SNAP - It's what's for dinner.

Or not...

May 17, 2025

As Congress continues in their quest to downsize the federal budget—and downsize the government right along with it—Republicans have focused their efforts on social service programs that take up a good portion of annual federal expenditures. President Trump has stated that Medicare, one of the largest federal expenditures, is “off the table”. Social Security, representing 23% of the budget, is also untouchable, and as usual there are no deliberations or discussions about how to head off the impending insolvency of the trust fund. You can read more about that here.

The vast majority of the Federal budget is mandatory “non-discretionary spending”, encompassing things like interest on the debt and social service “entitlement” programs. The three largest expenditure categories, Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid, make up 73% of that mandatory spending. We talked about the proposed cuts to Medicaid in last week’s post. Discretionary defense spending, at thirteen percent, has not only been spared, but will be increased from last year’s levels. What is left, the non-defense discretionary spending items in the budget, represents just 15% of annual expenditures and it is from this small pool of money that Congress, with an able assist from the White House and DOGE, is searching for candidates to cut.

It will come as no surprise that the constituencies with the biggest and best team of lobbyists (think, defense industry, oil drilling, etc.), will fare better in these deliberations than programs that feed children from low-income families. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is one of those at-risk programs. SNAP is a federally funded program that provides food assistance to families at or near the poverty level. For a family of four, the federal poverty level is $32,150. For a single individual, the level is $15,650. In 2025, the maximum SNAP monthly benefit for a single person is $292. For a three person household the maximum benefit is $768. Over 60% of the families who utilize the program have children and one out five children nationally benefit from the nutritional assistance of the SNAP program.

Funding for SNAP, sometimes still referred to as Food Stamps, is included in the Farm Bill which is currently winding its way through Congress. The Agriculture Committee, which is responsible for the administration of the Farm Bill and by extension, SNAP, is proposing significant cuts to the program, primarily by imposing stricter work requirements for unemployed SNAP recipients and also scaling back the inflation adjustment for benefits. According to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, the cuts being discussed would affect millions of low-income people, including one million veterans.

I sometimes find it very difficult to discuss nutrition issues like “food deserts” and “food insecure families” because we use these sanitized phrases that mask the horrible reality of the situation that we are actually talking about—families who are sending their kids to bed hungry because there is nothing to eat in the house—in the United States, the richest country on the planet, in the year 2025. This Food Bill is designed by the same Agriculture Committee which is proposing eliminating nutrition assistance for our low-income neighbors as it simultaneously sets the level of price support for agribusinesses that grow corn that we will end up burning as ethanol, or designing and enforcing a protectionist price support system for the “Sugar Lobby” and the sugar cane and the sugar beets that the US Department of Health is telling us to avoid eating. (This one issue deserves its own post.)

Importantly, these are national programs with national rules and regulations, but our north country neighbors who are SNAP beneficiaries live in distinctly different circumstances than people who live in cities, and because of that they will be disproportionally impacted by these proposed changes. It is tempting to agree with suggestions to strengthen work requirements for programs like Medicaid and SNAP which seem to make sense on the surface. Why give away money to folks who are undeserving or unwilling to fend for themselves? A closer examination of the circumstances will often contradict that assumption. The fact is that the overwhelming majority of able-bodied Medicaid and SNAP beneficiaries work, and those that do not are often dealing with issues that prevent them from doing so. Here in the north country, we are already dealing with a scarcity of good paying, year-round job opportunities. In the Adirondacks, some residents just find it really hard to get to work. Low-income residents are often burdened by the lack of a public transportation system—again because of a lack of scale. There are not enough residents in the Adirondack region to pay for an economically viable public transportation system. Unemployed residents often lack a car to get to work, or the income required to qualify for a car loan to buy one. It is a Catch-22 that urban residents do not have to deal with. They hop on a bus or a train. Often, unemployed individuals are also dealing with childcare issues or are care givers for elderly parents. Lack of childcare is a national dilemma, but the problem is particularly acute here in the Adirondack region. You will hear similar arguments about providing the federally funded free and reduced-price lunch programs at our local schools. During the pandemic the income qualification was temporarly eliminated and all students were eligible to use the benefit. Last year the original restrictions—similar to the Medicaid eligibility, families at or below 130% of the poverty line—were re-introduced. For many north country schools, the majority of the students qualify for the subsidized lunch, and thankfully New York State allows those schools to provide free lunch to all students. I have heard many people argue against doing this; they see it as a waste of taxpayer money going to “undeserving” families. They overlook two very important issues. Eliminating the income threshold eliminates the stigmatization of the students who are not paying for their lunch. The same issue holds true for participation in back-pack programs. Some students do not want to be seen carrying the backpacks of distributed food, and will forego participation out of misplaced sense of shame. Older students make their younger siblings carry the pack, which then gets left in the corridor because it is too heavy for the younger student. Importantly, for those closely monitoring taxpayer expenditures, many studies have shown that the cost of implementing a monitoring system to keep track of the income of student’s families exceeds the cost of the lunch. They may think they have the moral high ground, but there is a cost for holding that ground. Usually, no taxpayer money is saved. Similar arguments are made for stricter income and work requirements for SNAP.

