Yes, in a way. My understanding is that in the US instead of giving less fortunate people the money to buy what they need they get given tokens which can only be used for specific types of items. Obviously it’d be a lot cheaper to skip that extra admin cost and give the money directly instead of maintaining an entirely separate type of currency, but you can’t trust those filthy poors to know what they need. And hygiene products are one thing they don’t need, apparently.
You’re taking it too seriously. It’s a humour comic, everything before the punchline is to set up the punchline.