Cuts to SNAP benefits will push millions over the hunger cliff

Millions of people in the U.S. are now facing the precipice of a hunger cliff. 

Starting in 2020, the pandemic pulled back the curtain on the tattered state of the U.S. safety net and the millions of families who were falling through. Hunger rates were expected to soar like they did during the Great Recession. 

But that’s not what happened.

Thanks to a pandemic expansion of the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, millions of Americans kept food on their tables during an unprecedented public health and economic emergency. These “emergency allotments” made food easier to access and increased the number of people who were eligible. Hunger rates stayed put during the emergency — and poverty actually fell.

Unfortunately, that enhanced food assistance came to an end last Wednesday because Congress failed to make them permanent. With the double whammy of inflated food prices and other pandemic supports like the expanded Child Tax Credit, eviction moratoria and expansions in Medicaid also ending, millions of American families are now at risk of going hungry.

This is a critical moment for our nation. We must not allow struggling workers or our children, grandparents and disabled loved ones to fall back into hunger.

SNAP helps a quarter of U.S. children avoid hunger. It also helps 6 million older adults on fixed incomes, 4 million non-elderly disabled people and more than 1 million low-income veterans. The majority of people on SNAP earn an income and don’t receive cash welfare benefits.

SNAP puts food on the table for Americans of every color and in every zip code. The pandemic SNAP expansion successfully narrowed racial and ethnic inequities in food security, even though the majority of beneficiaries are white and participation is highest in rural areas and small towns. 

So how bad will things get without action?

Children, workers and vulnerable elderly folks who rely on SNAP benefits will now lose an average of $90 per month. Daily food assistance will fall from an average of $9.00 per person per day to an average of $6.10 per person per day. 

The Department of Agriculture’s recently updated Thrifty Food Plan for SNAP beneficiaries softens the blow for some families, but that program is already being targeted by conservatives in Congress. If they roll back the Biden administration’s update, benefits could plummet further to just $4.75 per day.

These lawmakers should try eating well on $6 per day — never mind on less than $5.

For older Americans, the blow will be even worse. Seniors who ordinarily qualified for only the most meager benefits before the pandemic emergency allotments now face the steepest hunger cliff: Their monthly allotment will plunge from $281 a month to just $23 per month — about 75 cents per day.

These tragic, unnecessary cuts will undermine one of our country’s most effective anti-poverty and anti-hunger programs. 

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the pandemic-expanded SNAP benefits reduced overall poverty by 10 percent and reduced child poverty by 14 percent in the last quarter of 2021. Studies show that students learn better, graduate at higher rates and have lifelong increased employment success with sufficient SNAP benefits. And health improves for all SNAP beneficiaries.

We should build on this progress, not destroy it. Congress can repair and improve the safety net so that our children, struggling parents and grandparents don’t have to choose between paying rent and eating, or getting health care and putting food on the table.

SNAP should be protected and strengthened, starting with reinstating the benefits that were cut. 

Anti-hunger advocates like the Food Research and Action Center have put forward several legislative priorities to enhance SNAP benefits and increase access. They’re calling to close existing gaps in access, allow the purchase of hot food with SNAP benefits, end the three-month in three years time limit for certain beneficiaries and expand benefits to those in need — like low-income college students, residents of U.S. territories and lawfully present immigrants. They’re also calling to end the lifetime ban that prevents formerly incarcerated people from receiving food assistance.

A healthy, adequate diet is necessary for a healthy, productive life. The U.S. is the wealthiest nation in the world — none of us should be going hungry or standing at the edge of a cliff about to fall over. It’s time we treat access to food as the human right that it is.

Karen Dolan is a poverty expert at the Institute for Policy Studies.