More Than 770,000 Children Are No Longer Receiving SNAP Benefits After Trump Changes Federal Food Program

The three members of the House Agriculture Committee who defended last year’s bill before its passage — Rose, Thompson and Johnson — did not respond to ProPublica’s questions about their statements now that many children no longer receive SNAP benefits.

Rep. Jim McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat, asked Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins about her recent comments that it was “good news” that millions of people no longer receive SNAP. If more than 700,000 children have been dropped in the 12 states that report those figures, “that number’s going to be into the millions” when other states are included, he said.

Rollins responded, “The 700,000 number of children is not correct,” contending that most people who were kicked off SNAP were “fraudulent.”

“That is not a nonpartisan group that gave you that number,” she said. (ProPublica independently verified the figures reported by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.)

McGovern said he has talked to people who have lost food assistance. “These are people who actually need and rely on this food assistance to provide basic nutrition for their families,” he said.

Pressure to lower error rates “creates a temptation for the states to bump off working families,” said Parke Wilde, a food economist at Tufts University. Working families may have more volatile incomes, making it harder for state agencies to assess benefits accurately.

“When they say we want to preserve SNAP for those with the greatest need, they’re sort of acknowledging that they want the scale of the SNAP program to be smaller,” he said.

Mariana Chilton, an expert in child hunger at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, said a smaller program won’t save money in the long run. Research shows that children who receive SNAP benefits are healthier, have better academic outcomes, use hospitals less often and have better mental health as teenagers.

She called the situation a “public health crisis” in the making. “When children are not healthy, this affects children today and it affects them throughout their lifetimes,” she said, likening hunger during early childhood to a brain injury.

As Arizona’s SNAP participation drops, nonprofits are feeling the effects. St. Mary’s Food Bank, the largest in the state, has seen a 15% increase in need this year, which translates into 300,000 more visits from people in search of food, said Milt Liu, the chief executive officer.

“It’s important for everyone to realize that policies have implications for people on the edge, and we’re seeing that in our line every day,” he said.

On a recent morning, Ana Alvarez waited in a line of vehicles at a St. Mary’s food bank in Phoenix. Alvarez, a single mother of five who works at a restaurant, started coming to St. Mary’s after she lost her SNAP benefits in September.

She reapplied for SNAP with the Arizona Department of Economic Security in December, but the application is still pending. The department did not respond to questions about its backlog.

She clips coupons and has cut out trips to the zoo and restaurants with her children. The slow season at the restaurant where she works is about to hit. And as summer temperatures rise, Alvarez wonders how she will afford her electric bill, her rent and her car payment.

At least once a week she contacts the agency about her application. The last time she called, a worker told her what others have in the past: She will have to keep waiting.

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