During the record 2025 government shutdown, food assistance for about 42 million Americans was put on the line while other spending carried on. In Episode 014, recorded on day 36, Nicky P, Luke Tatum and Rob Brayton ask why groceries became the pressure point, how the benefit cliff keeps families from moving up, and how to build a way forward that doesn't depend on Washington.
“Government breaks your legs and then says, here’s a pair of crutches”
Luke and Rob recorded this on November 5, 2025, day 36 of what had just become the longest government shutdown in US history. Of everything the government could pause, food assistance was near the top of the list. Luke's question is why.
What We Covered
Why SNAP? Luke asks why food aid is on the chopping block instead of, say, congressional pay. Rob says it feels like manipulation: the people who rely on the system feel it first, while money to foreign countries kept flowing. Luke's version: government breaks your legs, then hands you crutches.
The standoff. Nicky describes the politics: one side wouldn't agree to keep spending flat without health care subsidies, so food aid waited. Either way, both sides are arguing about spending more. Luke says the whole thing rests on an attitude that federal spending doesn't really matter.
MMT and paying it back. Nicky says modern monetary theory might work if anyone followed the part about paying it back in good times. Luke compares it to just war theory: the criteria somehow always end up met, and there's always a reason not to pay it back yet.
“Just allow people the dignity to build their own way in the world”
Leveraging pain. Luke is clear that he isn't saying people on SNAP shouldn't be. He was broke for years himself. His objection is to using people's hunger as political leverage.
Who receives SNAP. Nicky's research puts recipients at about 42 million people, many of them children. Luke notes the elderly and people with disabilities, and that benefits are counted per person in a household, averaging about $189 per person per month. He sets aside the claim that SNAP mostly goes to people here illegally. That's a small share of the program.
The benefit cliff. Luke's bigger concern: earn more and you lose benefits, so moving up can mean taking a pay cut. Nicky adds that whoever controls your food can tell you what to do, and over time people stop seeing themselves as able to leave the program. He feels for the people caught in that position.
“Go take a hundred dollars and turn it into 200.”
Making it hurt. Luke points back to COVID, when public parks closed. Parks don't cost much to keep open. Closing them makes people miserable. Most people couldn't name every federal department, and billions could be trimmed elsewhere without anyone noticing. When Luke's family was poor, they didn't sign up for assistance. He worked more hours and got out, though he isn't telling anyone they have to do it his way.
Taxed at every step. Luke says taxing income punishes work and taxing purchases penalizes spending your own money. Even people too poor to owe income tax pay sales tax and property tax. Nicky adds that SNAP decides what you can buy, and rules like that create a secondary market where benefits get sold for cash.
Turn $100 into $200. Rob shares an idea he heard on another podcast: give someone $100 and 30 days to turn it into $200, legally. Buy a used dresser, spend $20 on paint and sandpaper, and sell it for $150. Most of us are taught to trade time for money. Nicky points listeners to his Perfect Spiral Capital article on the eight forms of capital, and Rob says the exercise gave him new ideas for his daughter's small business.
Key Takeaway
You don't control Congress or the SNAP rules, but you can build your own way forward. Luke describes the Infinite Banking Concept as an exercise in creativity: looking at your situation from a different side, changing how your cash flows, and taking responsibility instead of copying someone else's plan. In his words, become the mayor of your own life.
Key Moments
[1:00] Why SNAP?
[3:00] The Political Standoff
[6:00] MMT and Paying It Back
[9:00] Who Receives SNAP
[10:00] The Benefit Cliff
[15:00] Making It Hurt
[17:00] Taxed at Every Step
[20:00] Turn $100 Into $200
[21:00] The Eight Forms of Capital
[23:00] Creativity and Infinite Banking
“Become the mayor of your own life.”
Related Episodes
Episode 010: Does a Government Shutdown Hurt the Economy? Trump's Permanent Cuts and 23% of GDP
Episode 009: Why Are Americans Swimming in Credit Card Debt? Inflation, Spending and $1.2 Trillion
Episode 006: Trump's Tariffs Ruled Illegal: Who Really Pays for Tariffs?
