Sen Joni Ernst introduces McSCUSE ME Act to reel in a SNAP program providing hundreds of millions of dollars in fast-food options
By Catholics for Catholics
If you thought SNAP benefits only provide recipients with healthy food, well, you would be wrong.
According to Iowa Senator Joini Ernst, U.S. taxpayers are paying almost $250 million a year for SNAP meals that include fast food. That money is going to just nine states, most of them are blue states, she told Fox News.
Nine states, including Arizona, California, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Rhode Island and Virginia — all of which are Democrat-run states except for Virginia — are picked into a SNAP program called the Restaurant Meals Program (RMP), which has spent nearly $250 million a year on hot meals, including fast-food, Ernst’s office found.
Created in 1964, the modern day Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program was formed under the Food Stamps Act to deliver straightforward food needs such as meats and fruits and vegetables to financially susceptible Americans. Because the main goal of the program was to provide essential foods to be prepared at home, hot meals or foods ready to eat were not authorized for purchase under the program.
McSCUSE ME?
— Joni Ernst (@SenJoniErnst) November 20, 2025
The amount of SNAP being spent at fast food should be $0 not McMillions. 🍟 pic.twitter.com/041ZKf2jFb
However, a 1977 loophole permitted states to get into a program called the Restaurant Meals Program, which was created to admit homeless individuals who do not have a kitchen to purchase prepared meals using SNAP benefits, according to Ernst’s office. The admissibility for the program swelled in the following years to include disabled individuals, the elderly and their spouses, according to the office.
Nine states are admitted into the program, which obliges partaking restaurants to sign an agreement with the state that is then authorized by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which supervises the SNAP program writ large. Restaurants that participate in the program were historically a small group but have since expanded, most notably in California in the Biden era, Ernst’s office said.
“The ‘N’ in SNAP stands for nutrition not nuggets with a side of fries,” Ernst told Fox News Digital. “I wish I was McRibbing you but $250 million per year at the drive-through is no joke and a serious waste of tax dollars. I hate to be the one to say McSCUSE ME, but something needs to be done because taxpayers are not lovin’ it.”
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