Under Trump budget, parents will go hungry so kids can eat

On Monday, President Trump released his 2018 budget. It slashes funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the nation’s most critical anti-hunger tool, by 25 percent.

These cuts abandon a quintessentially American commitment to provide us all with enough to afford a basic diet. More than 2 in 3 SNAP participants in Arizona are kids, seniors or people with disabilities.

Without SNAP, parents will skip meals so their kids can eat.

Seniors and people with disabilities will choose between paying for food and paying for medicine.

This isn’t just a moral disgrace. It’s also bad policy.

SNAP lifts millions out of poverty each year, improves nutrition, and boosts the economy. 82 percent of participants who can work do. And the Arizona Legislature just passed reforms to make it stronger and more secure.

Shredding these programs will have devastating effects on Arizonans in rural, suburban and urban areas alike. People cut from these programs would likely turn to our already strained food-bank network.

Cuts of this magnitude could not be absorbed without significant private investment. Arizona’s representatives must reject these proposed cuts.

— Angie Rodgers, Phoenix The writer is president and CEO of the Association of Arizona Food Banks.