ELLY GRIMM
• Leader & Times
Cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and other similar programs have been floated as part of the Trump Administration’s “Big Beautiful Bill.”
At a virtual press conference Wednesday afternoon, Gov. Laura Kelly joined a group of fellow U.S. governors and representatives to share the negative effects of such an action.
“We’re all here for one simple reason, and that is the fact that this bill will raise grocery costs and take food away from millions of families to fund tax breaks for the wealthy,” Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar said to introduce the meeting. “This week, Republicans are trying to rush through this bill before their self-imposed deadline, and one of the things we’ve learned is while roughly 40 percent of U.S. citizens don’t know everything in the bill, they’ve greatly disliked everything they DO know about. According to the latest Fox News poll, 60 percent are opposed to this bills, and by a ratio of 2:1, U.S. citizens feel like this will hurt their families. The Congressional Budget Office has confirmed this betrayal of a bill would take food assistance away from 4 million U.S. citizens, including 1 million senior citizens, 800,000 parents with school-aged children, and 1.4 million people who live where it’s hard to find employment. The bill would also reduce food assistance for tens of millions more people. In all, this bill would affect every single one of the 42 million people who count on SNAP to help put food on the table, including – and this is probably the most important thing to remember – 16 million children, 8 million seniors, 4 million people with disabilities, and 1.2 million veterans. This bill shifts these costs back to the states in the billions of dollars range. 41 states have balanced budget rules, so they’d have to be forced to choose paying for food assistance or reducing law enforcement, education and healthcare. These cuts wouldn’t just increase states’ costs, they would make it nearly impossible to states to effectively plan for these long-term budget impacts, and there would also be impacts to the overall supermarket ecosystem.”
Gov. Kelly then spoke about some of the impacts that could be seen in Kansas.
“It’s absolutely regrettable we even need to be talking about this. If I have to explain to people how cutting SNAP would cause irreparable harm to state budgets and to people, it’s too late,” Gov. Kelly said. “Earlier this summer, Congressional Republicans passed an extreme budget, and this week, the Senate stands poised to pass the same budget and cement it into law. This deeply unpopular bill is expected to gut SNAP benefits, which would endanger our most vulnerable citizens and cause multiple detrimental effects to the economy. This bill proposes the deepest cuts to SNAP in history, slashing the program by roughly $200 billion, or 20 percent. While the Senate Parliamentarian has said this aspect of the proposed bill would violate the Byrd Rule, that has not deterred the Republican leadership from continuing to search for workarounds. We know these cuts would harm people in our states. Kansas’ SNAP helps address hunger and puts healthy food on the tables of nearly 190,000 Kansans, including 87,000 children. This legislation would force children to go hungry and increase costs for all U.S. citizens. On top of that, it would hurt grocers, especially in the rural communities. According to the National Grocers Association, SNAP supports 389,000 jobs and $20 billion in wages, including 250,000 jobs and $10 billion in wages in community grocery stores. U.S. farmers would also lose $24 billion in revenue over 10 years due to cuts from SNAP because so many people will not be able to but their products. New work and reporting requirements included in this bill would jeopardize supports for nearly 27,000 Kansans, and administrative cost shifts would be more than $15.5 million per year in Kansas alone. The reality is, there are no cost shifts to the states – the idea of states responding to massive cuts of federally appropriated dollars by backfilling them with state resources is totally bunk. We don’t have the money or resources to respond at that scale. This bill will result in cuts to critical programs used by thousands of Kansans. Cuts to making available affordable, nutritious food damages economic progress and stability and does so on the backs of hardworking U.S. citizens, all to provide tax handouts for the ultra-wealthy and exploding the national debt by trillions over the next decade.”
Delaware Gov. Matt Meyer then shared his thoughts.
“We don’t want a bill that provides benefits to billionaires while taking nutritious food off the tables of not only Delawareans but U.S. citizens everywhere,” Gov. Meyer said. “Right now, 37,000 Delawareans face a deeply uncertain future if these proposed cuts go through, and these are people we see next door and on the street every single day who will no longer have access to the sustenance they need. And as Gov. Kelly said, this will have a deep impact on our farmers and the agriculture economy. My wife is an emergency room physician, and this would also have a deep, deep impact on our nation’s healthcare system. If someone isn’t eating healthy, the chances of them doing well at work and other places are much, much lower. We simply would not be able to shoulder those extra millions of dollars over the next decade without making some major sacrifices to to important programs used by so many people on a daily basis.”
Delaware Sen. Lisa Rochester then spoke.
“This bill, which the Senate will consider this week could create sweeping devastation across the nation,” Rochester said. “I’ve met with doctors, Feeding America, AARP, unions, Moms Rising, members of the clergy, and domestic violence advocates – and that was just before this press conference. All of these groups are so concerned about the impact this legislation would have on families in this country and putting our health in jeopardy by kicking millions of people off of their healthcare. This would also place jobs in jeopardy in sectors like clean energy, among others. This issue does hit home for Delaware because 1 in 6 children and 1 in 8 adults face chronic hunger. More than 66 percent of SNAP participants in Delaware are families with children. As a member of the HELP (Health, Education, Labor and Pensions) Committee, I know it will affect the health status of families in our country, and children can’t receive the best education possible if they’re going to school hungry. Many folks who are on SNAP are already working, so cutting this incredibly essential program would drive countless families into hunger and put even more strain on food banks and grocery stores at a time when there’s already so much instability in those sectors because of cuts by this administration. This bill is ugly and cruel, and everyone will be hurt by this bill.”
Also sharing her thoughts was Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey.
“Out of our state’s 7 million citizens, roughly 1 million of them are on SNAP, so it’s a rather substantial investment,” Gov. Healey said. “And I say ‘investment’ because this is about feeding people and making sure they have enough food so they don’t go hungry so they don’t get sick or sicker and potentially end up in emergency rooms. SNAP is a program we as governors have run within our states for years, and we do that in a way that’s compliant and responsible and at the end of the day, this is about doing something good. And as has already been said, states do NOT have the resources to make up for these proposed cuts. SNAP is a program that, in my view, is a foundation for economic mobility and economic security. It reduces hunger and helps improve health, and it’s been working. There are so many vulnerable who will be greatly harmed should these cuts ultimately happen.”
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear was the final one to share his thoughts.
“If this bill passes, U.S. children and seniors especially will go hungry,” Gov. Beshear said. “They’re going to have that pain in their stomachs and throughout their bodies when they’re trying to go to bed or waking up for the day du to not having enough to eat. This, for me, is also an issue of faith – the Bible story of the loaves and the fish is the only one that gets repeated throughout every book of the Gospel. It’s meant to guide us to where, in a country that grows enough food, no one has to go hungry. And no one should go hungry. We should never look at starvation as either a punishment or a means to push people in one direction or another. U.S. farmers have already been hit by this administration over and over again, and they can’t take anymore. This bill attempts to shift enormous costs from the federal government to states that simply aren’t going to be able to afford it. We have to balance our budgets, as states, but if we add all of that extra expense, we’re going to have to make some major cuts to other programs, and that’s simply not feasible or right. It’s ironic how a bill that’s claiming to save U.S. citizens money is actually going to blow a hole of trillions of dollars in our federal debt and deficit while also blowing a hole in every state’s budget. This bill is going to cause more people to need SNAP benefits because in Kentucky alone, it has the potential to close 35 rural hospitals, which are large employers.”
