SNAP provides a monthly supplement to low- and no-income residents to purchase groceries. In 2018, the average SNAP recipient received about $127 per month in benefits. The endeavor, operated by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), is the largest federal nutrition program in the United States. Last year, SNAP fed 38 million Americans, the vast majority of whom are children, the elderly, and disabled adults.

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USDA launched the online SNAP pilot in April 2019 in New York  — a state with more than 2.6 million residents enrolled in the federal nutrition safety net program — with three retailers: Amazon, Walmart, and ShopRite. Although rollout to other states wasn’t planned to begin until after the two-year test pilot, by March 2020, administrators faced pressure to fast-track implementation nationwide to allow SNAP recipients a safer, socially distanced way of shopping during the pandemic.

With its recent expansion to 44 states (including the District of Columbia), USDA says online SNAP is now accessible to more than 90 percent of users — or around 34 million people — who rely on the social safety net program each year. Another three states were approved to participate and are in the process of implementing the program for their eligible populations.

According to the federal agency, since online SNAP’s widespread implementation due to COVID-19, usership has increased. A spokesperson from USDA noted via written request that in March 2020, close to 35,000 SNAP households shopped online. By June, more than 800,000 households were participating. While that is a dramatic increase, it is only 4 percent of the households receiving SNAP.

Despite recognition of the program’s importance in the face of the pandemic, users, food security advocates, and legislators have raised flags. Experts like Ed Bolen, senior policy analyst at the Washington D.C.-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said that though extensive research on the impact of online SNAP is yet to be conducted, anecdotally his organization has heard from a number of users about issues with learning about, accessing, and fully utilizing the online purchasing and delivery resource. Additionally, users must navigate order minimums and delivery fees as the USDA prohibits the use of SNAP funding for these costs.

Bolen points to the lack of information available on the program in communities with high SNAP eligibility as one factor for potentially low participation rates. Generally, when a state is added, a press release follows with pick-up by local media. However, the trickle down to users has been spotty depending on state-level implementation and the communication resources at their disposal.

In Massachusetts, food advocate and SNAP user Diane Sullivan said the state generally does a good job keeping in touch with participants about SNAP and has even implemented new ways of doing so during the pandemic, such as texting. However, with the struggle to keep up with a constant flux of changing policy and a growing participant list, Sullivan added that she didn’t recall receiving a text from the state about the online option when it became available in late May.

In addition to finding out about online shopping, sometimes it’s hard to find the foods users want. Joanne referenced the hour and a half she recently spent compiling a cart of only 12 items eligible for the electronic benefit transfer (EBT) cards issued to participants. “Looking at Amazon,” Joanne said about one of the program’s two approved retailers in her state, “if you put ‘EBT’ in their search line, you have to go down seven rows before you find something that I consider whole food. Generally, what I find is that most of the things on here are processed food, which are not useful to me.”

Joanne said she prefers to spend her SNAP dollars — which amount to the minimum monthly benefit of $16 per month — in person at stores and farmers’ markets that not only sell whole foods more to her liking, but where she can benefit from EBT matching programs that double her benefits when they are spent at qualifying markets.

Amazon and Walmart currently dominate online SNAP as the only shopping option in 38 of the 44 states approved to participate. The CBPP’s Bolen explained that the lack of diversity in retailers may be discouraging uptake. “Having only those options might not mean a lot if you don’t live near a Walmart and you’ve never thought of Amazon as a place to buy your groceries,” he explained. For this reason, in July, U.S. Senators Tammy Duckworth and Dick Durbin of Illinois introduced a bill in the Senate appealing for the expansion of retailers participating in the program.

Additionally, low-income Americans are more likely to lack the technological resources to access the internet. Data from the Pew Research Center shows that 29 percent of adults with household incomes below $30,000 per year do not own a smartphone, 44 percent do not have broadband internet, and 46 percent lack a computer. The Center notes that in nearly all households with incomes over $100,000 per year, these resources are consistently available.

From her lens on the ground, Sullivan said the online option is “on the right track” but it needs amending to ensure challenges facing recipients are addressed with their concerns in mind, not the bottom lines of the billion-dollar corporations currently benefitting from the economic stimulus.

“You have to engage people with lived experience in the process of designing these programs and implementing them,” Sullivan says. “We are on the ground and have information on when these systems work or when they don’t. We need to be brought into conversations around solutions in a more meaningful way.”

This January, that was threatened when she received a letter stating that her benefits would be cancelled if she did not fulfill a 20-hour-a-week work requirement.  When I first met with Ortiz, she stated that “I would have to make major cuts to the food that I get” if she lost her SNAP benefits.

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This letter came at the same time that the United States Department of Agriculture finalized the Able-Bodied Adults Without Dependents (ABAWDs) rule in December 2019. “Able-bodied adults” — defined as not receiving SSI or SSDI, without children, or who are not the caretaker for an adult — are required to work or volunteer 20 hours a week, or participate in an approved workplace training program, in order to maintain their SNAP benefits. Previously, states had been able to apply for waivers to ease those requirements, but the new rule would take that flexibility away and cost up to 700,000 people their benefits.

