[0:00] Yes, in the midst of all of this, the 
United States Congress is seriously  
[0:06] considering a piece of legislation 
called the Hot Rotisserie Chicken Act.
[0:14] I was part of a Hot Rotisserie 
Chicken Act in college, but anyway.
[0:18] This started off a standalone bill and now 
the House has added it as an amendment to this  
[0:23] year's Farm Bill, which means it's probably 
gonna pass, and I guess I'm fine with that,  
[0:29] though I do think the whole thing is 
kinda silly. It'll help some people,  
[0:33] for sure, but it is little more than a 
publicity stunt, for reasons I will get to.
[0:40] There is a lot of important stuff we can 
learn about how government food assistance  
[0:45] works by going deep on this silly bill 
with a silly name, so let's do that.
[0:51] The biggest but not the only way we give food 
to poor people in the United States is through  
[0:57] the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance 
Program, SNAP. Some old-timers like me  
[1:03] still call it food stamps, because back 
in the day the government sent you these  
[1:08] physical paper coupons you could use to buy 
groceries. They looked like Monopoly money,  
[1:13] and they came in like 1 dollar 
or 5 or 10 dollar denominations.
[1:18] You would take those to a store 
that accepted food stamps,  
[1:21] which was a lot of them but not all 
of them, and you used it like money,  
[1:26] except it was money you could only spend 
on groceries. They gave you your change  
[1:31] back in more food stamps, or if it was less than a 
dollar in change they would give you normal coins.
[1:37] If it sounds like a hassle for everyone 
involved that's because it was. Stores  
[1:42] basically had to be ready to accept two totally 
different kinds of currency at all times,  
[1:47] and ... it was really visually obvious to 
all of the other people waiting in line  
[1:53] that you were using food stamps, 
and it usually took extra time  
[1:57] to pay with food stamps which made 
everybody behind you in line mad.
[2:02] Everything got a lot better in the early 2000s 
when we moved to a card-based system — EBT  
[2:07] cards. Electronic Benefit Transfer. You use them 
just like a credit card and the government just  
[2:13] fills is up every month for you. The typical 
monthly benefit is about $200 per person.
[2:20] Even if you are opposed to government social 
welfare benefits, you have to marvel at the  
[2:25] efficiency of the SNAP system. Just as you have 
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[3:42] Anyway, even if you are philosophically 
opposed to social welfare benefits,  
[3:47] you have to marvel at the efficiency 
of the SNAP model in the U.S.
[3:52] If you want to hand out food directly to the 
poor, you have to build a whole nationwide  
[3:59] supply chain. We already have a nationwide 
supply chain. It's called grocery stores,  
[4:05] and so it's much more efficient to just give 
poor people money to shop at grocery stores.
[4:12] But a complication arises when one considers 
that grocery stores don't just sell groceries.  
[4:20] Grocery stores sell magazines and flower 
arrangements and cigarettes and little toys  
[4:26] they dangle right at grabbing distance for 
a toddler who is riding in a shopping cart,  
[4:31] and depending on the state, some 
grocery stores sell alcohol.
[4:36] These are things that you might not want people 
to be able to buy with their food assistance,  
[4:42] for reasons that are legitimate if debatable.
[4:46] So, since the very first federal food stamp 
program, which goes back to the Depression,  
[4:53] there have been rules about what you 
can and cannot buy with your benefits.
[4:58] That very first national program in 1939 
was specifically limited to agricultural  
[5:06] surplus — that is, crops that U.S. farmers 
could not sell for some minimum price on  
[5:12] the open market. This is why SNAP is, to this 
day, administered by the U.S. Department of  
[5:19] Agriculture instead of, like, the Department 
of Health and Human Services. Food benefits  
[5:26] in the U.S. double as farm subsidies — always 
have, by design, just in many different ways.
[5:34] There's this thing that still exists called 
the USDA Commodity Foods Program that started  
[5:39] out as a way for the government to 
buy surplus products, like milk,  
[5:44] to stabilize the price for farmers. Use 
government as the buyer of last resort.  
