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Roughly every five years, Congress debates changes to the omnibus Farm Bill, a multilayered law covering a plethora of agricultural and food programs. The first Farm Bill was passed in 1933 to bolster food supplies during the Great Depression and help keep food prices in check for average Americans.
Today, one of the largest programs in the Farm Bill is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, which supports 41.1 million Americans every month by supplementing their grocery budgets. While SNAP benefits vary from family to family based on their unique circumstances, the program has a singular goal of helping Americans achieve essential nutrition by addressing food insecurity and hunger. These terms are not synonymous. Food insecurity is defined as “a household-level economic and social condition of limited or uncertain access to adequate food.” On the other hand, hunger is “an individual-level physiological condition that may result from food insecurity.” While hunger may be related to food insecurity, not all those experiencing hunger are food insecure.
In recent debates about the Farm Bill, policymakers have disagreed over how supplemental the SNAP program should be. The Congressional Budget Office’s 10-year cost projection through fiscal year 2033 finds that $1.2 trillion of the Farm Bill’s $1.5 trillion budget is allocated toward SNAP. Some congresspeople find this cost too high.
In the spring of 2024, the House Agricultural Committee chair, Glen Thompson (R-PA) proposed amendments to revert SNAP to its funding in 2021 when the Thrifty Food Plan was adjusted only for inflation. The Thrifty Food Plan (TFP) is one of the USDA-created food plans that estimates the cost of a healthy, low-cost diet. The proposed legislation would draw on SNAP funds to source direct subsidies to large commodity farmers and consequently limit the Thrifty Food Plan. This would lead to a $30 billion cut to SNAP over the next ten years, with the decrease in benefits growing larger each subsequent year. If these proposals were implemented, it would be the largest cut to SNAP in almost 30 years.
The challenge with this proposal is that, even under current funding levels, the TFP is inadequate in providing a well-rounded diet for its participants. The plan includes a small quantity of “non-luxury healthy foods commonly eaten by U.S. households and includes foods in amounts that most U.S. households do not consume — such as quantities of milk and legumes that are well more than what people eat.” Furthermore, the Thrifty Food Plan assumes food accessibility and food affordability without accounting for different levels of food access and costs of living across the country.
Many researchers fear that Rep. Thompson’s proposed cuts would undermine food security in America, especially in light of economic challenges to SNAP brought about by the pandemic. Northwestern University economist, Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, has researched the effects of the ending of pandemic-era supplemental SNAP benefits. She and her team have found that “the end of the emergency programs could cause hunger — as defined by the share of households who say they sometimes or often did not have enough to eat over the previous week — to go up by about 10%.”
But many in Congress worry that SNAP is inefficient. Rep. Mark Alford (R-MO) argues that the program overpays by millions of dollars every day while actually undermining the health of its recipients through the purchase of sugary drinks, which are the second most purchased item sold through SNAP. “The truth is that as the number of SNAP recipients has grown, our healthiness levels [have] fallen here in America,” he said. But in reality, SNAP offers an average of only $6.30 per person/per day across all three meals—which hardly seems like overpaying in the current economy. And to claim that just because sugary drinks are the second most purchased item through SNAP, it is the cause of the drop in healthiness levels in America, is to commit the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. Researchers have shown the opposite. Studies show that SNAP involvement is directly correlated with lower rates of long-term health complications such as obesity, high blood pressure, heart disease, and diabetes, particularly for children.
At the same time, researchers at Children’s HealthWatch found that when a family experiences an abrupt change or end to their benefits or household income—such as during the abrupt roll-back of benefits in the early months of 2023—their children are more likely to experience food insecurity.
In an era of inflation, Americans must decide which costs are worth paying. Despite the large proposed changes to SNAP in the new Farm Bill, the beauty of the Farm Bill is that it must receive bipartisan support to become a law. With public trust in government decisions steadily declining and a heated election cycle on the horizon, policymakers must work together in order to aid in the well-being of American families. The data shows that the social and physical benefits of SNAP to American families are tremendous. A reduction in funding to the SNAP program would negatively harm the health and well-being of millions of children.
Addison Ream studies Biblical and Theological Studies with a double minor in Social Work and German at Wheaton College (IL). She is a student employee for the college’s Center for Vocation and Career and the Office of Undergraduate Admissions. Addison’s professional aspirations reside in pursuing justice in the division of social policy, particularly pertaining to child and family welfare. Her long-term career aspirations now reside at the intersection of policy and advocacy, specifically utilizing research as a means of fostering social change.
Keith L. Johnson is Professor of Theology and chair of the undergraduate Biblical and Theological Studies department at Wheaton College in Illinois. His recent books include The Essential Karl Barth: A Reader and Commentary (Baker Academic 2020) and Theology as Discipleship (IVP Academic, 2016). He also has co-edited several volumes, including Kenosis: The Self-Emptying of Christ in Scripture and Theology (Eerdmans, 2023) and Balm in Gilead: A Theological Dialogue with Marilynne Robinson (IVP Academic, 2019). He received the Senior Teaching Award at Wheaton in 2022.