The ABAWDs rule is not the only restriction on eligibility requirements for SNAP — according to a spokesperson at the Illinois Department of Human Services, students enrolled in undergraduate or graduate programs “more than half-time” are not eligible for the program without a special exemption. Additional restrictions ban SNAP benefits for people who are undocumented, have a drug felony, or have more than $2,250 in assets. Some of these restrictions are established by states, and may vary.

In theory, a social worker like Crystal should be uniquely positioned to navigate this bureaucracy. However, social workers who use SNAP can have just as difficult of a time understanding the requirements to keep their benefits as the clients they assist. Crystal said that in class discussions about policy changes around SNAP eligibility, there wasn’t always an understanding that students were current or former SNAP recipients who were personally affected by these changes. She also said some professors would broadly mention that resources were available if students needed additional support, but specific resources were not mentioned in course materials. “I would like to see acknowledgement from the school…because if we’re not talking about it, we can’t come together,” she said, adding that this lack of discussion means students are “struggling silently.”

Even with her understanding of the SNAP requirements, Ortiz ultimately lost benefits for two months. To get them reinstated, she set up multiple meetings and phone calls with the Illinois Department of Human Services, which included taking public transit in the middle of a pandemic, waiting outside since the office was only admitting one person at a time, offering to translate for another person in line because another staffer was not available, and then meeting with a caseworker and manager to advocate for herself. The root of the issue, it seems, was her unpaid internship — she was under the impression that it counted as work, but her caseworker believed it did not since it was for class credit.

Crystal’s experience highlights the many different restrictions that already existed in the SNAP ruling even before the proposed expansion of the ABAWD requirement, and how challenging it is trying to parse conflicting information from multiple agencies. But still, even in the midst of the coronavirus, many of the restrictions hold.

Currently, the Families First Coronavirus Response Act only partially suspends the ABAWD rule: If recipients are offered a slot in a designated workfare program, they must participate in the program in order to maintain benefits. A representative from the Illinois Department of Human Services stated that all ABAWD requirements, including the requirements in FFCRA, and eligibility requirements for students receiving SNAP, are suspended until a month after the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services lifts the Public Health Emergency declaration. Navigating these mixed messages from different agencies can be frustrating for a social worker, but can be downright impossible for the average person unfamiliar with public benefits agencies. A page on the IDHS website states that current SNAP recipients will receive the maximum benefit starting the week of April 6.

The framing around these reversals in policy is focused on maintaining food access “during a public health emergency.” However, not having enough food to eat was already a public health emergency before COVID-19, as demonstrated by the patchwork of food pantries and soup kitchens that had challenges meeting the needs of the communities they serve. As we work to ensure that everyone has enough to eat during the immediate crisis of COVID-19, we can’t lose sight of that basic fact. If the USDA and state agencies can recognize how devastating a lack of food is during COVID-19, to the point where they suspend restrictions on one of their most aggressively means-tested programs, then they should be able to recognize this when there isn’t a pandemic magnifying the hunger crisis that existed before it.

When your grocery budget is entirely reliant on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), your mom’s Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), and other assistance programs designed for low-income disabled single parents and their disabled children, you have to be very specific about what you buy. It’s easy to spend your entire food budget before the month is over and find that toward the end of the month, you’re hungrily eating cheap cereal and off-brand white bread for every meal.

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Recently, Democratic Senators Kamala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand introduced a bill with Senator Bernie Sanders that would expand the SNAP benefit. The bill would increase the baseline for SNAP benefits by roughly 30 percent and expand benefits to those living in U.S. territories. Currently, the Families First Act is temporarily increasing SNAP benefits for households that haven’t been receiving the maximum benefit, and many states are allowing customers to purchase SNAP-eligible items online, a move that makes grocery shopping during a pandemic safer for low-income elderly, disabled, and high-risk individuals. A permanent increase to SNAP benefits and expanded delivery options would make a significant difference in the lives of many SNAP recipients, giving them the ability to purchase more food each month and making it easier for people to shop even if they can’t physically go to a grocery store.

The maximum SNAP benefit for a household of two in Massachusetts, where I live, is currently $355 per month. A 30 percent increase to that would be $106.50, bringing the total to $461.50 per month. That would mean SNAP recipients could almost afford the average cost of groceries ($489.16 per month in Boston, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, though the average monthly spend on food overall is $805.58 once you include takeout and restaurants). Although many families don’t receive the maximum SNAP benefit — in Massachusetts the average monthly household benefit is only $210, or $1.36 per person per meal — the proposed increase in SNAP benefits would at least bring low-income and poor Bostonians closer to being able to afford a full months’ worth of food.

