Amendment exposes Kansas lawmakers’ hypocrisy on RFK Jr. - inspired candy ban | Opinion
What if Kansas legislators spending their taxpayer-funded allowances had to follow the same rules they want to impose on welfare recipients?
That delightfully subversive proposal was put forth in a legislative committee this past week.
It didn’t pass (nobody ever thought it would), but the point was made, and I have a new legislative hero, Rep. Jarrod Ousley, a Democrat from Merriam.
The discussion of what lawmakers should be allowed to eat and drink when dining on the taxpayers’ dime refreshingly exposed Kansas’ welfare-reform efforts, which can pretty much always be summed up in two sentences: If you’re poor, it’s your own fault. Don’t expect any sympathy from us.
The latest punish-the-poor bill is House Bill 2015, which would ban recipients of SNAP — the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps — from spending any of their relief money on sweetened drinks or candy.
It doesn’t save taxpayers a dime. It’s more just an exercise in kicking people when they’re down.
These sorts of legislative actions follow a formula: The pitch comes from an out-of-state salesman with a briefcase, backed up by some randomly outraged Kansan.
Who plays those roles doesn’t matter a whole lot, because they’re as interchangeable and predictable as the characters in a Hallmark Channel Christmas movie — although not nearly as nice or as likable.
The hearing on HB 2015 in the House Welfare Reform Committee featured some guy from a Florida political bill mill, who graciously dropped by our flyover state to inform us we have a problem with our poor people consuming too much sugar, and maybe not being as miserable as they ought to be.
Florida Man came armed with Department of Agriculture statistics on what SNAP recipients eat, which he proceeded to grossly misrepresent — and then tied it in with President Donald Trump’s nomination of anti-vaccination conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the nation’s chief health official.
“He (Kennedy) has been very clear about Make America Healthy Again and this a part of that,” said Florida Man. (By the way, if you believe in the whole MAHA thing, I want to sell you a timeshare in Florida).
As regular readers know, I’m a big fan of irony. So I can’t help but point out that the Republicans dictating healthy food choices for the poor are the same ones who screamed like scalded cats when Michelle Obama cut sugar and fat in school lunches 15 years ago.
Anyway, Florida Man was followed by Outraged Kansas Man, who said we’d be shocked at the things poor people are allowed to eat.
“They say alcohol is banned (from SNAP) but you can go buy alcohol in the form of vanilla extract at the grocery store,” he warned.
Vanilla extract does contain alcohol (it’s made by soaking vanilla beans in ethanol), but it tastes awful and costs almost $5 per ounce, so I think we can safely set aside that concern for the time being.
Against this backdrop of absurdity, Jarrod Ousley’s attempted amendment was brilliance.
It would have prohibited lawmakers from spending their legislative per diem payments on anything SNAP recipients are not allowed to buy with their benefits, including beer, wine and spirits, tobacco, prepared foods and, once HB 2015 passes, sweetened drinks and candy.
Oh, SNAP!
The average Kansas representative gets a salary of $43,000 a year, which is pretty good money for four months of seasonal work that mostly involves sitting in a padded chair.
But on top of that, lawmakers get an expense allowance of $178 per day when they’re in Topeka.
To put that in perspective, the average Kansas SNAP household gets just over $300 a month — less than two days worth of legislator per diem — according to the USDA.
Ousley argued that if legislators feel compelled to tell poor people what they can and can’t eat because they’re spending taxpayer dollars, it’s even more important that lawmakers doing the same thing hold themselves to the same accountability standard.
“The intent of this bill (HB 2015) is to promote healthy dietary habits, if I understood the hearing correctly,” Ousley said. “And I understood there was a federal movement coming, Make America Healthy Again, MAHA if I heard the conferee correctly . . . I can’t think of anybody that should be more clearheaded and healthy minded than leaders who are here making decisions.”
The amendment was voted down and HB 2015 advanced out of committee to the House floor.
But, “I think it pointed out some hypocrisy,” Ousley said afterward. And “I’m calling out poor-shaming where I see it.”
At most, the Ousley amendment would have been symbolic. There’s really no way to track how lawmakers spend their expense money and the reality is that they’d seldom have to spend it on food anyway.
The entire legislative schedule is structured around the free lunch for members, which is paid for and delivered to the Capitol on a daily basis by a variety of special interests. And practically every night there are lobbyist receptions where the food is free and the booze is freer.
Ousley said he toyed with the idea of proposing SNAP food restrictions on lobbying when he wrote his amendment.
Would that it could happen.
If you ever saw the Topeka lobbying trough in full swing, you’d be laughing as hard as I am at the thought of our lawmakers showing up at a reception and finding out they’re getting a kale salad and a glass of carrot juice.
MAHA!
This story was originally published February 13, 2025 at 5:10 AM.
