Every month, more than 1.8 million low-income New Yorkers — the majority of whom are children, older adults, and people with disabilities — rely on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, formerly known as food stamps, to put food on their table.
While grocery prices have risen sharply over recent years and expanded pandemic-era benefits have expired, food stamps have not evolved with the times, and many impacted households still struggle to afford a healthy diet, even with assistance. In New York City, families receive, at most, a bit more than $8 per person per day in SNAP benefits, hardly enough to afford a healthy diet in a high-cost area.
But despite its limitations, food stamps remain the nation’s largest and most effective tool for alleviating hunger and combating poverty. For more than 40 million Americans, it is a lifeline that helps them make ends meet. But this critical resource is under threat right now.
In Congress, lawmakers are preparing to negotiate a new Farm Bill, the federal legislation governing SNAP, and lawmakers have introduced and advanced harmful, partisan Farm Bill language that would result in a $30 billion cut to food stamps over the next 10 years.
The measure would restrict the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) ability to properly update benefit levels based on the real cost of a healthy diet, severely compromising a lifeline that feeds tens of millions of Americans every day. These efforts must be stopped.
The 2018 bipartisan Farm Bill directed the USDA to conduct a common-sense adjustment every five years, and removed the requirement that adjustments must be cost-neutral, to ensure that SNAP benefits would continue to reflect the actual costs of a healthy diet.
When the USDA conducted the first of these required re-evaluations in 2021 SNAP benefits levels increased by 21%, making a healthy, nutritious diet more attainable for every SNAP recipient in America — illustrating the shortcoming of inflation-only adjustments. Without this change, the cost of a meal would have been 45% higher than the maximum SNAP benefits.
The current House Republican Farm Bill language would halt the progress that has been made, repeat the failures of the past, and deprive millions of struggling households of billions in food benefits.
If we want to properly combat food insecurity and support low-income families across the nation, we must ensure that the USDA has the authority to regularly adjust SNAP benefits based on the real costs of a healthy diet, rather than relying on a fixed standard that is merely adjusted for inflation.
There is a solution to meet this moment. The Senate Agriculture Committee chairwoman, Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow, has a Farm Bill proposal that would ensure that SNAP benefits reflect reality. Her bill maintains the five-year re-evaluation of benefit levels and allows the USDA to account for not only inflation, but changes in dietary guidelines, purchasing habits and food prices when making these adjustments.
Stabenow’s bill will also expand program eligibility, in contrast with the partisan and pernicious language being advanced in the House of Representatives. Additionally, it includes the bipartisan H.R. 3087, the Training and Nutrition Stability Act, which supports pathways to self-sufficiency through improved job training programs for SNAP recipients. This means more money for SNAP, more food for families in need, and more pathways to stability.
If Senate includes H.R 3903, entitled the Keeping SNAP in our Communities Act, the legislation would increase fairness and transparency for stores that accept SNAP who are at risk of losing their food stamps license and ensure that the low-income communities that rely on these benefits are able to use them at their local bodegas and stores.
Food stamps are about making sure that working class families never have to choose between feeding their children or paying for essential services. Food security is a human right, and food stamps, while being imperfect, have ensured that families have food in their fridge and pantry. That stability is under attack.
Now is the time to make everyone’s voice heard and urge congressional Republicans to do what’s best for our nation and protect and strengthen food stamps. Without it, we put the lives of more than 40 million Americans in jeopardy.
Espaillat represents New York’s 13th Congressional District covering Northern Manhattan and parts of the Bronx. Park is the commissioner of the New York City Department of Social Services.