I know how it feels to be able to expand your food budget, even by a little. I remember the first time my dad, who took over raising me after my mom died, had a particularly good month driving the cab. This was before the 2008 recession, and his specialty was driving kids with busy working parents to and from school. We had an unexpected, albeit small, increase to our food budget. I no longer had to survive on $1 Celeste frozen pizzas. I could get a few higher-cost pizzas, like DiGiorno. I was allowed to get inexpensive sushi at the Stop & Shop seafood counter twice a month, and we bought lobsters when they were on sale for $4.99 a pound. We kept the house stocked with sodas and Little Debbie snacks for when my friends came over.

I could actually tell my new high school friends we’d feed them instead of asking them to come over “after dinner,” and we spent one New Year’s Eve trekking through a blizzard to get takeout Chinese food from the best restaurant in the city. I felt rich enough to try crab rangoon, which I’d always assumed I wouldn’t like — when you’re poor, you don’t take risks spending your limited money on food you’re unsure about and may have to throw away. The crab and cream cheese tasted like the freedom of choice and exploration, and I’ve loved them ever since. Then the recession and the rise of Uber and Lyft made it harder for taxi drivers to make money. We went back to eating cereal when we ran out of food money. I got part-time jobs and saved my birthday and holiday money to help my dad pay for groceries.

When I went to college, my food budget slowly started to increase again. It wasn’t much, but I went from being truly poor to just being broke. I’ve always defined the difference by how often the threats of eviction, running out of food, or having the electricity or heat turned off crossed my mind at any given moment. If I had enough money that those things were just background noise, I was broke. If I had so little money that I couldn’t help my dad pay down the electric bill so the power company wouldn’t turn off the lights. I was poor.

Being broke meant I could sometimes save enough money to take my girlfriend (now my wife) on a sushi date, if we kept the meal inexpensive or it was a special occasion. It meant splitting pizza delivery with my friends on Saturday nights, after we’d all had a few cheap vodka cocktails and were sitting around the dorm room laughing at weird memes. Broke was being able to get something else out of the freezer if I’d overcooked my chicken nuggets to a burnt crisp, instead of laying on my bed devastated because I’d ruined my chance to eat.

A few years ago, after my wife and I both got full-time jobs and were no longer relying on the modest budgets of grad students, we first noticed the difference at the grocery store. We were no longer poor or broke; we could get fresh salmon for dinner instead of frozen. We never had to put things back if we were over-budget, we could just have an honest conversation in the car afterward about whether we wanted to cut back the next time. I didn’t even cry when our zucchini went bad the day before we were planning to cook it, even though the child in me — the one who still remembers eating a free pizza lunch at the park with my mom on the August day that she died — was determined not to let it happen again.

That’s how a 30 percent SNAP expansion could change your life. It gets you from poor to broke. From hungry to offering to split your Caesar salad and brownie with another broke friend in the school cafeteria. It’s the bare minimum a person needs to be able to spend their days without low-level anxiety about how they’re going to survive. In the richest country in the world, the bare minimum shouldn’t be too much to ask for. We all deserve to get freshly baked muffins from the grocery store bakery every once in a while, and take the small risk of trying crab rangoon for the first time.

It wasn’t like it is today, where people get a debit card nearly indistinguishable from a Visa or Amex. Back then, we were given books of bright red or blue coupons, which were slightly smaller than dollar bills. You weren’t supposed to separate individual stamps from the booklet ahead of time, which meant that you had to stand at the cash register and count them out and sign each one, publicly. She was ashamed that we needed them, and so was I.

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Once, when I was in middle school, a kid dropped a red food stamp on the playground, and our gym teacher snatched it up and held it above his head, loudly calling, “Who dropped their food stamp? Can’t go to the store after school and buy yo mamma’s groceries if you don’t have her food stamps!”

No one took it. It wasn’t mine, but I thought about claiming it anyway. It was a dollar. It would buy fruit. You could get a pomegranate for a dollar at the store, and I was on a pomegranate kick.

It is easier to implement cruelty if you don’t think of those you’re being cruel to as good people. If you think of the cruelty as “tough-love” or as teaching people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, then you don’t see it as cruel at all. To the Trump administration, being poor is a character flaw. It is worthy of shame. A flaw for which they have no problem punishing people for, even children, the elderly, and the disabled.

The first time my family shopped with our food stamps, we bought grapes, Roman Meal bread, cheddar cheese, romaine lettuce instead of iceberg, peaches, and a lot of hamburger. And a lobster and a pound of butter and some lemons. The lobster was on sale since they tended to hang around the tank for a long time at the H-E-B in southeast San Antonio. I remember exactly what we bought, even 30 years later. We feasted that night. I remember cracking open the claw, startled at the creaminess of the flesh, dripping with butter and tart from lemon juice.

To be clear, we weren’t destitute. We were broke and lived off poor people food, like canned butter beans and potatoes stewed in milk and covered in ketchup, and Little Debbie Snack Cakes. My dad rarely paid child support and my mom was working and going to college full-time. We were in the same situation as millions of families now who use SNAP. Food stamps were a step-up to better nutrition, including the one-time lobster.

