FRAC: President's Budget is a Major Threat to SNAP, Other Programs

The president’s fiscal year 2019 budget eviscerates one of the nation’s most successful programs, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance program (SNAP). The mind-boggling hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of cuts and the ill-conceived programmatic distortions, if adopted, will mean much more hunger and poverty, worsened health, decreased ability of children to do well in school, and lower productivity for America. The spate of recent research showing the critical importance of SNAP to economic and food security, health, employment, learning, and productivity is jettisoned by the president’s proposal to slash and burn the program.  -Jim Weill, president, Food Research & Action Center (FRAC)

The New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty recently sounded the alarm about the potential effect of President Trump's budget cuts on SNAP recipients and other low-income families and individuals in our state.

 The Food Research and Action Center offered a broader view. The national anti-hunger organization recently wrote an analysis on how the budget would impact SNAP  and other programs designed to help low-income families nationwide nationwide.  Here are a few snippets on how the president's budget would impact SNAP.

• $129.2 billion would come from shifting a portion of SNAP recipients’ benefits to the U.S. Department of Agriculture ( USDA ) commodity foods — dubbed “America’s Harvest Box” — affecting households receiving more than $90 per month in benefits (81 percent of SNAP households).
• $ 57.5 billion would come from eliminating SNAP eligibility for many working families with children and jobless adults who are willing to work, but are unable to find sufficient hours .
• $23.3 billion in SNAP cuts would make it harder for people struggling to afford to “heat and eat,” by eliminating the state option of connecting the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) and the SNAP Standard Utility Allowance (SUA) in computing SNAP benef its , and by standardizing the SUA methodology.
• $9.8 billion would come from capping the federal match of state SNAP administrative costs .
• $4.7 billion would come from eliminating SNAP Nutrition Education (SNAP-Ed),

Read FRAC Analysis for a detailed report of the full impact of  the proposed SNAP Reductions  An article in The Atlantic makes some of the same points.

Other Cuts
In addition to devastating cuts to SNAP, the budget contains reductions in many other safety-net programs.

Here is a sampling:

• Funding is eliminated for the Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP). This will harm hundreds of thousands of low-income older adults. 
• No money is allocated for the McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program. The program provides U.S. agricultural commodities and associated technical and financial assistance to carry out preschool and school nutrition programs in developing countries. 
• Funding is cut but not eliminated for important programs like the  Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), Conversely, no money is allocated for the WIC Farmers Market Nutrition Program 
•  Funding for the  Congressional Hunger Center (CHC ) fellowship program would be eliminated. The program  has historically been funded at $2 million.

Significant changes (spending cuts, elimination or new strict requirements) are also made to  other important safety-net programs, such as Medicaid, the Social Services Block Grant, LIHEAP (which provides heating and cooling assistance for low-income households), the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit, the Legal Services Corporation, among others.

Silver lining?
Funding is preserved for core child nutrition entitlement programs,The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) and the Senior Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program and is actually increased for the Nutrition Services under the Administration for Community Living (ACL).

Here is the Full Analysis from FRAC report

What will Congress do?
The president's budget proposal is not the last word, with Congress making the actual decisions. Still, this proposal sets the parameters under which the budget will be discussed. Given that the president's party controls the House (as well as the Senate), the resulting 2019 budget might not bring much good news for low-income families and individuals in our country.

In terms of Bread for the World's 2018 Offering of Letters campaign, this budget represents many steps back rather than any steps forward towards the goal of eliminating hunger in our country by the year 2030. That's why Bread is urging congregations and organizations to join in this year's letter-writing campaign to sway Congress to preserve funding for the programs that help so many of our neighbors.