To Be Equal: Nation’s “Most Effective Anti-Poverty Program” Decimated to Fund More Tax Cuts for Billionaires
“It’s just a given that a civilized society would want to take care of people who are struggling to put food on their table. To see that all unwound for the sole purpose of ensuring there was more money to give tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires is beyond unconscionable—it’s cruel.”
—New York Gov. Kathy Hochul
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as Food Stamp-s, has been determined to be “our nation’s most effective antipoverty program for the non-elderly.”
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, SNAP kept nearly 6.6 million people, including 3 million children, above the poverty line. A 2021 adjustment to benefits kept another 2.9 million people out of poverty.
Not only does every dollar invested in SNAP generate an estimated $1.80 in immediate economic activity, the long-term effect on young children who have access to SNAP is so dramatic that each dollar invested yields an astonishing $62 in value.
But none of that is as important to the Trump administration and its allies in Congress as tax cuts for billionaires.
The “Big Ugly Bill” passed by Congress and signed by the President last month will strip more than 22 million American families of some or all of their nutrition assistance. More than 3 million will be dropped from the program entirely in the first year.
This heartless and short-sighted transfer of resources from the most vulnerable to the very wealthiest will reverberate throughout the economy, bringing job loss and the failure of small businesses across the nation. Shifting costs from the federal government to the states could trigger tax increases or a complete termination of nutrition assistance in a state.
The effect on families of color, who are twice as likely to rely on SNAP as white families, is especially intense. More than two-thirds of the individuals that SNAP helped lift out of poverty in 2023 were people of color and nearly two in five were children.
The largest cut to SNAP in American history comes at a time when the Trump administration’s misguided economic policies are creating an even greater need for nutrition assistance. Economic growth has slowed, prices are soaring, and unemployment—particularly Black unemployment—has surged.
In times like these, initiatives like SNAP are a bulwark against recession, helping families maintain purchasing power and keeping local businesses alive. Without them, our economy is weaker and less resilient.
The assault on SNAP in the reconciliation package comes from four directions:
• Reducing the federal contribution to states’ SNAP programs, cutting federal funding for food benefits up to 25 percent, and administrative costs by half.
• Expanding SNAP’s “harsh, ineffective, and red tape-laden” work requirement.
• Ending food assistance for 120,000 to 250,000 people with a lawful immigration status, including about 50,000 children.
• Cutting food benefits for people with low incomes by permanently freezing the cost of the Thrifty Food Plan, increasing the paperwork burden, and restricting deductions.
The Trump administration has tried to prop up support for its unpopular agenda with false claims about Americans who receive SNAP benefits. The majority of able-bodied, non-elderly SNAP recipients already are working: 89% of households with children and a non-disabled adult included at least one member who worked in the 12 months before or after receiving benefits. Undocumented immigrants, the administration’s go-to scapegoats, have never been eligible to receive SNAP.
Allowing American children to go hungry so billionaires can get enormous tax breaks is immoral. It’s also bad fiscal policy. SNAP supports local businesses, stabilizes communities, and invests in the prosperity of the next generation. Preserving and strengthening SNAP is not only a humanitarian imperative, but an economic one.
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ChildWatch: Holding a Vision
A few months before the National Museum of African American History and Culture’s official opening in September 2016, Dr. Rex M. Ellis, the museum’s founding Associate Director for Curatorial Affairs, spoke to college-aged servant-leaders who were preparing to teach in Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) Freedom Schools® summer programs. The museum was the realization of a dream that had been a very long time coming, beginning more than a century earlier with Black Civil War veterans seeking a place to memorialize their contributions to our nation, and the ultimate work of constructing and completing the final vision seemed to mirror some of the stories shared inside its walls, requiring faith, determination, and persistence. Dr. Ellis described some of the joy and triumph his colleagues felt as they neared the finish line:
“When we began back in 2005, we had nothing. We had no building. We had no collections. We had no land to put a building on and very little money. We had a very small staff of about three people … Many said it could not be done. ‘How are you going to raise over $540 million and a building that you say will have over 300,000 square feet and seven stories? It’s too much,’ they said. ‘It can’t be done,’ they said. ‘It will certainly take more time to build, and what about collections? How are you going to find a world-class collection? Most of the stuff worth having museums have already collected. You’re not going to get the good stuff.” The audience began cheering as he kept speaking. “We’ve got Chuck Berry’s Cadillac, but that’s not all. We’ve got Maybelline, his guitar. But that’s not all. We got hip-hop artist Chuck D’s jacket. The original funkmaster George Clinton, we got his Mothership. We got Prince’s tambourine. We got Nat Turner’s Bible. We got Harriet Tubman’s shawl. We got Radio Raheem’s boombox from Do the Right Thing. We got a training plane flown -by Tuskegee Airmen. We got the Olympic torch that Muhammad Ali signed in the 1999 games in Atlanta, his head gear, his training robe, and on and on and on … We never stopped believing that we could do it. We could build this museum. We could make it happen. We didn’t give up, didn’t turn back, didn’t listen to those who said that we would fail, and the more people saw and experienced our belief, they caught the fever too.”
He then explained how this alone should inspire this group of young teachers: “Believe me, if we can build a museum … there’s nothing that you can’t do. There’s nothing you can’t reach. There’s nothing you can’t teach. But it begins with the vision, and it begins with a vision that maybe nobody else can see.” That vision was made real in a transformational collection that has inspired and educated over 11 million visitors and helped light the way for the next generation of Americans since the day its doors opened.
Now, just this week, the National Museum of African American History and Culture was named as one of the first eight Smithsonian museums targeted for a “comprehensive internal review” by the current administration in order to “ensure alignment” with the vision laid out in President Trump’s executive order on “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” The National Museum of American History, the National Museum of the American Indian, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the National Portrait Gallery are among the other institutions named on the initial list. Will Americans stand—or fall—for any ongoing attempts to edit, reframe, hide, or delete pieces of our shared cultural history? Or will the true stories of the vision, determination, exceptionalism, and contributions of all Americans remain firmly out in the light?
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Come back next week to read from Ben Jealous.
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