Latest news with #TracyRoof
Vox
22-07-2025
- Business
- Vox
How Trump is making America hungrier
The Congressional Budget Office estimates more than 3 million people in the United States will likely be dropped from the accessing SNAP the next few years, states will have to decide how much of the SNAP costs to absorb, which totaled over $100 billion in 2024. The CBOe predicts that some states will scale back or drop SNAP benefits altogether. Food banks throughout the country are already raising the alarm that they won't be able to meet the food demands created by cuts to the program. In addition to shifting the cost to states, the legislation will change the enrollment requirements for SNAP, such as raising the working age to 64, and requiring able-bodied parents with children over 14 to work in order to receive benefits. Some critics of the bill argue the provision prevents SNAP from serving its purpose of feeding low-income Americans. On the Today, Explained podcast, co-host Sean Rameswaram dove into the history of SNAP, the program's controversies since its inception, and how the legislative bill will prevent the program from being able to deliver on its original goals with Tracy Roof, an associate professor of political science the University of Richmond who focuses on domestic policy who is writing a book about the history of food assistance in the United States. Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There's much more in the full episode, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify. What's the history of food assistance in the United States of SNAP? Whose idea was this and why did we want to do it? In the 1950s, you got more attention to certain pockets of poverty in the United States. One of the areas that got the most attention was Appalachia with coal miners who were losing their jobs. You were starting to see more mechanization of coal mines, as well as competition from things like oil. And all of these coal miners were losing their jobs in the middle of areas that didn't have other economic opportunities. And because you had able-bodied workers in the household, a lot of these families didn't qualify for cash assistance. John F. Kennedy, when he was running for president in 1960, toured some of these areas and saw how widespread the problem of starvation was. At the same time, members of Congress made the argument that we were spending all of this money to store surplus grain, and we could not find enough places to sell that grain. So we started sending some of it abroad to starving people in other countries, but we had starving people in the United States who were not getting access to that food. And so the idea came about of trying to get some of these surplus commodities to people. When Kennedy came into office, his very first executive order was to create a pilot program. People were given coupons that looked like Monopoly money that they could take into grocery stores and use to buy any food within the grocery store. You couldn't get alcohol, you couldn't get cigarettes, but pretty much any consumable food you were able to purchase with it. Then during the mid- to late 1960s, you started to see more and more attention to the plight of tenant farmers in the South. A documentary from CBS called Hunger in America came out, and it showed starving children. When Nixon came in, there was a very famous speech where he pledged to end hunger. That ultimately led to the creation of a permanent program in 1964 that was expanded over the course of the late 1960s, and ultimately every jurisdiction was required to have it by 1974. It was set up such that the federal government would cover all the cost of the benefits, and the states would still be responsible for administering it, but a lot of the cost would be borne by the federal government. So that's the origins of the program. Epic. Yeah. This isn't the first time that people have wanted to cut or curtail or prevent certain people from accessing this program. That's been a long-established history as well. Pretty much from the beginning, there've been critics of the program. I mean, there were people in Congress that just didn't think it was necessary, or they thought that it should be treated as a welfare program and not as a nutrition or agricultural program because it was always put into the Farm Bill. But as inflation grew in the 1970s, enrollment really started to take off. And you saw people like Ronald Reagan in his run for the presidency become very critical of people becoming overly dependent on it. The argument was very similar to what we've just heard, that we needed to protect the program for the truly needy and get people that can fend for themselves off of it. Is this most recent cut to SNAP the most drastic cut we've ever seen? Yes, it's likely to be the biggest cut we've seen. But it isn't an elimination. It's saying, 'States, you gotta figure this out, your move.' Exactly. Is it going to affect Democrats, Republicans, white people, Black people, Asian people, poor people, tall people? A lot of that is gonna be up to the states. So rather than Congress coming in and saying, 'We're going to eliminate eligibility for these categories of people,' it's telling the states, 'You're going to have to bear a larger share of the benefits. And if you can't cover that, you're going to have to figure out how you reduce enrollment in the program or come up with ways to cover the additional cost.' You know, some of the bluer states are probably going to try to make up those differences and maintain assistance to people. Some of the poorer states are probably going to cut back. People will be hungry. Why let people go hungry? We're the richest country on Earth. Why do people want to cut food aid for the poor? You always have a number of people that could be getting something like SNAP, but they don't apply, either because of the stigma associated with it, or because they don't want to go through all the paperwork, or for whatever reason they don't know they're eligible. Back in the 1990s in the midst of welfare reform, the participation rate fell such that only 57 percent of eligible participants participated in SNAP. And then over the course of the George W. Bush administration, that number came up into the 70s. As they tried to make the program more accessible — and that took off during the Great Recession — what you saw was a steep increase in the percentage of people that were on SNAP. It went up to 15 percent of the population at the peak in 2013. But it remained pretty high, even as the economy started to recover. That was largely because it took a long time for the economic recovery to hit low-income workers, and partly because of the decline in stigma. And so that criticism became really loud in Congress once Republicans took control of Congress during the Obama years, and it carried over into the Trump administration. This isn't the first time that the Trump administration has tried to cut benefits. They tried to do it in the wake of the 2016 election as well, they just weren't successful. How much of a shakeup do you think this is of food aid in the United States ultimately? Most states have to have balanced budgets either because of their constitutions or because of state laws. They can't just sell more Treasury bonds the way the federal government does. That means that when we slip into a recession, states face really tough choices because they need to fund education, they need to fund Medicaid, and they need to fund all the other services that states provide. They're going to face some really tough choices about where they allocate their resources.