One of the members of the Agriculture Committee, Representative Dusty Johnson, proposed the enhanced work requirement that is currently under consideration. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities had this to say about it:

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected that many of those who would be at risk of losing their food assistance due to the Johnson proposal would indeed be cut off SNAP, estimating that 3 to 3.5 million fewer people would participate in SNAP in a typical month.^[4] Because research consistently shows that SNAP’s work requirement does not increase employment or earnings, the vast majority of those losing SNAP due to the expansion of the work requirement — including older adults, parents, veterans, people experiencing homelessness, and young people who have aged out of foster care — would lose the assistance they need to afford groceries with no improvement in their job prospects or income.^[5] Ending SNAP eligibility for these individuals would harm not only the adults subject to the requirement, but also the people they live with, including children and people with disabilities, by reducing food benefits for the entire household.

The impact of cuts to the SNAP program will reverberate beyond the circumstances of the individual SNAP beneficiaries. The retail outlets that service this population also depend on the revenue from the program. Here in Essex County in the Adirondacks, population 36,788, we have 47 retailers who accept SNAP, and they provide food for 3,268 families—9% of the population. Just north of us is Clinton County, population 77,978, where 14.4% of the population uses SNAP to supplement their food budget at 85 participating retailers. The cuts under discussion are not a small thing that will impact a few people. Thousands of our north country neighbors depend on the SNAP program to feed their families, and that lifeline is in peril.

I am quite sure that the discussions that are taking place in Congress are not a lot different than the discussions about Social Service programs that we have with our neighbors over coffee at Stewart’s. Is this the right way to do this? Why are we doing this? Are we enabling a “culture of dependency”? Can we afford to do this? Would this money be better utilized somewhere else? I have heard it all. I can tell you that my outlook about Social Service programs like SNAP, or Medicaid, or the “backpack programs” at the local schools, have changed enormously in the last ten years, I think for the better, or are at least better informed. The catalyst that brought about that change in outlook has been my work over the last ten years with the Adirondack Foundation, the local community foundation for the north country of upstate New York.

Philanthropic organizations look at issues like this much more strategically than most people do, or most politicians seem to. I suspect that most charitably inclined individuals will look at this or similar situations and support the positive outcome that helps the most people. If it is a local program like a food bank, they volunteer if they have the time or write a check if they can afford to. Strategically, at the 10,000 foot level, you think a little differently. Why are so many people using SNAP, or using the food bank? Why are they there in the first place? Are they employed? A lot of people right now are working full time and still qualify for SNAP because they’re not paid a living wage. Do we need to re-think the minimum wage? If they are unemployed, why? Is it a job skills issue? Do we need better or different job training programs? Is it a childcare issue, or are they caring for an elderly parent? Is there a transportation problem? Are there addiction problems? Or do they just need snow tires to get around in winter. (What you do not do is cut 10% of the program budget and fire 10% of the staff and then see who sues you, who screams the loudest, and what blows up, and then go from there.)

There can be dozens of different issues and circumstances and causes for problems with any program including SNAP, or Medicaid, or the local backpack program, and I am happy to debate them all, but—we should have that debate while we are feeding the kids—because it is not their fault! Some families, too many families, need SNAP to make that happen.

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