Want the full conversation, including Rob's $100 challenge? Listen to the full episode and grab the free toolkit at PerfectSpiralCapital.com/podcast.
FAQ
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SNAP is funded through annual appropriations, so when funding lapsed on October 1, 2025, the money for November benefits ran short as the shutdown dragged on. In Episode 014, Luke Tatum and Rob Brayton question why food aid was among the first things on the line while other spending continued.
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About 42 million Americans receive SNAP benefits, including children, older adults and people with disabilities. Benefits are calculated per household member and average roughly $189 per person per month, according to the figures cited in the episode.
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The benefit cliff is the point where earning a little more causes you to lose a benefit worth more than the raise. For a family on SNAP, a better-paying job can leave them worse off, which makes it hard to move off the program. Luke Tatum sees it as a bigger problem with SNAP than the claims about who receives it.
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Start by building value and savings you control. Rob Brayton’s exercise is to take $100 and find a legal way to turn it into $200 in 30 days, which trains you to create value instead of only trading time for money. From there, Perfect Spiral Capital helps people build savings in properly designed whole life insurance, with contractually guaranteed cash value they can reach when they need it.
Show full transcript
Between The Lies: Episode 014 Transcript
The SNAP Apocalypse [0:00]
Nicky P: It's official. We've crossed the line into uncharted territory. Welcome to the land of the longest government shutdown in US history. More importantly, welcome to the SNAP apocalypse. Welcome to the Between The Lies Podcast, your weekly lesson on how to approach an uncertain world with positivity and balance.
I'm Nicky P here with my good friends and money brains. Luke Tatum and Rob Brayton from Perfect Spiral Capital. Stick around till the end of the video for their free toolkit and be sure to like and subscribe if you enjoy the video. Gentlemen, does the government control your groceries?
Day 36 of the Shutdown [0:00]
Luke Tatum: Currently I'm happy to report.
Thank you for asking. How about you? No, I'm kidding. Yeah, we're in, today as of recording, this is November the fifth when we are recording. This will come out a couple of days later. We're at day 36. Of the government shut down. So we've got a whole month without any federal government. Can you believe it?
I'm just so happy if only it were so right. Yeah. Isn't that, isn't that what they told us? We're not gonna get anything. You're not gonna be allowed to have any cool perks of having a federal government. But you know, I think that goes into why SNAP benefits, right? Like why, why is this the thing that we're cutting?
Why are we all worried about. Being able to feed our families instead of something like, well, maybe Congress doesn't get paid, or, you know, something like that. Right. So, is that just to, you know, put the herd on and get us to all write letters to our congressmen, you know, so that they'll pass a budget and move on?
I mean, is that what's going on here? What do you think, Rob?
Why SNAP? [1:00]
Rob Brayton: Yeah, I mean there's a lot of times this stuff feels a lot like manipulation, right. And especially when it's. Almost designed to make the end person who actually pays or contributes to the system be the ones who pay for it. So it certainly feels that way.
And I mean, there's a lot of people who, you know, do rely on some of this stuff at this point. And that's a different topic that maybe we'll get into about whether that's good or bad. Regardless, why are they the ones who have to have to pay, right? Like that? It doesn't make a lot of sense when you consider how much of government really is completely unnecessary.
I'm sure we could cut in other places. You know, we've sent, you know, billions of dollars to a few different foreign countries bailed out an economy. Maybe we didn't need to do those things right? And supposedly the government shut down. So how are we even doing those things, right? Just something to think about.
You know, anybody who's really concerned about it. Those are some of the questions that you have to ask. And are these the same people that you want solving your problems?
Breaking Your Legs, Handing You Crutches [2:00]
Luke Tatum: I mean, it's the classic, you know, government breaks your legs and then says, here's a pair of crutches, and you're supposed to go, thanks government.
Right? Like, okay, I mean, you know, maybe we shouldn't be blowing up. Military munitions at the end of the year, just so we can ask for a bit bigger military budget the next year. Like just to get rid of it and say, oh yeah, we're using all this stuff. We really need to ask for more money. Like that kind of stuff happens, you know?