Most of the kids in my elementary school qualified for food stamps, so most of us also qualified for free or reduced breakfast and lunch. There were separate lines for kids who paid the reduced or free rate. Even knowing that we were all poor, there was still so much stigma and shame attached to using that checkout line. So much that rather than deal with it many of us used the change meant for lunch for vending machine snacks instead, or just didn’t eat. A generation of kids raised on Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and Snickers bars lunches. Eventually, the entire school district was allowed to serve everyone reduced or free lunch since such a large percentage of us qualified, and they removed the separate reduced/free lines. Suddenly there were a lot more kids in the cafeteria and fewer hanging out by the vending machines.

It’s easier to be cruel to someone who you’ve made feel ashamed. Shaming people others them. It creates a divide in their mind between themselves and poor people. It makes it easier to believe that poverty is the result of bad choices and decisions, not a capitalist system that’s out of control. This way, it could never happen to them. People who support SNAP cuts aren’t afraid of poor people, they’re afraid of BEING poor. When my coach was teasing us about food stamps, I imagine that it made him feel better somehow, to feel apart from all the poor kids. Especially since his salary made him food stamp eligible, too.

In my case, my mother graduated from college and went on to become a high school teacher. We moved from the neighborhood I grew up in to across town for a new start. I went to college at seventeen, then culinary school, then graduate school. I married, had a child, and became disabled. Neither of us have gone back on SNAP.

I am a success story because of public assistance, and I am no longer ashamed. Food stamps saved my family when I was young. They save families every single day.

This was the first of three SNAP-related rules introduced by the administration this year. If all three are finalized, they will have a cumulative effect of taking critical nutrition assistance from more than 3 million people.

The Trump administration’s attack on SNAP is nothing new; for decades, presidential administrations as well as members of Congress have been attempting to push people off SNAP, as seen under the Reagan administration, in 1990s welfare reform, and 2018’s farm bill. Selecting ABAWDs as a target was no coincidence; the policy is complicated and confusing, and though it has extremely high stakes for those affected, their voices are rarely heard.

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More than that, though, it’s a rule ripe for generating arguments about personal responsibility, hands up instead of hands out, and the “dignity of work.” This talking point made a return appearance in a press release from Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX) and an op-ed from Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue, who has apparently never labored under the oppressive eyes of a ruthless algorithm at an Amazon warehouse, or defended himself against violent customers attacking him over a McDonald’s counter.

Conservative policymakers rely on language like this to drive home the idea that programs like SNAP, along with housing vouchers, Medicaid, and other elements of the social safety net, are handouts encouraging dependence rather than part of the social contract. In cuts to programs like these, the argument is that without stricter guidelines, poor people will “lazily” rely on benefits.

This framing can also be seen in incidents like a flashy campaign to highlight corporate tax dodging that stigmatized public benefits, rather than focusing on the need for corporations to pay not only taxes, but fair wages.

Some may defensively and correctly note that many people subject to work requirements are already working; in 75 percent of SNAP households with someone who is subject to existing work requirements, for example, someone has worked and/or will work within a year of receiving SNAP. Furthermore, some people considered able-bodied for the purposes of SNAP are in fact disabled.

It’s also important to be aware that the overall quality of jobs in the United States has gone down. In some cities, as many as 62 percent of workers are employed in “low-wage” jobs. 30 percent of low-wage workers live at or below 150 percent of the poverty line. And while Perdue commented on Twitter that “there are currently more job openings than people to fill them,” getting a job in a nation with very low unemployment can actually be challenging, particularly for people with limited education or trade skills and obligations that may not show up on SNAP paperwork.

Ample evidence dating to the 1970s, when they were first implemented with then-food stamps, demonstrates work requirements are ineffective when it comes to meeting the stated goal of fostering independence; “work or starve,” as NY Mag put it, does not result in systemic change. While people subject to work requirements may experience a moderate uptick in employment, it fades over time, suggesting the effects are not lasting.

In some cases, people actually grew poorer over time; the current ABAWDs requirements have people working 80 hours a month, but accept volunteering and training programs in addition to work hours, which are not necessarily avenues to making enough money to survive. When participants are involved in voluntary, rather than mandatory, work and training programs, on the other hand, they’re much more likely to experience improvements.

Meanwhile, SNAP contributes about $1.70 to the economy for every dollar spent, and can help insulate workers from shocks like recession and job loss. These benefits are tremendous poverty-fighting tools. Making SNAP harder to get will make it difficult to get people onto SNAP quickly when unemployment starts to spike, hurting local economies in addition to making it hard for families to feed themselves.

SNAP is not the only program being targeted with work requirements. Multiple states have pushed for Medicaid work requirements, though thus far every one has backed down or faced a legal challenge. Programs such as SNAP and TANF, notably, already have work requirements, they just aren’t stringent enough in the eyes of some critics.

