The SNAP Debate and the Trump Tax Cut Bill: Facing the Truth About Dependency and Dignity by Josimar Salum

 

The SNAP Debate and the Trump Tax Cut Bill: Facing the Truth About Dependency and Dignity

Josimar Salum 

July 3, 2025 

In the current debate surrounding the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill,” also known as the Trump tax cut bill, one of the most controversial features is the reduction of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, commonly known as food stamps. While some see these cuts as heartless, I believe they are long overdue and fundamentally necessary to confront a culture of dependency that is crippling American society.

Let’s be honest: America’s welfare state has moved far beyond its original purpose of protecting the truly needy — the elderly, the disabled, and children — and has become a system of permanent assistance for millions of able-bodied, working-age adults. That is not compassion. That is a form of bondage.

We are witnessing a society where too many people rely on public benefits not because they are truly incapacitated, but because it is more convenient and less risky than striving for self-sufficiency. This dependency culture has been reinforced for decades by politicians who argue that any reduction in benefits will cause “unnecessary harm,” even for those who are physically and mentally capable of working.

Yet, the reality is that harm does not come from encouraging work — it comes from chaining people to a welfare check, killing their initiative, and robbing them of dignity.

The Illegal Workforce: A Revealing Contrast

Here is a hard truth no one wants to say out loud: millions of undocumented immigrants manage to find work in this country, often in the toughest, most grueling, lowest-paying, and least-protected jobs imaginable. They pick crops, clean buildings, slaughter animals, lay roofs, and scrub floors — with no safety net, no public assistance, and often under the constant fear of deportation.

Yet they do it. They find work. They survive.

Meanwhile, millions of able-bodied American citizens on SNAP, with far more protections, far more options, and far more legal rights, do not. They stay on the program year after year, citing barriers that, while real in some cases, are not insurmountable.

Why? Because it is easier to depend on SNAP than to step out and take a risk.

If undocumented immigrants can find a job — despite language barriers, legal status issues, zero benefits, and constant fear — why can’t an able-bodied American adult do the same?

The answer is not a lack of opportunity alone. It is a lack of willingness, shaped by a system that rewards passivity and punishes initiative through benefit cliffs, endless red tape, and political rhetoric that excuses idleness as “protection.”

The Broken Welfare State

America’s welfare safety net was never meant to become a lifestyle. It was intended as a bridge, a helping hand, a stepping stone. Yet for millions of able-bodied, childless adults, it has turned into a permanent foundation, stripping them of motivation and pride.

Yes, some truly cannot work due to serious physical or mental disabilities. They deserve help. So do the elderly and young children. But the overwhelming argument used by politicians to protect SNAP in its current bloated form is ideological: they see a large welfare state as a moral obligation of government.

But a welfare state does not free people. It enslaves them. It makes them permanently dependent on government. It removes personal dignity, weakens families, and encourages generational cycles of poverty.

In contrast, work builds pride. Even hard, low-wage work, the kind undocumented immigrants do every day, fosters resilience, skills, networks, and self-worth. Work teaches responsibility, discipline, and initiative. Public assistance, when it becomes permanent, kills those virtues.

The Trump Tax Cut Bill and SNAP Reform

The Trump tax cut bill’s proposals to tighten SNAP eligibility and raise work requirements are being attacked as cruel. In truth, they are a wake-up call. They draw a clear line:

• protect those who genuinely cannot work

• push those who can work to actually do so

The bill aims to ensure able-bodied adults work 30 hours per week to keep benefits. Critics call this harmful. I call it liberating. It will challenge people to do exactly what undocumented immigrants are forced to do — take whatever work is available, even if it is tough, inconvenient, or unpleasant. That is how people rise, step by step, out of poverty.

Yes, some people will struggle with childcare or transportation. But these are not immovable obstacles. Millions of immigrants prove every day that where there is a will, there is a way. The difference is they have no backup plan — no SNAP, no fallback. That desperation becomes motivation.

Restoring Dignity Through Work

Work is dignity. Work is growth. Work is freedom.

A system that cushions able-bodied adults indefinitely from work does not protect them — it destroys them. It removes their ability to stand tall, to struggle, to achieve, to fail and try again. That is why the welfare state, as currently built, is a broken system. It does not lift people up; it chains them down.

The Trump tax cut bill’s SNAP reforms will not solve every problem, but they are a crucial start. They send a message: government will help those who cannot help themselves, but it will no longer endlessly carry those who will not help themselves.

That is not cruelty. That is justice — and a restoration of human dignity.

If America is to remain strong, it must break these chains of dependency and trust its people — all of its people — to work, to struggle, to succeed, and to stand on their own feet, as every free person should.