And I. Or we could let people have food. You know,
The Political Standoff [3:00]
Nicky P: So I'm gonna actually frame this into what the situation actually is at the moment, the, at a political level, because I think that's interesting in and of itself right now, where we're we forced the government outta the standstill because the left is refusing to allow a.
Contingent, you know, keep spending levels the same. Move decide later for SNAP because they're trying to back the Republicans into a wall about subsidizing healthcare. Now it seems odd to me that like so. All we're talking about is subsidizing one part of the government or another. It's like, well, we, you we're not gonna give you your benefits until they tell us that we can give these other benefits to people.
It's, we're. We need to spend more at all costs is what it feels like at the end of the day. Like, look, until we can spend more over here, we're not gonna spend here.
Spending Without Limits [4:00]
Luke Tatum: And it's all like kind of backed up by this, well, you know, federal spending doesn't matter. We can put anything on the credit card.
Right. And just keep on plowing ahead. It, we've entered this like era where you have people that think or. Behave as though the government could spend 86 quintuple, you know, times the amount that we're spending right now. That that's not a real thing. 86 quintuple, I don't know what the hell I'm talking about, but, you know, 86 times the current spending level.
Right. You could just do that tomorrow, and it'd be, it's all fine. It's all fine. The money's not real. We don't have to worry about it. We're not paying the debt back anyway. Who cares? Right? Like that's the kind of attitude that we're in these days. And so it's kind of weird to like bicker and argue about the government budget once you know every now and again, like, oh, well we gotta pass a new budget.
But like, nobody cares, nobody. Acts as though any of this money has to come from somewhere, or that it matters at all, any of the rest of the time, and then all of a sudden we're supposed to get upset about, oh my gosh, the government isn't making enough money.
Rob Brayton: I mean, it's really funny too, right? Because you think about, technically there's nothing backing our currency.
They could just print as much as they want and there is no problem. Well. I mean, it's gotta, you have to have value someplace. But you know, when you really think about it, if we're printing out of nowhere, why can't they just say, oh, well there's enough money to get it done and we can keep funding. Well, I mean, obviously we're most or all of us are very much more so aligned with the Austrian school, and we tend to understand a little bit more about how some of those underlying things work, but.
When you, if you're in that sort of Keynesian mindset, why not just do it and then not worry about it and hope for the best? 'cause That seems to be the current model that's in place.
MMT and Paying It Back [6:00]
Nicky P: To me, I find it odd because it's like, we're in agreement with you. This is all fake. It's not real. But they only want people to believe that when it comes to the printing side of it, not to the paying side of it.
And that's, you know, its own sort of issue. You mentioned something there and it kind of, I don't know how much of that I wanna blame on Keynesianism versus fractional reserve system because if you were to listen to Keynes Yes. Things do actually need paid back at some point in time.
It's like, you remember the buzzword of MMT that was going around a couple years ago and I'm never giving up on this 'cause I actually. Right into what MMT was, and if you did any of the things that MMT suggested, it probably actually would work. They just never bother with the paying back part. Like the whole con that whole concept is, you know, you've got lean times in good times and you do such and such during the lean times and in the good times you put it back.
It is just those other times it's never seemed to manifest. It's, we just keep pulling and pulling even when we are doing better.
Leveraging People's Pain [7:00]
Luke Tatum: It's like any of these doctrines, I mean, that's what irritates me so much about, modern monetary theory and, and any of these things. It's like just war theory. It's like, well, you can only ever have a just war with all of these criteria met and then.
Well, isn't it convenient that all the time we're gonna find a way to make sure that all those criteria are met? Right? And so by the same token, like MMT, okay, great. We've gotta always, find a way to pay it back, except that, well, I have this list of excuses, I've got convenient excuse, A, B, C, D, why? It's not a good time for us to do that, right?
So in practice, MMT doesn't help anybody, right? It's not, it's not solving anything but. You know, I don't know this whole thing with SNAP benefits, I mean, that is definitely negatively affecting millions of people. Okay? And I don't wanna come up here and say like, well, there's people that are on there that shouldn't be on there and, and, you know, EBT cards, you know, they shouldn't be receiving any benefits at all, blah.
