The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is one of the costliest welfare programs at about $70 billion a year. Not only is it costly, but a large share of the benefits are not used as intended.

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) has released new data reaffirming the scandal that is federal farm policy. The government pumps out billions of dollars a year in subsidies to farm businesses, and the giveaways mainly benefit the richest farmers.

The EWG found that, “Between 1995 and 2016, the top 10 percent received 77 percent of all ‘covered commodity’ subsidies … The top 1 percent received 26 percent of all subsidies, or $1.7 million per recipient.”

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) aims for recipients to “make healthy food choices within a limited budget.”

An important issue on the plate of the incoming president will be the next farm bill. Current farm programs run through September 2018, and farm bill supporters are already making plans to extend and expand them.

The welfare state is so vast and complex that it often works against itself. Regulations and taxes kill jobs and work incentives, but EITC subsidies are supposed to boost incentives. The government tells women to breastfeed, but the federal WIC program subsidizes baby formula.

WIC makes no sense. American pediatricians universally recommend breastfeeding, as do government health officials. Yet the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) runs a $6 billion subsidy program that induces mothers to use manufactured baby formula.

The government takes obesity so seriously that it funds a $78 billion program for people to buy any type of food they want at 250,000 retail stores nationwide. The program subsidizes 46 million people to buy items such as “soft drinks, candy, cookies, snack crackers, and ice cream

The federal government funds hundreds of subsidy programs for state, local, and private activities, such as programs for housing and economic development. State and local governments, businesses, charities, and individuals could fund such local activities by themselves without federal aid. But America is increasingly kicking local activities up to the federal government, and so Uncle Sam the Middleman keeps growing.

The federal government owns more than one quarter of the land in the nation, about 640 million acres. The holdings are concentrated in the West, where it owns about half of the 11 westernmost states.

Marvin Horne doesn’t look like a man in open rebellion against the United States government, but the 70-year-old raisin farmer and his wife Laura have had enough. If they get their way, they’re not going to let the U.S. Raisin Administrative Committee take their raisins anymore.