There’s no evidence to support punitive measures like these. They do not improve employment rates or fiscal independence. It’s important to acknowledge this, but not at the cost of the larger point: SNAP exists to bolster access to nutrition in the United States through a variety of means, whether allowing people to pick up what they need at the grocery store or certifying children for school lunch eligibility.

SNAP doesn’t just need to be defended; 62 percent of voters actually believe the extremely popular and effective program should be expanded. The United States should increase the availability and quality of benefits, and eliminate bizarre and restrictive limitations on the program, such as the ban on hot food. When people lack access to stoves or microwaves, refusing to allow them to buy hot foods is cruel, and undermines the USDA’s own goal to “do right and feed everyone.” And it should streamline SNAP benefits — something under attack with the USDA’s proposed rule around Standard Utility Allowances (SUAs), which would make it harder for people to get SNAP benefits when they need them.

The nation must change the way it talks about programs like SNAP; they aren’t something to be ashamed of, or evidence that someone has failed. They are instead evidence of a belief that everyone deserves access to a standard of living that meets their needs, freeing them to lead their best lives.

Take the Great Recession, the economic plunge that followed the 2008 financial crisis. It cost those in the poorest 10 percent of Americans more than 20 percent of their incomes, which was more than twice the drop experienced by the richest 10 percent. It was black and Hispanic workers, as well as workers who didn’t have a college degree, who saw higher rates of unemployment and longer durations without a job than other workers.

Overall, the recession exacerbated already existing inequalities in wealth and income, with black and Hispanic families, as well as women, falling further behind their white, male counterparts in terms of asset building.

And the next recession could be even harder.

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It’s not because that next recession, whenever it arrives, will reach the depth and breadth of the Great Recession. Rather, it’s because federal and state governments have been undermining the programs that protect people when an economic downturn arrives, such as unemployment benefits or nutrition assistance, essentially since the Great Recession ended. This means those programs will be even less effective when they’re next called into action, making the next recession more painful than it would be otherwise.

These concerns are even more important now that there are some flashing red signs that a recession may come sooner than anyone would hope.

To start, nine states have cut the duration of their unemployment benefits systems to below the previously standard 26 weeks, with Florida cutting all the way down to 12. During the recession, when the average length of unemployment approached 40 weeks, more conscientious states extended benefits up to 99 weeks.

While five of the states that have cut unemployment benefits have rules in place to automatically expand benefits if the unemployment rate rises, the other four don’t. And since the conservatives who now control the Senate were against those Great Recession benefits expansions, there’s no guarantee of federal help if states do not act to fix their stingy systems.

Also, having a workable benefits system in place doesn’t necessarily ensure people get the help they need. In 2007, 35 percent of unemployed workers received benefits. Today, barely more than a quarter do due to the imposition of more stringent eligibility requirements. In some states it’s substantially worse: In 2017, for instance, just 10 percent of unemployed workers in North Carolina qualified.

So the main bulwark against poverty when mass unemployment occurs has been whittled down from a standard that even before the recent cuts left America among the least generous countries in the world.

Then there’s nutrition assistance. During the recession, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) provided help to nearly 50 million people per month at its peak in December 2012. But the Trump administration — after trying and failing to convince Congress to cut the program — has unilaterally imposed new limits that are going to make it so the program reaches fewer people in the future.

One change, in particular, makes it harder for states to waive certain requirements during periods of high unemployment, which is exactly the time at which eligibility should be expanding.

The Trump administration is also providing waivers to states so that they can add work requirements to Medicaid – to date, six states have had their waivers approved. So when workers lose their jobs, and thus their employer-based health insurance, Medicaid will be that much harder to turn to.

Other steps state governments have taken will also make recession response harder. One of the fundamental problems during an economic downturn is that most states have balanced budget requirements, meaning they have to cut their budgets and suck money out of the economy at the precise moment households are doing the same thing, creating a vicious cycle of economic contraction. Education is a particular favorite for reductions; 12 states still aren’t spending as much on their education system today as they were before the Great Recession.

To deal with that reality, states have rainy day funds they are meant to deploy during rough times to counteract some of that budget slashing. However, about a third of states don’t have the money available in their funds to get through even a moderate downturn. Some of those states, such as Kentucky and Missouri, decided to lower tax rates for their wealthiest earners this year, which didn’t really help bolster those reserves.

Come an economic downturn, the federal government could step in to fill the void states create, just as it did during the Great Recession, providing aid so that states don’t have to, for instance, lay off as many teachers as they would otherwise. But there’s not much reason to believe conservatives in the U.S. Senate would be for that, either. So, an economic problem is going to collide with a political one, creating more pain for more people. (It doesn’t help that Republicans in Congress used $1.5 trillion on a tax cut for the rich and big corporations that had little economic effect, and will embolden those who think additional spending is impossible due to federal deficits and debt.)

Of course, there’s no divining whether a recession is imminent. It may be that the warning signs this time are just a false alarm. But another recession is going to come eventually. And when it does, it’s going to be more painful than necessary, not due to any innate economic condition, but because of choices policymakers made.