They're spinning it on the wrong kind of things. That's, I'm not, I'm not here to say that, right? Like, my goal doing this podcast is not to. Be told that I hate poor people. Okay. Like I, 'cause I don't, I was dead broke for years and years and we can talk about that if y'all want to, right? But, the issue is that we're leveraging the pain and the suffering of people in order to satisfy political means.
And you know what that is definitionally. If you go to dictionary.com or any website that's terrorism. Okay.
Who Receives SNAP [9:00]
Nicky P: 42 million people I think is what it said when I was looking at it. 34% of which are children under 18. That one actually surprised me a little bit is that, is that it wasn't more children represented in that demographic.
So I'm assuming that SNAP also must apply to the elderly and like that's what a lot of it is.
Luke Tatum: Yeah, dis People with disabilities. The elderly, you know, if a household is receiving SNAP, it's like, okay, you have a house with five kids, two adults, for example, right? Well, both of the adults will qualify based on their assets and their income and stuff, and then all the kids in the household.
So it's per person. That's in the household. I think it's like 180 something dollars on average nationally or something per individual person per month.
Nicky P: The average family, it makes them about 350 bucks a month
Luke Tatum: On average. Okay. My number's wrong then. Yeah. Yeah. Well,
Nicky P: It's 189 per person.
Luke Tatum: Okay, okay. Yeah.
The Benefit Cliff [10:00]
Luke Tatum: Right. So you're saying per household. Okay. I gotcha. Yeah, I gotcha. Yeah. That kind of being said, like. One of the sort of right wing, like, we don't wanna do this because it's just a bunch of, illegals receiving stuff like that. Talking point is really not backed up by much. I mean, like, maybe there's a handful of people, like there are some green card holders and stuff receiving SNAP benefits, but it's not, I mean it's like.
A very, very small percentage of a very small program. You know, to me the bigger issue is the so-called benefit cliff, right? By making any money, by finding your financial footing, by doing well. You lose these benefits and so it makes it very hard to move from SNAP benefit recipient to non-SNAP benefit recipient.
You're taking a pay cut to do that. It's not good. It's not easy to do.
Control and Dependence [11:00]
Nicky P: Well, it's an unfortunate measure of control when you control whether or not someone gets the, their money for their food. You. You can put your thumb on the scales and tell them what they need to do to ensure it's the idea like the minute, the minute you allow any government to transfer funds, you have now opened it up for that government to tell you what you can do and who you can do because you are.
You know, your livelihood depends on it. And any, it's, I'm not mad at anyone who is doing what they need to try and make ends meet, but as you said that, that financial cliff where like they make it hurt to try and find a way off, you know, not to mention they build the system so that people over time like becomes.
They stop thinking of themselves as somebody who can and doesn't have to be on these programs. Like it's infantilizing entire swaths of people. It's creating a culture that believes they need to be babied and taken care of. You know, we always say, you know, if you, if you pulled kids away from their mother at the, you know, the first day they're born.
They'd think that eventually, real quickly, you'd think that the government had to teach kids how to walk because it's just what it's setting up. I mean, it's in their incentive structure to do so. So I, more than anything, I feel bad for the people that find themselves in these positions that allows somebody else to get a choke hold and a stranglehold over, you know, their ability to thrive.
SNAP as a Share of Federal Spending [13:00]
Rob Brayton: I will say, I think it's. Disappointing when you really consider the whole scope. We're looking at like 20, 25. Just some rough figures I saw was that the spending was projected at like $7.05 trillion for the us for the government. This is 1.8% of that, 1.9% of that amount of money. And you're telling me that we can't make like pay that.
I mean that doesn't make any sense. When you consider how much waste there is with the other, you know, six point some trillion dollars, I mean, we're running a budget deficit of nearly a half a trillion dollars a month. So that's overspending per month. So you're telling me that we can't afford to just kick these people some money to get food.
And again, to your point, Luke. We're not here to argue whether they should or shouldn't get that, that's a different conversation. But when we think about how it's being used as a pawn in this game, that's where it's a bigger problem. Like people are being manipulated and it really kind of holding them hostage to your point of, you know, terrorism.
