45,000 Minnesotans are at risk of losing SNAP benefits

Yahoo

5 days ago

A 'SNAP welcomed here' sign is seen at the entrance to a Big Lots store in Portland, Oregon. (Getty Images)
Roughly 45,000 Minnesotans would be at risk of losing all of their federal food assistance, and tens of thousands more could lose some of that assistance under cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) approved by Republicans in the U.S. House. The bill still needs to pass the Senate and win the signature of President Donald Trump to become law.
All told, 11 million people nationwide would be at risk of losing some food aid under the $230 billion in cuts approved by House Republicans, according to a recent estimate by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank. That money would be used instead to partially fund tax cuts that mostly benefit the rich.
'One of the harshest cuts would take food assistance away from people — including, for the first time ever, parents with children over the age of 6 and adults aged 55 to 64 — who don't meet a red-tape-laden and ineffective work requirement,' the CBPP writes.
Studies have consistently shown that those work requirements do not actually boost employment.
Minnesota has relatively low SNAP participation compared to other states, so the cuts won't bite as sharply here as they would elsewhere. They'd be distributed more or less evenly across the state's eight congressional districts, with between 4,000 and 6,000 people in each district at risk of losing benefits completely.
Districts in more impoverished regions of the country, like Appalachia, the deep South, and parts of the Southwest, would see tens of thousands of adult residents at risk of a total loss of benefits.
The severity of the final cuts will depend in part on whether affected states can fill gaps with state funding. Even a relatively small funding gap in Minnesota could wreak havoc on the state's budget, which lawmakers are currently working to finalize.
Roughly 440,000 Minnesotans currently rely on SNAP, according to data from the Department of Children, Youth and Families, including 50,000 children under the age of 6.
'Food insecurity is directly linked to higher rates of chronic conditions,' the agency warns. 'Without SNAP, more vulnerable Minnesotans will go without consistent access to food, increasing the strain on an already stretched health system.'
A 2022 study by researchers at the Department of Human Services found that for every additional month a recipient received SNAP benefits, their annual health care costs decreased by roughly $99.