More states slash food aid as prices soar
Millions of Americans are losing extra federal assistance despite ongoing hardships.
DES MOINES — Month by month, more of the roughly 40 million Americans who get help buying groceries through the federal food stamp program are seeing their benefits plunge, even as the nation struggles with the biggest increase in food costs in decades.
The payments to lowincome individuals and families are dropping as governors end COVID-19 disaster declarations and opt out of an ongoing federal program that made their states eligible for dramatic increases in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits, also known as food stamps.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture began offering the increased benefit in April 2020 in response to surging unemployment after the COVID-19 pandemic swept over the country.
The result is that, depending on the politics of a state, people in need find themselves eligible for significantly different levels of help buying food.
Nebraska took the most aggressive action, ending the emergency benefits four months into the pandemic, in July 2020 — a move Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts said would “show the rest of the country how to get back to normal.”
Since then, nearly a dozen GOP-led states have taken similar action. This month, Iowa become the most recent place to slash the benefits; they will be cut in Wyoming and Kentucky in the next month. Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Nebraska, South Dakota and Tennessee have also scaled them back.
Republican leaders say the extra benefits were intended to temporarily help people who were forced out of work by the pandemic. Now that the health crisis has eased, they say, there is no need to offer the higher payments when businesses in most states are struggling to find enough workers.
But the extra benefits also help families in need at a time of skyrocketing food prices.
Recipients receive at least $95 per month under the program, but some individuals and families typically eligible only for small benefits can get hundreds of dollars in extra payments each month.
The entire program will come to a halt if the federal government decides to end its public health emergency, though the Biden administration has yet to signal that it intends to do so.
For Tara Kramer, 45, of Des Moines, the decision by Iowa’s GOP Gov. Kim Reynolds to end the emergency payments starting April 1 meant her monthly SNAP benefit plunged to $20, from $250 in March. Kramer, who has a genetic disorder that can cause intense pain, said the extra money enabled her to buy healthier food that made her feel better and helped her live a more active life.
“My heart sank,” Kramer said. “All the memories from before the emergency allotment came rushing back.”
Alex Murphy, a spokesman for Reynolds, noted that the extra benefits were intended to help people who lost jobs due to the pandemic and said, “We have to return to pre-pandemic life.”
Murphy pointed out that Iowa has more than 86,000 openings listed on a state unemployment website. But Kramer said she’s not able to work, and even getting out of her apartment is a struggle at times.
Vince Hall, who oversees public policy for the nationwide food bank network Feeding America, said ending the extra benefits ignores the reality that even as the pandemic wanes, there hasn’t been a decline in demand at food banks.
Wages have been increasing, and in March the national unemployment rate dropped to 3.6%, but those gains have been offset by an 8.5% increase in inflation compared with a year ago. Food is among the goods whose prices are rising the fastest, leaving many families unable to buy enough groceries.
“The COVID pandemic is giving way to a hunger pandemic,” Hall said. “We’re in a real, real struggle.”
Feeding America, which represents 200 food banks, says demand has increased just as individual donations dwindle and food costs rise. The organization estimates that food banks will spend 40% more to buy food in the fiscal year ending June 2022 than they did in the previous year.
For Annie Ballan, 51, of Omaha, Ricketts’ decision to stop participating in the program reduced the monthly SNAP payments she and her son receive from nearly $500 to $41. Both have health problems and can’t work.
“From the middle of the month to the end of the month, people have no food,” Ballan said, her voice rising in anger. “This is all the governor’s fault. He says he loves Nebraskans, that Nebraskans are wonderful, but he’s cut off our food.”
The demand on food banks will only grow as more states reduce their SNAP payments, which typically provide nine meals for every one meal offered by food banks, Hall said.
Valerie Andrews, 59, of St. Charles, Mo., said the SNAP benefits on which she and her husband rely fell from $430 a month to $219 when Missouri ended the extra payments in August 2021. Andrews, who is disabled, said she tries to budget carefully and gets groceries regularly from a food pantry, but it’s difficult.
“We’re barely making it from paycheck to paycheck,” she said. “It gets pretty rough most of the time.”
Officials at food banks and pantries say they will do their best to meet increased demand, but there is no way they can fully offset the drop in SNAP benefits.
Matt Unger, director of the Des Moines Area Religious Council network of food pantries in Iowa’s capital, noted that the pantries’ cost for a 5-ounce can of chicken has jumped to $1.05 from 54 cents in March 2019.
“Costs are just going through the roof,” he said.