It really is that definition. It, I mean, and it's sad. 'cause we're wasting so much money everywhere else and we can't afford to feed some people. Like, it's ridiculous to me.
Nicky P: You guys are right, is that, you know, whether they should or shouldn't give. This is correct. But what should be correct across the board is that you shouldn't trust people that will use this as their political cudgel like that.
That's a sociopath. And those people need to just be wiped out the deck. You know, maybe I'm the crazy one here, but like, you know, that's where so much of my distrust in these systems comes from personally, is that the kind of people that make the decisions aren't the kind of people you wanting, making decisions about your food and your housing or any of those things.
Making It Hurt [15:00]
Luke Tatum: Every single person. Listening to this show, every single person was around for COVID, right? And when all that was going on, what did they do? They closed public parks. Okay. Why did they close public parks? It's not because public parks are the largest single place that the government has to spend money.
It's because it hurts. It makes people miserable to take things away that they might actually use, you know? Not a single person can list every government department from memory. Maybe like, maybe there's some person who committed them all to memory. I don't know, but you know my point, right? Nobody knows, right?
There's so much, so much that the government does that people don't even know is happening. You could close them down. People wouldn't have even known that they were there in the first place. Right. And we're talking hundreds of millions, hundreds of billions of dollars. They could easily be trimmed somewhere else and rearrange for this and, you know, but the thing that just makes me so mad about it's like, just allow people the dignity to build their own.
Way in the world, right? When I was poor, all I wanted was a better opportunity to make some more money to provide for my family, right? I, we didn't sign up for government assistance programs. I didn't wanna sign up for them. It wasn't fun. But we kind of committed to that. You know, I don't wanna have to qualify, I don't wanna have to fill out paperwork.
I'm gonna maintain my dignity and work harder, right? Work more hours, work harder, get out of that. And I did. You know, I'm not telling everybody that they have to be me,
Nicky P: Uhoh, Luke's putting on the bootstraps.
Taxed at Every Step [17:00]
Luke Tatum: Taxing your income is a punishment for working, right? I think we can all agree, oh, you make too much money.
Oh man. You know, can't have that taxing your purchases. Is a penalty for using your money, right? All of these different types of taxes that we have, you're pinged every step of the way. Even if you don't pay income tax, 'cause your income is so low, you are still paying sales tax. You're still, you know, if you're trying to.
Buy a house, you're trying to pay off a house, you're still paying property tax, which is rolled into your mortgage payment if you're on a mortgage. Like all of these things are still there, and all of those things prevent you from properly directing the money that you make, period. Right. You could figure out a way to lift yourself up, so to speak.
You know, bootstraps, whatever. You could figure out a way. To manage your affairs better than the government bureaucrats that will never meet you and never care about you, and never think about you for one second, can do well, I mean,
Nicky P: It's not even like, it's just giving you the cash to buy food. Like the system is set up, it tells you what you can and can't buy.
Like, it's not like it covers everything. So it's even beyond like. You being able to make your own choices. Like even that's not on the table anymore. Like you're gonna buy what they tell you can buy.
Luke Tatum: Yeah, yeah. Here's some money. But, you know, it's always a, but after they hand something to you
A Secondary Market [19:00]
Nicky P: And like, add to that, like I know that I know firsthand the kind of things that go on in that system because, you know, well I'm have no need.
For cash for food. So I'm just gonna sell my benefits to somebody else and then go use cash on something I really want anyways. So like this is gonna, there's a whole secondary market that's created by this stuff. It's,
Luke Tatum: It's very frustrating. A prohibition is a black market. It creates a black market. It always will and always has, right?
You can't do this well, what's the price to do it anyway?
Nicky P: We don't wanna belabor it. The reason we're talking about it's 'cause it's in the news, it's on our minds. You know? Let's look at some ways in which like we can, we can look positively about, you know, what's going on. Or at least, you know, a workaround.
Turn $100 Into $200 [20:00]
Rob Brayton: One of those things, I was listening to a different podcast, completely unrelated just today, and one of the things they were talking about is just the overall mindset. And so much of our society is taught right from the beginning to have this, you know, trade labor for, or trade your time for money.
