code for we want a far more radical, liberal left wing party. And by the way,

Dick Durbin is no moderate, okay? I mean, this guy is a card-carrying member of the progressive left, and it says something that they thought he wasn't radical enough. And so they're

There are some voices in the party calling for moderation, but we'll see what comes out of the primary and the reality on the ground. That debate within the Democratic Party right now almost mirrors previous discussions we've had about the debate within the Republican Party, where everyone sort of agrees on the direction that the GOP wants to go. And it's a dispute about taxability.

There is a faction of the party that thinks it's productive to shut it all down. And notable, Dick Durbin was one of about 10 Democrats who voted recently to fund the government on a Republican funding bill instead of choosing to shut the government down and pick a fight over Elon Musk or other priorities when Democrats have pretty limited leverage. They don't control Congress and they don't control the White House.

Durbin was trying to explain that he didn't like this funding bill, but he didn't think it would be helpful to plunge our country into further chaos and turmoil, is what he said. But Alicia, for that, he was denounced by some progressive groups. There was a climate group in Illinois that held a public protest.

protest against Senator Dick Durbin. One of these climate activists said this, he said that those Democrats who voted for this bill sold out our generation and displayed an immense amount of cowardice, unquote.

And so, like Kim, I'm going to be watching this to see which way that direction inside the Democratic Party is going. There are some members, including former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who is a potential candidate in a statewide race in Illinois in coming years, who have argued that the Democratic response...

to the losses in the 2024 election should be to listen to voters, to figure out what their concerns are, to triangulate. Notable, Alicia, you're a close watcher of California Governor Gavin Newsom. He seems to be on that same page. He's got this new podcast going where he's saying things like it's deeply unfair for girls to have to compete in women's sports against biological boys. I think some of his

allies have been shocked at the turn that he has made. It does seem like there's going to be a debate within the Democratic Party which way to go in the era of Trump, too. Right, and I think you see that with the whole Ezra Klein abundance agenda and a lot of younger Democrats trying to

talk about how to make government more efficient, to ease regulations, to promote more housing development. I think they're also trying to downplay the cultural issues and cultural wars, which the progressives have been on the offensive on. But I think the savvier Democrats realized that that did not work down to the party's benefit last year.

I think the broader problem that they have, and you mentioned Governor Gavin Newsom, is their own policies. I think it's smart to the extent that they can keep the focus on Donald Trump and his tariffs and how that raises the cost of living. You look at Gavin Newsom in California and another potential contender that's been floated, J.B. Pritzker.

in Illinois, their records are awful. You look at California, the highest gasoline prices in the country. Valero just announced that it's shutting down a refinery, which comes on the heels of another Phillips 66 refinery that was announced last fall. You're seeing prices go up and it's clear that Democrats are still, at least in Sacramento, are very much beholden to the climate lobby and the progressive left. So even while Newsom

is trying to moderate his rhetoric on some of these issues and to some extent is adopting a more conciliatory attitude to Donald Trump. His actions really aren't changing. And I think the effects of the Democratic policies are going to continue to be a liability for them.

Finally, one note on programming as we get to Friday afternoon and the end of this week. Kim, your new podcast, All Things with Kim Strassel, used to be part of the Potomac Watch feed, but it has recently been moved into its own feed. So let's flag that for listeners who are looking for something to queue up this weekend and have not made their subscriptions on that feed as well. You're having real conversations with big names, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, and this past week,

You had Vice President Mike Pence on. Give us a little taste of what the former VP told you. Well, thank you. And yes, the feed part is important. If you want to sign up for that, you got to subscribe to it separately. And we're hoping you do that. It's a little bit different format than this. It's just me with a guest.

As noted, this was Vice President Mike Pence. And here's the value, a couple of things. This Mike Pence conversation was fascinating. One, while they didn't part on the bestest terms, Mike Pence did spend four years as close to Donald Trump as you could possibly be. And he brings some insights in this podcast about how Donald Trump thinks about things

I'm not going to give anything away. Just a little tease. If you listen to this podcast, he had an interesting observation about the one thing that could usually always end a conversation with Donald Trump. And you'll have to go listen to it to find out. It's kind of interesting. But also, Mike Pence has the ability, because he was there the first time around, to look at some of the things that the Trump administration is doing differently in the second term

and make some comparisons and contrasts. And, you know, he has some pretty healthy criticisms too of, for instance, tariff policy and why it's a problem. He's got his own conservative group now that he's running, and they are actively engaging in some of these policy debates. And he's also just a guy who's served his country very honorably for a number of years and has a lot of experience in D.C. I think you'd enjoy hearing that.

hearing him talk. Thank you, Kim and Alicia. Thank you all for listening. You can email us at pwpodcast at wsj.com. If you like the show, please hit that subscribe button. And we'll be back next week with another edition of Potomac Watch. The spirit of innovation is deeply ingrained in America, and Google is helping Americans innovate in ways both big and small.

The Department of Defense is working with Google to help secure America's digital defense systems, from establishing cloud-based zero-trust solutions to deploying the latest AI technology. This is a new era of American innovation. Find out more at g.co slash American innovation.