The primary beneficiaries of this program are not those who get free food, but those who sell their food to the government. The program is administered by the Department of Agriculture, a New Deal agency designed to help farmers, not the Department of Health and Human Services. The food growers, then, are the ones most likely to complain as people begin to drop off the rolls. If the Agriculture Department, in combination with influential agricultural interests, succeed in keeping the largess flowing, it will be at the expense of a vulnerable population that desperately needs new answers. These agricultural lobbyists won't be entirely candid about their motives.
Private charity tends to be inversely related to growth of government welfare.
For example, the high point of American charitable giving predates the Great Society. As today's budget cuts go into effect, people will reach deeper into their pockets to help those genuinely in need. To understand these two trends requires that we think about welfare reform as more than a static sequence of economic trends. What Washington does changes people's views of how they should live. The models of the social scientists do not show it, but even poor people have free will and can exercise it wisely.