[5:50] And the USDA would process and package 
these foods and send them out in bulk  
[5:56] as a kind of supplement for people on food 
assistance. This is where we get the phrase  
[6:01] "government cheese." Colloquially it refers 
to any and all government-provided benefits.
[6:08] But etymologically speaking, 
government cheese is literally  
[6:12] a big block of processed cheese made by the 
government to subsidize the dairy industry.
[6:18] Many years ago I made a YouTube video about 
a dessert called "Blueberry Yum Yum," which  
[6:24] is this unholy, big, bulk dessert where you 
layer whipped cream with cream cheese and  
[6:31] graham crackers and blueberry pie filling. 
The video featured my old friend Chris,  
[6:36] who is Hopi, he grew up on reservation. 
Indigenous communities are big recipients  
[6:42] of commodity food products and he told me 
that dessert was the kind of thing his mom  
[6:48] would make to use up the big commodity blocks 
and jugs of stuff they would get from the feds.
[6:56] Obesity and metabolic syndrome disproportionately 
afflict native communities in the U.S. and people  
[7:02] sometimes point to the commodity foods 
program as one causal factor. Remember,  
[7:08] it's a farm subsidy as much 
as it is a food program,  
[7:12] and sometimes it makes more sense as a farm 
subsidy than it does as a food program.
[7:18] The Food Stamp Act of 1964 said you could 
use your benefits to buy any food for human  
[7:24] consumption except alcohol and "imported foods." 
No imported foods. I suppose that was a bit of  
[7:33] protectionism for farmers, effectively an 
import tariff doubling as a food benefit.
[7:39] And since the 1970s, the law has, in one way or 
another, specified that you cannot use your food  
[7:46] stamps to buy hot, ready-to-eat food. The 
benefits are supposed to be for groceries,  
[7:54] not for eating out. Not for restaurant food. 
Why? Well, I think this is a policy that  
[8:02] probably made a bit more sense in the 20th 
century, when people cooked at home more,  
[8:08] and prepared foods were generally, relatively 
more expensive than they are now. The prepared  
[8:14] food industry is much more scaled up 
these days, driving down unit costs.
[8:20] It's still probably cheaper to cook 
at home if you know what you're doing,  
[8:25] but we live in the real world, where a lot of 
generational cooking knowledge has been lost,  
[8:31] a lot of generational cooking habits 
have been lost, and poor people are  
[8:36] often working multiple jobs outside the 
home and they don't have time to cook.
[8:42] More than half of households with children 
receiving SNAP benefits are working households.  
[8:48] Yes, some SNAP recipients are unemployed, but 
not all of them. Not by a longshot. And a lot  
[8:55] of the recipients who are unemployed 
are not working age. They're kids or  
[9:00] seniors and other people you wouldn't 
expect to be working. Disabled people.
[9:06] Of the working people on SNAP, a lot of them are 
working multiple jobs, spending hours a day on  
[9:14] the city bus because they can't afford a car, or 
they can't afford to live in a walkable community,  
[9:20] and they live in a food dessert where it's 
not profitable for supermarkets to operate  
[9:25] etc etc, and you can imagine that a person living 
that kind of very common American life might need  
[9:34] to rely on at least some cheap prepared foods 
— cheap takeout, at least some of the time.
[9:44] But it was, perhaps, a different 
world in the 1970s. And Congress  
[9:49] didn't want people using government 
food benefits for restaurant foods,  
[9:53] which were considered a little more 
inherently luxurious back then.
[10:00] Forget for a second whether you agree 
with that policy. Just ask yourself,  
[10:04] as a practical matter, where would you 
draw the line between prepared foods and  
[10:11] groceries? Are cornflakes a prepared food? 
I mean, kinda. They're ready to eat. But,  
[10:22] cereal is a grocery, right? Why? How about a 
can of soup? It's prepared, but it's a grocery.
