A top House Republican is blasting a key part of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s MAHA crusade for raising prices.
Earlier this year, Kennedy and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins began calling on states to bar people from purchasing unhealthy foods and beverages using food stamps.
Rollins announced Wednesday that 18 states have answered the call and submitted waivers to ban purchases of soda, energy drinks, and candy with benefits provided by the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
But House Agriculture Committee Chair Glenn Thompson, a Republican, is now warning that the policy misses the mark and will push grocery prices up—a warning issued as President Donald Trump wrestles with slumping polls thanks to an affordability crisis.
“I think it’s going to drive up the cost of food because of compliance, because all these states are going to have different standards, different labeling standards,” Thompson told HuffPost.
Of the 18 states that have had their waivers for the bans approved, only two—Colorado and Hawaii—are led by Democrats.
In a Wednesday statement thanking the governors for their “unwavering commitment to Make America Healthy Again,” Kennedy said, “I call on every governor in the nation to submit a SNAP waiver to eliminate sugary drinks—taxpayer dollars should never bankroll products that fuel the chronic disease epidemic.”
But Thompson, who has long opposed the SNAP food ban, said the states were making a mistake.
“These governors, I think, are wading in in a way that I’m not sure they know what they’re getting themselves into,” the Pennsylvania congressman said. “I think the market is really responding to consumer needs. There’s far less sweeteners being used in beverages and snack foods and different things like that. So, I think they’re going to make this so complex for retailers to be able to administer.”
The food industry has argued that grocery stores would need costly system overhauls to accommodate the bans, HuffPost reported. Over 42 million Americans use SNAP benefits.
The total upfront cost is estimated at $1.6 billion, and some of those costs would be passed onto consumers in the form of higher food prices, according to a September analysis commissioned by the Food Industry Association, the National Association of Convenience Stores, and the National Grocers Association.
The waivers could also prompt stores to opt out of the program, causing a “significant” and “costly barrier” to meeting the food needs of SNAP participants, according to a report by the Food Research and Action Center, an anti-hunger advocacy group.
Americans say they’re being squeezed by rising prices, as inflation remains at a stubborn 3 percent—despite Trump’s claims to the contrary.
The Daily Beast has reached out to Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture for comment.
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