And so much of it could be changed with a more of abundance style mindset of, and one of the examples that was used, and I thought it was brilliant, was, here's a hundred bucks. You have 30 days, go turn this hundred dollars into $200 in some way, shape or form. Find a way to do it. It doesn't matter what it is, so long as it's legal.
Like don't go do something nefarious. I don't advocate that for anybody, but go take a hundred dollars and turn it into 200. Maybe you go and buy a used dresser someplace and then you spend 20 bucks on paint and some sandpaper and you turn around and sell it for 150. Like, wow, you more than doubled.
Right? So those are some ways where you could think differently in these scenarios of, oh, well maybe I can go do something different. And actually create value for somebody else. We're not, nobody's teaching that, generally speaking, it's not taught in school. It's, you know, do this for somebody else. So,
Nicky P: Well, you know who is teaching it though?
Rob Brayton: Who's that?
The Eight Forms of Capital [21:00]
Nicky P: Perfect Spiral Capital definitely has a, an article, 'cause I wrote the thing specifically on value and, you know. What is, what is the name of that article? You, we recall Luke, the Eight Forms of Capital, right? Yeah. The eight forms of capital. And you know how leveraging one into the other is how you like do better in life.
It's so, yeah, you can focus on the time, but eventually you learn ways to leverage those things into different, you know, assets. And until you start focusing on looking at it from an asset's perspective, like yeah, you get stuck and bogged down in that trading time for. You know, money thing, and it's about the least efficient way to do it, but for a lot of people it is the only thing they have.
Rob Brayton: Yeah, totally. And I think what was really cool about that whole thought process is that I, it inspired me to start thinking a little differently as well. And I came up with like four or five different ideas that I could potentially use to help my family, my, like my daughter starting this little business.
And I'm like, oh, here's like four other ideas where she could generate potentially passive income with the same business. So like, these are things that, you know, are really side benefits of like what we do of beyond just helping somebody structure a system, but we can help foster those ideas and help work with people that way.
And that's the positive spin that I think is great about, you know, our show here and the things that we do is it's thinking differently and. Yeah, we can get down and bogged down in some of these areas, but regardless, there are positive things that we can do. And the only one that's gonna change your situation and that actually can really cares about your situation is you.
So you are your best investment. Go out and do something for you with the talent, the abilities that you have, and turn it into something that is maybe spectacular. I mean, that's. There's all kinds of things out there. There's lots of opportunities. You just have to go do it.
Creativity and Infinite Banking [23:00]
Luke Tatum: And creativity is just, that is the thing.
I mean, we talk about the infinite banking concept, and it's an exercise in creativity, right? It is. It is. Looking at the same Rubik's cube from another side, twisting a few things around. Oh, you know what if we configured things like this, what if I flowed my cash a little differently? What if I, what if I thought differently instead of just copy paste what some random person on the internet tells you to do, right?
What if I took the responsibility myself to like find a way through? 'cause my situation isn't the next person's situation. It's not even your situation, Nick. Rob, it's not, we're different. We live completely different lives. We live in different places, you know, and that's fine. It's just how do you manage that?
And you know, that, that, that's what makes it so fun for me to do this. Well,
Nicky P: I know one way you don't manage it, you by hiring a socialist mayor. So that's not something that I'm choosing to do. But, you know, maybe other people have different choices. Luke, why don't you, why don't you take us out and tell people how you could help them directly.
Outro and Free Toolkit [25:00]
Luke Tatum: Yeah, that's right. Become the mayor of your own life. And, thank you so much for joining us for this week's episode of Between The Lies Podcast. If you did watch this full episode, it's obvious that you're interested in Money, the World of Money. We've got a free toolkit that'll help you de demystify the future of your.
Money and it's got two free video courses as well as a free PDF copy of my Amazon bestselling book Between The Lies. We'd love to give all of that to you just for your email address, so head on over to perfectspiralcapital.com/podcast. Sign up for that today and we'll hope to talk to you again in the near future.
Thanks for watching.