Now, a new Trump administration rule could make paying for lunch even harder for thousands of students. Via changes to a rule known as “categorical eligibility,” the Trump administration is trying to undermine access to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). This program is commonly used as a basis for certifying kids for free and reduced lunch. That could increase the number of kids going hungry at home and struggling to pay for lunch at school.

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Under categorical eligibility, households that qualify for certain cash benefits, including Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and General Assistance, are treated as “categorically eligible” for SNAP. Since they have already met the income and asset tests set by the state for the other program, they do not need to endure a separate eligibility determination to qualify for SNAP.

43 states have introduced a form of this known as “broad-based categorical eligibility,” which allows people to qualify for SNAP if they are eligible for certain non-cash benefits and services funded by TANF, such as child care assistance and work supports, along with Medicaid in some states. Since many states allow households with incomes up to 200 percent of the poverty line ($50,200 per year for a family of four) to receive these benefits, this method of qualifying people for SNAP creates a gradual phase out of benefits as family incomes increase. Without broad-based categorical eligibility, anyone earning more than 130 percent of the poverty line ($32,630 per year for a family of four) could lose their SNAP benefits.

In short, broad-based categorical eligibility improves access to SNAP — and would be radically altered by the new rule that the USDA will open for public comment tomorrow. Under the rule, only people receiving “substantial” benefits valued at $50 or more would be eligible, and only if they utilized work supports, child care vouchers, and subsidized employment.

The USDA estimates these changes could strip SNAP from 3.1 million people in 1.7 million households. A 2019 report estimated that similar changes could threaten access to school nutrition programs for 265,000 children who get free and reduced lunch due to their SNAP enrollment. But in a June 22 phone briefing with the House Committee on Education and Labor, the USDA admitted this number could approach 500,000. And in October 2019, the USDA admitted that nearly one million children could lose their lunch benefits.

Children in 2.9 million households experienced food insecurity in 2017. And while child poverty rates are falling, 41 percent of children remain low-income and have difficulty paying in the cafeteria — one reason the U.S. has a free and reduced lunch program. During the 2018-2019 school year, 22 million students a day ate free and reduced lunch across the United States. Nearly all U.S. public and nonprofit private schools participate in the federal school nutrition program, which compensates schools on a sliding scale for every meal served.

Eligibility for free and reduced school meals can be based on an application submitted by the student. But foster and migrant youth, runaways, and children in families with benefits like SNAP (and in some cases Medicaid) are automatically qualified for free meals. They can be identified through direct certification, a federally-required process that compares school enrollment records to records maintained by local benefits agencies. Children who qualify for SNAP via broad-based categorical eligibility may not be eligible for school lunch otherwise, say advocates. The USDA disputes this claim, saying children who lose SNAP would still be eligible by applying directly, though according to the agency’s own guidelines, this might not necessarily be true, and this would increase the administrative burden on schools.

Losing school lunch has serious implications for low-income children counting on year-round nutritional supports. Even the relatively low cost of school lunch, which typically costs less than $3 at full price, can be too much for children living on the margins. Hungry children have difficulty focusing and don’t perform as well in school. They can also experience behavioral problems that disrupt their educations as well as that of other students. Research also shows growing up with nutritional deprivation can cause developmental delays and lasting physical effects.

Fewer children eating meals is a problem for the school, as well, because school nutrition is already underfunded. The government compensates schools by meal served, not by child; if children aren’t receiving meals, the district will not receive state and federal funds. Reduced funds limit the school’s or district’s purchasing power, making it harder to negotiate affordable prices to keep meal costs down. At the same time, labor costs for school cafeterias will remain relatively consistent, forcing districts to pay for food preparation, administration, and other services with reduced budgets. Dropping children from the free lunch roll will have negative effects on district finances — which, as lunch debt shaming shows, are already precarious in some districts.

SNAP is designed to secure access to safe, wholesome food for people who have difficulty affording it on their own, and if the new rule becomes reality, affected children will lose the benefits paying for food at home as well as the eligibility for food at school at the same time. Some may go hungry, while others may begin to rack up school lunch debt, one carton of milk at a time. The affordability problem won’t vanish when the SNAP benefits do, and hunger will follow children from kitchen to classroom.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated (July 29 2019) with updated numbers regarding the estimate of how many children will be dropped from the free and reduced lunch program. It was updated again (October 16 2019) to reflect the USDA’s revised numbers.

My fibromyalgia doesn’t care about my work schedule. It doesn’t time its flare-ups according to my current proximity to heating pads. Even more than Beamer, my service dog, fibromyalgia is the most constant presence in my life, on my mind at all hours of the day. In the morning, my joints could be so sore that I forgo my cup of coffee, because I can’t trust my grip and I don’t want to clean up another shattered mug. By the afternoon, those aches may give way to a fog that clouds my mind until any attempt at sustained concentration feels like running up a downward escalator — a lot of effort, but little payoff.