[10:33] The common denominator is that they're not 
hot, at least when you buy them. Restaurant  
[10:41] food is usually served hot, to be consumed 
immediately, on-site, or on the street, or  
[10:46] as soon as you get home. Are there exceptions to 
this rule? Yes, absolutely, but probably the best,  
[10:54] simplest way to draw a bright, legal line between 
groceries and restaurant food is with temperature.
[11:04] And so if we look at the food stamp language from 
the 2008 farm bill, which is still in effect,  
[11:13] "Food" that can be bought with your SNAP card 
is defined as "any food or food product for  
[11:21] home consumption except alcoholic beverages, 
tobacco, hot foods or hot food products ready  
[11:31] for immediate consumption other than 
those authorized pursuant to clauses."
[11:38] What clauses are we pursuing there? A whole bunch 
of exceptions, mostly for old people, sick people,  
[11:46] and homeless people. There are carveouts that 
allow seniors to use their SNAP benefits to  
[11:53] buy hot meals from federally authorized vendors. 
Certain contractors. Companies that run federally  
[12:00] subsidized nursing homes. Again, a lot of these 
things are government subsidies to private  
[12:08] sector entities that also, incidentally, 
function as food benefits for poor people.
[12:15] And even if you aren't covered by an exemption,  
[12:18] there are all kinds of workarounds for 
this hot food ban. Convenience stores  
[12:25] in poor neighborhoods often have a microwave on 
site where you can buy a cold burrito or a cold  
[12:31] slice of pizza with your SNAP card and then you 
can just turn around and heat it up yourself.
[12:37] And then there are the chickens. 
Grocery store rotisserie chicken  
[12:43] is a very popular item in the United 
States. I think it may be the cheapest  
[12:49] widely-available source of ready-to-eat 
protein in our entire food system.
[12:54] Grocery stores often sell these birds a loss,  
[12:58] what they call a "loss leader" in business. 
They roast the birds in-house in these big,  
[13:04] easy-to-use rotisserie cases. They fill the store 
with a delicious smell that brings in customers.  
[13:12] The customer buys the chicken, which is very 
often a chicken from the fresh meat case that  
[13:18] was about to expire anyway, and so this is 
a way for the store to minimize that loss.
[13:24] The customer buys the chicken, and they're 
probably not gonna have just chicken for  
[13:30] dinner. They're gonna buy drinks and sides 
at a much better profit margin for the store,  
[13:36] and retail is just like gambling, 
in that the house always wins.
[13:43] Grocery stores that serve lots of 
SNAP recipients will often chill  
[13:47] some of their chickens down so they can 
be bought with EBT cards. And sometimes  
[13:53] they'll even have a microwave right there 
for the customer to heat it back up again.
[13:57] Sure seems like a silly, pointless hoop to 
make everybody jump through. But then again,  
[14:04] I would argue, that if you want to draw a line 
between groceries and take-out, you will end up  
[14:11] creating some kind of gray zone that people will 
inevitably exploit. That doesn't mean the rule is  
[14:18] ineffective. It just means people are gonna bend 
it a little and that's the cost of doing business.
[14:27] If you want to have speed limits, you have 
to accept that people will go 5 or 10 miles  
[14:34] over the speed limit with impunity. You just 
factor that in when setting your speed limits.
[14:40] That doesn't mean we have to accept where 
prior generations of lawmakers have drawn  
[14:45] the line between eligible and ineligible foods. 
Enter the Hot Rotisserie Chicken Act of 2026.  
[14:55] This single-page bill simply inserts the 
words "hot rotisserie chicken" into the  
[15:03] definition of eligible food products that 
we just read. That's literally all it does.
[15:10] Hot rotisserie chicken is the ONLY 
hot item that this bill covers. All  
[15:15] other hot foods are still off limits to your 
typical, able-bodied, working-age SNAP user.
