In the last two years, taxpayers spent $524 million in food stamp payments mostly for fast-food restaurants, according to data from the office of Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa.
Of that, about 90%—or $475.2 million—was spent at fast-food restaurants in California from June 2023 through May 2025, according to Ernst’s office.
Ernst, who regularly calls out government waste, is the chairwoman of the Senate DOGE Caucus, short for Department of Government Efficiency—an office within the White House that has targeted spending reductions.
The intent behind the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, was to provide meat, fruits, and vegetables to needy families. However, Ernst’s office contends that Congress created new loopholes in 1977 for “hot food,” meaning food stamps could be used to buy food at restaurants. Currently, nine states participate in the SNAP Restaurant Meals Program.
The intent was to allow homeless individuals who lack access to kitchens or food preparation facilities to purchase prepared meals using food stamps. However, over the years, eligibility was expanded to include disabled and elderly individuals, along with their spouses.
Previously, participation was limited to a small number of restaurants within select counties, according to Ernst’s office.
However, the program has ballooned mostly in California, where state officials and the Biden-controlled U.S Department of Agriculture authorized more than 5,800 restaurants to accept SNAP benefits.
In addition to California, eight other states opted into SNAP’s Restaurant Meals Program—Arizona, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Rhode Island, and Virginia.
Participating restaurants must be located in an approved state, sign an agreement with that state, and be authorized by the USDA to accept SNAP benefits.
Ernst is set to introduce a bill, McStopping Chains from Using SNAP EBT to Make Entrees Act, or the McSCUSE ME Act of 2025, in a Senate floor speech Thursday. The legislation would limit the program to homeless, elderly, and disabled participation, and limit vendor eligibility to restaurants with healthy prepared food options. It would also increase public reporting requirements.
The California Department of Social Services did not respond to an inquiry from The Daily Signal for this story, but has a link to participating restaurants on its website, which includes most national fast-food chains serving pizza, burger, and fried chicken eateries among the more than 5,000 options.
The amount of SNAP benefits spent on the restaurant program in other states is small by comparison, according to numbers from Ernst’s office over the two-year period. Though, the amount doesn’t always correlate with the size of the state.
In Arizona, $41.4 million was spent in SNAP benefits at restaurants over two years. In New York, it was $3.6 million. In Michigan, $1.3 million. Rhode Island spent $995,900, Massachusetts spent $649,000, and Illinois spent $479,000. In Virginia, the amount totaled $308,500, while in neighboring Maryland, a comparative paltry $8,699 in SNAP dollars was spent over the two years at restaurants.
Fred Lucas is chief news correspondent and manager of the Investigative Reporting Project for The Daily Signal. He is the author of “The Myth of Voter Suppression: The Left’s Assault on Clean Elections.”
Reprinted with Permission from The Daily Signal – By Fred Lucas
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.
Amazing, another story of fraud, waste and abuse and the great possibility that nothing will be done since most of the abusers are protected by their corrupt judicial system. President Trump is doing his best and there is still a lot of work ahead.
Most supermarkets have prepared food available for take-out, and many also have designated areas for in-store dining. Usually the prepared food doesn’t include chips and soda, so this might be a way to cut down on these abuses
Purge & reform SNAP
They need to remove everyone from SNAP and have them re-apply with ID and good reason. Then when we have ONLY legal folks that are indeed in need of a helping hand we would send out care packages of food to the families. You get basic staples necessary to feed your family … with healthy FOOD! I am tired of paying for these lazy, fat a$$ criminals!!
Too lazy to cook so off we go to McDonalds and the crap they serve.
Arizona, welfare bums spent $55,800 a day at restaurants, all of it on the taxpayers dime. 56 grand a day for the last two years. Does anyone see anything wrong with this picture? And I bet they dont even tip!
just another example of what happens when nobody cares,nobody stops it
and the dems create programs like this. this is waste of tax dollars,now find anybody that cares.
OK. Shame on me. I had NO IDEA this was even ALLOWED. Po’ folks such as my wife and I never stop at ‘fast food’ places anymore. The last time we did (Wendy’s, 2 years ago), the requisite burger-fries-iced tea cost us $27. Learned THAT lesson!
Not only that they spend our tax dollars eating the fast food crap, after years of this diet they end up using our tax dollars to treat the health problems that come along with this type of diet….USA can and will do better and we are on our way to making this country the best ever.
Leave it to California to be the leader in fraud. I remember the days where you couldn’t use credit cards to buy groceries because politicians said Americans shouldn’t go into debt buying essentials. Fast forward, I’m not surprised that you can now squander away tax payer provided grocery money for fast food. But what else will we be paying for under the guise of democrat magnanimous subsides, fine dining and wine tasting?
The rules for buying hot prepared foods is quite clear and concise and the establishments that ask to be qualified as accepting SNAP payment can only accept payment for the food, not the accompanying chips and soda, so even fast food restaurants have limitation, and with most using kiosk ordering and payment and fraud purchase or the wrong items falls on the smaller merchants creating the fraud purchases with their under the table ring outs. It’s just like going after sale of products to underage individuals, enforcement of the regulations in place just needs more monitoring instead of more bribery.
THIS IS ALL KINDS OF WRONG!! IF YOU’RE ON EBT/FOOD STAMPS YOU SHOULD BE BUYING HEATHY FOOD FOR YOUR FAMILY, NOT SPENDING 99% OF IT AT MCDONALD’S I HAVE A GREAT JOB GOOD PAY BUT I STILL CAN’T AFORD TO EAT FAST-FOOD!!I DO NOT WANT MY TAX MONEY SPENT ON FAST-FOOD FOR SO CALLED POOR FAMILYS, WHO SUPPOSEDLY CAN’T AFFORD GROCERIES MCDONALD’S IS NOT GROCERIES!
This SNAP thing gets more complicated as we learn more about it. And like most government welfare programs what it was created for is no longer what it provides for. And like all these temporary good will programs they continue on and on and become permanent programs that no longer resemble the original program. SNAP evolved and is now considered an entitlement by those receiving it. However, they are addressing a real problem that we’re just throwing money at which is typical. We seem to have a lot of these initially temporary “entitlement” programs, that we can no longer afford or justify as they now are. But how do you take away the Big Mc value pack from a homeless person, or the chicken dinner from the senior or disabled – we do, however, need to better define senior and disabled eligibility. And we need a little more over sight to make sure these programs do what they are suppose to do for the people who should be receiving them. And then we have health care which makes SNAP look like child’s play to fix.
UNBELIEVABLE! Yes IF Fast food is allowed, it should only be for homeless or Seniors who can’t cook for themselves – but if they can drive to a Fast Food restaurant, they should be able to fine ways to eat better!!!