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People with disabilities are supposed to be spared from the cuts. But in practice, many people with serious health conditions will be at risk of losing food assistance, because SNAP uses other government programs with an extremely limited definition of disability as proxies for disability status. So, I’m on the chopping block.

If I need to miss a shift because I woke up feeling particularly sore or because the afternoon fog rolled in early, the benefits I rely on to eat are threatened. Good day or bad, doctor’s appointment or not, I have to make sure I’m on time and ready, smiling at the customer service desk of the museum that is my work place.

Managing my condition is a full-time job, in addition to the job that actually pays me. To be able to show up for work, I have to go to three doctors’ appointments per week: two sessions of mental therapy and one session of occupational physical therapy. That doesn’t include the constant stream of other specialists who might have some new insight into my pain management: psychiatrists, rheumatologists, and pulmonologists.

All told, the copays add up to about $240 a month, just for the therapy sessions. That’s 12 times what I get from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. 20 bucks a month for food sounds trivial, but anyone who has ever really struggled knows that $20 can make or break you.  For me, it’s the difference between an extra visit with a specialist or suffering until the next paycheck hits.

That doesn’t mean $20 is enough — like most of the strategies I use to treat my disease, SNAP is inadequate but essential. But the administration is putting it at risk with this new rule.

All of us have limited time and energy to spend in our 24 hours. But for some of us, to make it through requires more effort than others. In the three years since my diagnosis, I’ve come to terms with the fact that fibromyalgia isn’t going away. The appointments and the meds and Beamer don’t care about my work schedule because they make my schedule possible in the first place. With this latest rule, the Trump Administration is doing the opposite — they insist that I continuously prove that I’m building a life for myself. Why can’t I just build it?

Editor’s note: To leave a comment on the proposed regulation to limit states’ ability to waive work requirements, visit handsoffSNAP.org.

For households that qualify for SNAP, February, the shortest month of the year, was a long one. During government shutdown, 40 million Americans who participate in the program experienced as many as 60 days between the issuance of their February and March SNAP benefits. The shortages in household budgets meant that food banks across the country were inundated.

“355 households on February 19,” says Kelli Hess, operations director for the Missoula Food Bank & Community Center in Missoula, Montana. Hess notes that historically, February is a slower month for the pantry — families are receiving tax returns, and the short month means SNAP benefits don’t have to stretch as far. Prior to February 19, the local food pantry’s busiest day had served 240 families. “It was absolutely fallout from the shutdown. People can’t survive without paychecks. And they can’t survive without SNAP. Which is why this proposed rule change is so scary.”

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The rule change, proposed by the Trump administration, would limit states’ ability to waive work requirements during periods of high unemployment. Similar cuts to the program were rejected by the bipartisan Farm Bill passed by Congress in December 2018.

The administrative rule change would kick Miriam Bayer, a local academic, off SNAP. She is composed and deliberate in her statements as she explains the situation, sitting in a coffee shop in downtown Missoula.

She holds a master’s degree in biology from the University of Montana. During her undergraduate work at Washington Lee, which she attended on a full scholarship, she began her research on salamanders — work that earned her a first author publication before graduation. She spent a year researching in Brazil and was awarded a prestigious PhD candidacy at the University of Montana, a placement that allowed her to continue her education debt-free. However, a debilitating migraine condition forced her to pivot from the PhD candidacy to the master’s program. It also resulted in significant debt.

“Because of my medical condition, it took me longer to graduate, and I had a lot of medical bills. I would max out on my out-of-pocket every year seeking treatment. Between neurology, I was in a chronic pain program, physical therapy. That combined with the cut in income from switching from my PhD to master’s, I signed up for SNAP. I don’t remember when I started going to the food bank. And I took out student loans.” During school, Bayer’s SNAP access was not time-restrained because she was working as a teaching assistant. Upon graduation in December 2018, she was designated as an ABAWD (able-bodied adult without dependents), and the clock started ticking.

ABAWDs can only access SNAP for three months in a thirty-six month period, unless they can document 20.5 hours of work per week. Bayer, who has part-time employment as a tutor, works 14 hours per week, in addition to searching for employment in her field and working to publish her graduate research. She is in her fourth month on SNAP and is only able to continue receiving basic food assistance as a participant in a job seeker’s program through Missoula Job Services.

“I have to document 20.5 hours of qualifying activities per week. Because it’s not 20 hours per week, my job tutoring doesn’t count.” Bayer must document job-seeking activities and visit Job Services weekly to meet with her assigned jobs consultant.

“It is hard. It’s hard to spend time on my research papers, getting them out there, and working my job 14 hours per week, and applying to jobs, and trying to get additional tutoring jobs to make ends meet in the meantime so I can perhaps wait a little bit longer for a career position.”

“It’s just meanness. It’s mean spirited.” Sixty miles to the south in Victor, Montana, Barbara Willing is struggling to survive. At 64 years old, she says she will never be able to retire. “My story is one of someone who would have been okay, if not for the recession. I lost everything. It wiped me out.”