[15:23] The bill is sponsored by a bipartisan 
group of ostensibly centrist legislators,  
[15:30] the most famous of whom is Senator 
John Fetterman, from my home state  
[15:34] of Pennsylvania. I've watched Pennsylvania 
politics my whole life and so Fetterman's  
[15:41] been on my radar since he was the Mayor of 
Braddock. Wow his career has taken some turns.
[15:50] We cannot know if his stroke 
changed his personality. But  
[15:55] we do know that strokes sometimes 
do change people's personalities.
[16:01] Fetterman is thus quoted in his own 
press release: "America’s best (and  
[16:07] delicious) affordability play is Costco’s 
$4.99 rotisserie chicken. [...] It’s one  
[16:13] of my family’s favorites and 
I’m proud to join this bill."
[16:19] That's a little weird, right? A U.S. Senator 
plugging a specific company's brand? But it is  
[16:28] true that the 5-dollar Costco chicken is sui 
generis. I don't think anybody is selling a  
[16:36] cheaper chicken on the national level. 
I got this one at Food City for $8.99.
[16:43] And Costco is as close to a benevolent 
big box dictator as we have in our  
[16:49] corporate community. They pay their 
people pretty well. And they stood up  
[16:55] to some corporate coercion from the 
Trump administration last year when  
[16:58] every other big company folded like 
a cheap suit. #NotAnAd for Costco.
[17:04] So why do I think the Hot Rotisserie 
Act is kinda silly? Well, for one thing,  
[17:14] it only serves a certain kind of poor person. 
A suburban and disproportionately white kind  
[17:24] of poor person. That's just where the Costcos 
are, that's whom they serve. It's generally not  
[17:32] the kind of place you can take the city bus 
to, and imagine taking all those bulk goods  
[17:38] back home on the bus. I mean, I'm sure there 
are people who do that, but it's not the norm.  
[17:44] Plus Costco is a discount club, which means 
you have to pay an annual fee to shop there.
[17:51] Once this bill passes, most of the 
other rotisserie chickens that will  
[17:56] be bought with SNAP benefits are 
probably sold at supermarkets,  
[18:01] which, again, often do not serve the inner 
cities or remote rural areas. So to me this  
[18:09] kinda seems like a bill for John Fetterman's 
kind of poor people, if you take my meaning.
[18:17] And it feels like a bit of an 
election-year stunt. I mean,  
[18:22] here I am talking about the Rotisserie 
Chicken Act because "Rotisserie Chicken  
[18:28] Act" is fun to say, and it'll 
make people click on this video.
[18:35] The less token, more meaningful version of 
this legislation would be something that  
[18:41] lets you buy almost any kind of hot food with 
your SNAP card. And such a bill exists. It's  
[18:49] called the Hot Foods Act from Democratic 
Rep. Grace Meng of New York. Her bill will  
[18:56] not become law this year. Fetterman's 
bill about the chickens probably will.
[19:04] And I think that is revealing about 
whom our current Congress serves and  
[19:11] how seriously they take their jobs, 
which is to say, not very much.
[19:16] Because while they're throwing the hot 
chicken bone to their suburban voters,  
[19:22] they are simultaneously cutting funding 
for SNAP. By a lot. And, fewer people are  
[19:31] getting SNAP benefits. According to USDA data, 
the number of people getting SNAP benefits  
[19:38] dropped by about three million, 8 percent 
of the total, over the second half of 2025.
[19:45] President Trump's agriculture secretary, 
Brooke Rollins, goes on Fox News and touts  
[19:53] this decline as an accomplishment. She 
attributes it to a crackdown on fraud.  
[20:01] She does not have evidence to support this 
claim. Or if she does, she has not presented  
[20:08] it publicly. Rollins went on Fox the other day and 
breathlessly announced that in one state alone,  
[20:17] 14-thousand SNAP recipients also own luxury cars, 
including Maseratis, Ferraris and Lamborghinis.
