Right now, Congress is considering massive cuts to nutrition programs, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and school meals, as part of its budget plans. However, as families across America struggle to afford enough food to feed their kids, cuts to these programs are shortsighted - threatening a spike in hunger and poverty while also hurting local businesses and small farmers.
Meredith Jorss, Associate Director of Advocacy for Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry campaign moderated a panel of experts about the impact on kids and their families if these cuts are enacted. The panel included:
- Carolyn Vega, Associate Director of Policy, Share Our Strength’s Center for Best Practices
- Nichole Taylor, Food Service Supervisor, Great Valley School District & Policy Chair, School Nutrition Association
- Lydia Rivera, a mother, community advocate and small business owner who participates in SNAP and has a daughter who receives free school meals
You can also access the video recording here.
Here are three takeaways from the event:
1. SNAP is a powerful tool to fight hunger, feeding families and our economy
SNAP delivers grocery benefits to 42 million Americans, including 17 million kids. SNAP is vital for ensuring that children grow up healthy, educated and equipped with the resources they need to break the cycle of poverty. Vega explained how SNAP is uniquely positioned to help families, especially if they’re facing difficult economic times.
“SNAP is a powerful anti-poverty tool helping people to afford the food they need while also freeing up money in their budget for rent, medical care and other necessities.”
SNAP benefits are already modest, averaging about $6 per person per day. As food costs rise, families will need more support, not less. Rivera receives SNAP benefits for her family. She says the additional resources are a blessing for her family.
“Having the available support of SNAP helps me, it lightens the load, and we need more support like that.”
These same benefits help build up communities and the economy by going back into local businesses and supporting the farmers and producers who grow our food.
2. School meals are a vital resource for families and help kids learn and grow
School meals programs help feed kids by ensuring they receive a nutritious breakfast and lunch each school day. A nutritious meal is often the most important school supply. Taylor has seen firsthand how these meals help kids.
“We're starting our students off on the right note. For many students, school meals are one of the healthiest meals our students receive throughout the day.”
Rivera’s daughter currently receives school meals at no cost which means it’s one less thing she needs to worry about.
“Making sure she eats a good, sound breakfast and lunch is very helpful for me. It alleviates some of the added, everyday stress that I’m going through.”
One effective way to ensure all students can receive meals at no cost is through the Community Eligibility Provision, or CEP, which allows schools to join if a certain percentage of their student population are already eligible for free school meals.
“You know that when your child walks into that building, they're going to get at minimum a breakfast and a lunch,” said Taylor.
3. Cutting nutrition programs will hurt millions of kids, businesses, and farmers
“It would just be devastating to my local community, to my neighbors, my friends, my family if these budget cuts were actually implemented,” said Rivera. “It would be traumatic here.”
Congress has been eyeing changes to SNAP that would cut benefit amounts or limit future updates - making it ever harder for already modest grocery benefits to keep up with the rising cost of food. With benefits already incredibly modest at $6 per day - cuts would make it even harder to afford enough food.
“Any cuts to benefits or changes that limit access to SNAP will make it harder for families to afford groceries,” said Vega. “Especially now with high food prices, leading to more hunger and hardship.”
“Personally, I stopped buying eggs at 7, 8 dollars a carton, right now,” said Rivera. “Just because, I'm trying to make my SNAP benefits stretch longer.”
Other potential cuts include shifting funding to states, adding additional work reporting requirements, and creating new administrative hurdles for applicants. All of these would have the same result: making it harder for eligible families to participate in SNAP.
“The level of cuts is far beyond what we've ever seen in the past,” said Vega. “This could really, fundamentally change the structure of the program and how well SNAP responds to economic hardship.”
Cutting school meal programs by limiting options like CEP, which allow school nutrition teams to provide meals in the way that works best for their community, could impact more than 12 million students across 24,000 schools. In addition, new application verification requirements would put an undue burden on schools to process even more paperwork when they should be focused on educating and preparing healthy meals for kids. Taylor says that schools should be able to focus on feeding and teaching kids, not increasing complexity for families.
“That's going to be a lot more on us, but then it's also going to limit those students who have access to those meals,” said Taylor. “Our job at the end of the day is just to provide healthy, nutritious meals to our families and that's what we love to do.”
These cuts will also have a ripple effect on other programs, like Summer EBT. Many students are automatically eligible because they participate in these other programs. So, when students lose access to SNAP or school meals, it can create an even larger impact when they’re shut out of additional assistance programs.
Vega explained, “It's not just cuts to SNAP being hard on their own. It's not just cuts to CEP or changes to school meals being hard on their own. They add up together to further limit access and make it harder for families to feed their kids.”
These nutrition programs work together to help feed kids and support families. But with these potential cuts, millions of kids could lose access to the very resources that help them thrive. It’s critical that Congress avoids introducing new cuts to benefits or new restrictions to further limit access because without programs like SNAP and school meals, more Americans will be facing hunger and hardship.
