As families across Kentucky fill their homes with food this Thanksgiving, some politicians in Frankfort and Washington may be plotting to make that task much more difficult by shrinking our nation’s most vital anti-hunger tool.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) plays a critical role in the well-being of more than 600,000 of Kentucky’s kids, seniors and workers. But instead of protecting and expanding SNAP, decision makers are being pushed by special interests to force struggling Kentuckians to make do with less.
In Kentucky, the state legislature may be poised to revisit the 2024 legislative session’s failed plan to reduce SNAP access to rural Kentuckians. Under the changes, which were voted down earlier this year by a bipartisan group of lawmakers, the state would be prohibited from quickly waiving a demanding work reporting requirement for some adults in areas with high joblessness. This could result in food assistance being taken away from more than 15,000 Kentuckians in economically distressed areas.
President-elect Trump, who previously proposed sweeping changes to SNAP, appears to be moving once again in that same direction. According to a recent report in the Washington Post, the President-elect and Congress are looking to cut SNAP benefits that benefit Americans with low incomes to help pay for a tax break for the ultra-wealthy.
These moves couldn’t come at a worse time, as pandemic-induced inflation spiked the cost of eggs, bread and other essentials. Over the summer, the 2024 Map the Meal Gap report revealed that 710,000 Kentuckians are now food insecure. That’s enough people to fill the University of Kentucky’s Kroger Field to capacity more than 11 times. Of those, nearly 210,000 are children.
SNAP is our best tool to address this crisis. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, SNAP helps one in 10 underpaid Kentucky workers put food on the table, including thousands of servers, home health aides, retail workers and school employees. In fact, there’s a one in four chance that the cashier who rang up your Thanksgiving groceries used SNAP to help buy their own.
In addition to relieving hunger, SNAP keeps us healthier. Research shows that compared to similar people with low incomes, people with SNAP as a resource are less likely to stay home sick, to need medical attention or to forego care because of cost. They also spend significantly less on healthcare than other people with low incomes who do not receive SNAP. When people have SNAP to help supplement their food budgets, they face fewer impossible dilemmas, like having to choose between food and medicine.
SNAP also helps stimulate local economies, as it’s spent quickly in local farmers markets and grocery stores, supporting Kentucky farmers, retailers and communities. Kentuckians need leaders at the state and federal level to recognize the vital role SNAP plays in their health and well-being. This program, and other safety net supports, need to be strengthened, not weakened. And this Thanksgiving we should all recognize, whether we participate in SNAP or not, that it helps build the kind of healthy and prosperous Kentucky we all want to see.