[20:27] Her source for this remarkable 
claim is an analysis of USDA  
[20:33] data performed by the Foundation for 
Government Accountability, an allied,  
[20:38] conservative group. If you go to this actual 
report on their website they do not show  
[20:44] their data or explain their methodology very 
much. It's certainly not at a scholarly level  
[20:51] where you can go back and trace every single 
thing they did to come to this conclusion.
[20:56] One thing about the data they're working 
with is that it is anonymized — there's  
[21:01] no names attached to any of these data 
points, and so we can't investigate what's  
[21:06] going on with any of these people, 
or even if they are real people.
[21:12] Indeed, the authors of this analysis 
explicitly acknowledge, to their credit,  
[21:17] that some of these people on SNAP benefits who 
own luxury cars may be the victims of fraud,  
[21:25] not the perpetrators. They may be identity 
theft victims. Somebody used their social  
[21:31] security number to buy a car to hide the 
asset or to launder the money or something.  
[21:37] We do not know if these SNAP recipients are the 
same people driving the fancy cars around town.
[21:45] All we know for sure is that the USDA 
has recently made it harder to get SNAP  
[21:52] benefits. They've put extra hoops into 
the process. Maybe that has weeded out  
[21:59] some fraudsters who did not really 
qualify for benefits. Or maybe this  
[22:05] has just discouraged some eligible people from 
using the benefits to which they are entitled.
[22:12] It's probably both, because that's how 
these things usually go. Someone like  
[22:18] Brooke Rollins doesn't like the 
idea of people using government  
[22:23] benefits when they don't really need 
or "deserve" them. And fair enough.
[22:31] But the problem is, the way you crack down on 
that kind of thing is with another thing that  
[22:39] someone like Brooke Rollins don't like, 
and that is red tape. More government  
[22:47] forms to fill out. More hoops. And a bigger 
bureaucracy to go over all that paperwork.
[22:56] And when you make it really complicated to apply 
for benefits, you end up creating a whole private  
[23:01] industry of shady middlemen who help people 
apply for the benefits, and that industry  
[23:07] ends up becoming at least a little predatory, and 
it effectively sucks a lot of dollars out of the  
[23:13] system that were intended to buy poor people food, 
which is what this is all supposed to be about.
[23:21] This is the central paradox of the 
"conservative" approach to social  
[23:27] welfare programs. The alternative approach is 
to loosen the restrictions. The easier you make  
[23:35] it for people to get the benefits, the easier you 
make it on the government to provide the benefits.
[23:42] You need less bureaucracy, less red tape. 
More of the people's tax dollars go directly  
[23:50] to the benefits instead of going to the 
bureaucracy that administers the benefits.  
[23:57] The flip side of that more permissive, 
more "liberal" approach is that you end  
[24:04] up giving benefits to some people 
who don't really qualify for them.
[24:11] Maybe that's the price you're willing 
to pay? The cost of doing business? At  
[24:18] least you're paying for food and not 
paperwork. Maybe that is the 5-to-10  
[24:26] miles-per-hour of speeding that you have 
to factor in when you set a speed limit.
[24:32] And maybe that is a naive, rosy 
view of the situation from me,  
[24:38] a person who is not an expert in social welfare 
policy. But I've read the work of a lot of  
[24:47] experts, and a lot of them endorse a more 
permissive approach for exactly this reason.  
[24:56] Sometimes the more efficient way to fill the 
bottle is to let a little spill over the sides.
[25:04] This is one of many arguments 
for replacing most social welfare  
[25:08] benefits with a Universal Basic Income. 
Benefits you pay to literally everyone,  
[25:17] not just those who can prove they're poor 
enough, because if you just give the money  
[25:22] to everyone, you don't have to waste 
any money deciding who gets the money.
[25:29] Again, I don't know if that math 
actually maths. I'm not an expert.  
[25:35] I'm just "teaching the controversy," 
as they say. Make good choices,  
[25:42] at the grocery store and in the 
voting booth. Talk to you next time.