Yahoo
01-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
GOP lawmakers eye SNAP cuts, which would scale back benefits that help low-income people buy food at a time of high food prices
Congress may soon consider whether to cut spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the main way the government helps low-income Americans put food on the table. The Conversation U.S. asked Tracy Roof, a political scientist who has researched the history of government nutrition programs, to explain what's going on and why the effort to reduce spending on SNAP benefits, which can be used to purchase groceries, could falter. Conservative critics of SNAP believe that the U.S. spends too much on the program, which cost the federal government US$100 billion in the 2024 fiscal year. Federal spending on SNAP, however, has been falling since it peaked at $119 billion in 2022, before extra pandemic-related benefits ended. Some Republican lawmakers are calling for new changes that would cut spending on the program. No. Today, SNAP helps nearly 42 million people put food on the table, including 1 in 5 children. Americans can usually qualify for SNAP benefits if their income is under 130% of the federal poverty line. In 2025, that would be $41,795 for a family of four and they have limited savings. Some eligibility guidelines can vary by state. The rules are complex. Most adults under the age of 60 are subject to work requirements if they are 'able-bodied' and not caring for a child or incapacitated adult. If adults between the ages of 18 and 54 don't log at least 20 hours of work or another approved activity, their benefits can be cut off. Immigrants without authorization to reside in the U.S. aren't eligible for SNAP. Despite those restrictions on who can get SNAP benefits, there is no set limit to what the federal government can spend on the program. As more people become eligible due to their low incomes and therefore obtain benefits during economic downturns, this spending automatically increases. When the economy improves, it usually declines. States administer the program under federal government guidelines. The federal government covers the full cost of benefits low-income people receive through the program, but the states cover roughly half of the administrative costs. There are two main paths to program cuts. One is through the farm bill, a legislative package Congress typically renews every four or five years that sets policies for SNAP and programs that support farmers' incomes. The most recent farm bill expired in 2023. Congress has passed multiple one-year extensions on the measure because lawmakers have been unable to pass a new one. The latest extension will expire on Sept. 30, 2025. The other option is through the so-called budget reconciliation process underway in Congress. Right now, the primary Republican plan calls for extending $4.5 trillion in tax cuts passed in the first Trump administration and making up to $2 trillion in spending cuts over the next decade. The House took the first step in this process by narrowly passing a budget blueprint on Feb. 25. This plan requires the House Agriculture Committee to cut $230 billion in spending over 10 years. While it does not force the committee to cut SNAP specifically, the program accounts for $1 trillion of the $1.3 trillion spent over a decade that the committee oversees – leaving few alternatives. Most Republicans appear to favor changing how benefits are calculated and imposing stricter work requirements. Today, the value of SNAP benefits that participants in the program can get are calculated based on the 'thrifty food plan,' a blueprint for a low-cost, nutritionally adequate diet. A family of four, for example, can get benefits of up to $939 a month if they have no income. The Biden administration updated that plan in 2021 in a way that increased monthly SNAP benefits by 23%, not counting the short-term pandemic adjustments to the program. Republican lawmakers want to prevent future changes to the thrifty food plan that might again sharply increase benefits. Another proposal would roll back the 2021 change in the thrifty food plan. This would cut current benefits and save $274 billion over a decade. One hitch is that House Agriculture Committee Chair G.T. Thompson has promised no cuts to monthly SNAP benefits. Many Republicans would like to stiffen the work requirements by requiring work of recipients who are up to age 65 or are the parents of children who are more than six years old. They also could limit the ability of states to make exceptions in places that don't have enough jobs. Other options include limiting states' flexibility to offer benefits to people with incomes that are a little higher than 130% of the federal poverty level, capping the monthly benefit for larger households to the amount available to a family of six, and shifting more of the program's costs to the states. Other proposals would crack down on fraud and benefit overpayments. Those steps would be likely to achieve a tiny fraction of the spending reductions the GOP seeks. The food insecurity rate, which reflects the number of people who worry about getting enough to eat or who report skipping meals or buying less nutritious food because of costs, has been high in recent years. Polls show most Americans support increasing SNAP benefits, not cutting them. Angry constituents have recently turned out to protest potential benefit cuts to programs such as Medicaid and SNAP at town hall meetings held by members of Congress. Food prices are climbing, and there are growing concerns that a recession could be around the corner. As in earlier downturns, that would probably mean that more people would be eligible for SNAP benefits. Food banks, already struggling to meet demand and facing federal spending cuts, have warned they will not be able to fill gaps caused by reduced SNAP spending or new limits on benefits. Getting the House and the Senate to agree on a budget bill that curbs SNAP spending will be very tricky, to say the least. Republicans have a very small majority in the House and they would need almost every vote. There are seven House Republicans from areas where over 20% of all residents get SNAP benefits, making it hard for them to vote for changes that would reduce or restrict the program's scale. Other House Republicans, especially those expressing concerns about the national debt, are likely to insist that this spending be cut. It is unclear who will win this tug-of-war. There's another complication. If substantial SNAP cuts are made in the current budget process, it could make reaching a compromise on a new farm bill even harder than it's been in recent years. And while the budget can be passed without any votes from Democrats in Congress, the farm bill will require some bipartisan support. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Tracy Roof, University of Richmond Read more: Why government can't make America 'healthier' by micromanaging groceries purchased with SNAP benefits GOP lawmakers commit to big spending cuts, putting Medicaid under a spotlight – but trimming the low-income health insurance program would be hard Should government assistance cover pet food or potato chips? It depends who you ask Tracy Roof has previously received funding from Virginia Humanities and several foundations associated with presidential archives to study the history of the food stamp program.
