As the 2025 U.S. government shutdown wore on in late 2025 over budget disagreements, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) said it would freeze payments to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) program, the country’s biggest food aid initiative, also know as food stamps. Federal judges ordered U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration to use government contingency funds to keep SNAP functioning. On Nov. 3, the Trump administration said it would partially fund SNAP but the process could take months.
Per a New York Times report, the federal government had billions of dollars at its disposal to continue funding food stamps for the 42 million low-income people who rely on them. Before the administration said it would partially fund SNAP, Vice President JD Vance insisted to news reporters that there was little the White House could do amidst the government shutdown: “The American people are already suffering, and the suffering is going to get a lot worse,” he said.
Many online claimed Vance himself benefited from food stamps as a child, and accused him of hypocrisy, while other posts claimed members of his family benefited from food assistance programs.
One post stated, “JD Vance’s family was on food assistance when he was growing up, but he doesn’t think your family deserves that safety net.” Another shared (archived) a video with the caption: “JD Vance on his way to cut the same SNAP benefits he relied on as a child.”
(Facebook user “The Lincoln Project”)
Vance himself said in speeches and in his writing that members of his family relied on various forms of government assistance, including food assistance. He did not specify the kinds of assistance and the length of time they relied on it. In his memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” he admitted to indirectly benefiting from government assistance through his grandmother. He also criticized low-income people for misusing the food stamp system.
We cannot definitively confirm whether Vance benefited from food stamps directly as a child. A member of the vice president’s staff declined to respond to our queries.
Snopes looked closely at Vance’s statements and writings over the years. During an October 2024 vice presidential debate ahead of the November elections, Vance stated that his mother and other members of his family benefited from government assistance, though he did not say whether he also received such assistance:
I was raised in a working class family. My mother required food assistance for periods of her life. My grandmother required Social Security help to raise me. And she raised me in part because my own mother struggled with addiction for a big chunk of my early life. I went to college on the GI bill after I enlisted in the Marine Corps and served in Iraq.
In Vance’s 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” he wrote critically about recipients of food assistance, while describing his own upbringing as “middle class.” In describing his grandparents’ town, he wrote, “Jackson [Kentucky] is undoubtedly full of the nicest people in the world […] Its people are hardworking, except of course for the many food stamp recipients who show little interest in honest work” (pg. 42).
He frequently described witnessing what he called “misuse” of the food stamp system, but never disclosed if he was also a recipient: “One of our neighbors was a lifetime welfare recipient, but between asking my grandmother to borrow her car or offering to trade food stamps for cash at a premium, she’d blather on about industriousness” (pg. 103).
He wrote about working as a cashier at a grocery store:
I also learned how people gamed the welfare system. They’d buy two dozen packs of soda with food stamps and then sell them at a discount for cash. They’d ring up their orders separately, buying food with food stamps, and beer, wine and cigarettes with cash. They’d regularly go through the checkout line, speaking on their cell phones. I could never understand why our lives felt like a struggle while those living off of government largesse enjoyed trinkets that I only dreamed about. (pg. 237-238)
Notably, Vance placed himself in contrast to the people “living off government largesse.”
In a September 2016 interview with CSPAN, while promoting his book, he also described how the above scenario bred “resentment” among neighbors who witnessed such misuse and against the government.
Later in the book, Vance admitted that he indirectly benefited from government support given to his grandmother: “I never went hungry, thanks at least in part to the old-age benefits that Mamaw generously shared with me” (pg. 412).
He emphasized his conservative beliefs, while acknowledging that food assistance and other government programs helped:
I am a conservative, one who doubts that the 1960s approach to welfare has made it easier for our country’s poor children to achieve their dreams. But those of us on the Right are deluding ourselves if we fail to acknowledge that it did accomplish something else: it prevented a lot of suffering, and made it possible for people like Mamaw [his grandmother] to access food and medicine when they were too poor, too old, or too sick to buy it themselves. This ain’t nothing. (pg. 437)
In sum, Vance hasn’t openly acknowledged directly receiving food assistance himself, though he says members of his family, including his mother and his grandmother (through old-age benefits), did receive government help. His office did not comment on the exact nature of the assistance, nor whether he was a recipient himself.
We have previously covered rumors around Vance’s tumultuous childhood, including the true incident in which his grandmother set his grandfather on fire, and the false claim that his memoir included a story of Vance having sex with a couch.
