Tell Congress #HandsOffSNAP in Farm Bill

The House Republican Farm Bill will limit access and eligibility to SNAP in three key ways:

1. It takes food from working families with children by rolling back Categorical Eligibility. This is a critical state option that recognizes that working poor families have high expenses for basic necessities like housing, child care, and health care, so that it is a real struggle to make ends meet. This change will not only take food from their dinner tables but will also jeopardize eligibility for free school meals for their children.
2. It severely limits the Heat and Eat state option that boosts SNAP benefits for households with high utility costs. This again primarily dings working households, putting them at risk of missing meals or else having their utilities shut off.
3. It limits SNAP eligibility and access for unemployed and underemployed adults, including seniors up to age 60. This change takes food away from these individuals if they aren’t working a minimum of 20 hours per week. This not only takes food away from people who are facing the most significant barriers to work, but it also punishes people who are working but for whom work is not available year-round. In our state, where many of our rural areas primarily rely on the agricultural and tourism industries for jobs that ebb and flow with the seasons, we would likely see a deepening of hunger during the lean seasons.

In other words, the key takeaway is that the House Republican Farm Bill will take meals and food from our most vulnerable neighbors, including working families with children. These cuts assume the worst about struggling individuals and families, the people we serve, the people we care about–our program participants. These cuts also shift more of the work of feeding our neighbors to us, the charitable hunger relief system, and even though this Farm Bill offers a small increase in resources for food banks, that increase will not make much of a difference in meeting the deeper need that would no doubt come from SNAP cuts of this magnitude.

Don’t let them do this. More than ever we need to speak up with loud and clear voices to reject these cuts. We need to bring others with us in this effort, flooding Congressional offices with our stories and our messages to keep their #HandsOffSNAP.

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