24-03-2025
Plan to axe SNAP would harm poorest Americans so richest ones could live more luxuriously
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Think the decades-old food stamps program deserves to be in the callous, capricious cross hairs of Elon Musk, President Donald Trump and the latter's spineless sycophants in Congress? Then you don't know someone like Ndaneh Luseni.
The 34-year-old Alexandria woman, a single mother with three children, depends on the nourishment that food stamps provide. Luseni receives only $83 a month in benefits from what's formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Yet, that money allows her to help make ends meet on a regular basis. SNAP pays for essentials like eggs, milk, bread and juice in her household.
'It provides just some sort of assistance, where I can sleep and I know the kids will have something in the house … some stability,' Luseni, a clinical technician at a Northern Virginia hospital, told me this week. She brings home $600, after taxes, every two weeks from her job.
Congressional Republicans are hellbent on gutting the program that dates to the New Deal and similar safety nets for the poor, in part to extend tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest Americans. As if the latter even needs them.
It's plutocratic porn at its worst.
Trump and his wealthy allies want to yank benefits from low-income workers, disabled Americans and children so they can treat themselves to a sixth car, a third house or yet another international excursion. The prevailing plan treats SNAP recipients as a nuisance, forcing them to fend for food while rich Americans get fatter – literally and figuratively.
'There are so many people struggling to survive nowadays that it seems incredibly cruel to cut these benefits,' said Jay Speer, executive director of the Virginia Poverty Law Center.
State Sen. Mamie Locke, D-Hampton, told me many people on SNAP are children or disabled individuals.
'It is critically important that it be maintained as a program as it's currently funded, so that families can get sustenance,' Locke said, adding she didn't understand 'why that's a hard sell.'
More than 866,000 people in the commonwealth received SNAP funding in February, according to the Virginia Department of Social Services. That's nearly 10% of the state's population.
The U.S. House of Representatives recently voted to lower spending by certain committees in the chamber. That budget framework included at least $230 billion less from the Agriculture Committee through 2034; that panel oversees programs including SNAP. The Senate ordered a narrower budget resolution to cut at least $1 billion, but a second budget resolution could dictate much deeper cuts.
The exact policies and cuts themselves aren't clear. Various news articles, though, say you can't reach $230 billion without major hits to SNAP. In fiscal year 2023, SNAP served an average of 42.1 million participants per month nationwide, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That was 12.6% of the total U.S. population.
The potential evisceration has shaken many SNAP users and advocates for low-income people. They can't fathom why such a radical change makes sense or is even moral.
'SNAP is really important,' said Cassie Edner, public benefits attorney at the Virginia Poverty Law Center. Families need the boost so their children 'grow up healthy. Seniors with health conditions need quality food to stay healthy.'
'Without this, they have to choose between paying rent or mortgage and putting food on the table.'
Other considerations are at play, too. Retailers who accept SNAP payments – roughly 6,400 in Virginia – would lose money, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan research and policy institute.
SNAP disbursements also boost neighborhoods, the center said: 'In a weak economy, each $1 in additional spending on SNAP benefits generates $1.54 in economic activity when households use their benefits to shop at local stores in their communities.'
Nor is SNAP a magnet for illegal spending, one of the purported reasons Musk and his misguided Department of Government Efficiency project operates. 'Cases of intentional fraud by participants or SNAP authorized retailers are relatively rare,' the center said.
One result of the potential SNAP cuts would be to force states, nonprofits and food banks to shoulder more of the slack. That would be a monumental, costly task they couldn't begin to handle.
'States pay half of the cost of administering SNAP, but the federal government funds 100% of benefit costs, which make up the vast majority of program costs,' the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said. 'Virtually all states must balance their budgets each year, so shifting even a small portion of SNAP benefit costs' to states would require raising revenue or cutting funding for other programs or services.
The discussion is very personal to Locke, since her family depended on food stamps when she was growing up in Jackson, Mississippi. She was one of 11 children raised by a single mother, some of the time in public housing. Even though her mother worked, it was often minimum wage jobs.
'She had to depend on this supplemental support through food stamps and free and reduced lunch,' Locke recalled – with all the social stigma that using paper money at the store entailed in those days.
Barry Muhammad, a 69-year-old retiree in Hampton, gets roughly $160 a month in SNAP benefits. They pay for bacon, bread, oatmeal and other essentials, freeing up money for expenses that include electricity, gas and rent.
The Army veteran says the people in Washington wielding an axe to vital programs don't face what typical Americans confront.
'They never had to experience what people like me in my condition had to go through,' Muhammad surmised. 'They're rich, wealthy people.'
That's a huge part of the disconnect – and the condescension.
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