With decades of experience on her résumé ranging from office management and secretarial work to manufacturing, technical editing, and linguistics, Willing, who has her master’s degree in English, felt this time of hardship would be temporary. “But at my age, no one will hire you. Not for a job that earns a real wage.”

Living in a rural community away from many services makes things more challenging. “Driving to appointments, having to prove I need these programs. I don’t have the money for transportation, but there’s no way I could afford the rent in Missoula. I have to live out here.”

Willing has been on SNAP since October 2018. She describes the application process as demanding, but not impossible. She waited to apply for assistance until she was truly desperate, with zero dollars to her name and in danger of losing her housing.

“I don’t know how they expect people to make it. I know that as part of this waiver I’m on I can work for free, volunteering somewhere. But I don’t have the money to buy the gas!”

Barriers to employment differ widely from circumstance to circumstance. For Bayer, Willing, and the 755,000 people across the country in similar positions, access to basic needs like food makes the pursuit of career or gainful employment livable. After allowing hundreds of thousands of Americans to go without paychecks during the government shutdown, this administration’s proposed rule is another example of tone-deaf policies that do not reflect the realities of America’s working class.

“The charitable food system is not prepared — is not capable — of picking up the need that this rule change would create. The shutdown was heinous, but it was temporary. This would be disastrous,” says Hess.

For people like Willing, “This rule change, it leaves me out in the cold.”

Editor’s note: To leave a comment on the proposed regulation to limit states’ ability to waive work requirements, visit handsoffSNAP.org.

This year, the renewal process has been made even harder by the partial government shutdown, which accelerated deadlines with no notice for the more than 40 million people who receive benefits. And that’s just one of the effects the shutdown has had on SNAP and other nutrition assistance programs.

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On Jan. 8, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that February SNAP benefits would be distributed by Jan. 20, in order to get around shutdown-related restrictions. That called for a herculean effort: Millions of new applications and recertifications that would normally be due in February now need to be submitted by mid-January. Normally, new applications and annual recertifications take place on a rolling basis. For recipients who couldn’t gather supporting material in time or didn’t know about the deadline, such as furloughed federal workers hoping for nutrition assistance while they remain without pay, the time to file for benefits has already come and gone.

At the same time, some grocers have stopped accepting SNAP because the government shutdown means they cannot renew their licenses. As the shutdown continues, the number of vendors will dwindle, a particular issue for people in areas with limited options.

The effects of these problems are wide-reaching. Nearly half of SNAP recipients are children, and LGBTQ people, along with disabled people, are much more likely to need nutrition assistance.

States administer the SNAP program, and the state-by-state chaos has been frustrating. “I have not received any update from the state’s human resource department about how this would affect us. In every other instance of benefit changes, we are sent copious written notification(s),” another recipient told TalkPoverty via email. Documentation also sometimes contradicted itself, adding even more uncertainty to the process.

Others reported that they heard about the deadline from news stories or Facebook, and struggled to get answers from officials in local offices — many of which set different deadlines, making it difficult to determine when applications and renewals needed to be submitted. At least one recipient read on social media that SNAP benefits distribution would be reversed if agencies ran out of money, something that shouldn’t be possible with EBT cards. Confusion and fear like this are familiar for many low-income people, who sometimes feel at the whims of capricious government policies and procedures.

“I’ll push myself not to use [benefits distributed early] until February but there’s a fear they could be taken away. Everything just seems so uncertain. Poor people know to use what we have when we have it because we can’t depend on what will be there in the future,” said one SNAP recipient.

SNAP is not the only nutrition assistance program with funding thrown into uncertainty by the shutdown. Also threatened are the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, known as WIC, which supplies benefits to 7 million pregnant people, new parents, infants, and children, and the Food Distribution Program in Native American communities, which fed over 90,000 people a month in 2017. The latter adds to the shutdown-induced woes — which include limitations on access to health care — in Native communities. The national free and reduced-price lunch program, which feeds more than 30 million kids annually, could also be in danger if the shutdown persists into March.

Even after the government reopens, the danger isn’t over, thanks to a dangerous Trump administration proposal to make work requirements even harsher in SNAP, which Congress explicitly refused to do in the latest Farm Bill. Currently, 33 states and Washington, D.C. have waivers in place for high unemployment areas to relieve the strict time limits for so-called “able-bodied adults without dependents” written into SNAP in 1996, which restrict benefits eligibility to three months out of every three years for those considered “able-bodied” with no legal dependents. The Trump administration wants to sharply curtail states’ flexibility to use these waivers, throwing 755,000 under- and unemployed people off SNAP.

“I don’t have contingency plans because I can’t have any,” says a disabled SNAP recipient in Colorado who struggled to get an answer about her recertification documents, normally due in February. Members of low-income communities have extensive experience creating their own safety nets to support each other through hard times, but “I think that people are going to get burnt out and stretched too thin by all the need that surrounds them.”

Editor’s note: This post has been updated to clarify the Trump administration proposal on SNAP work requirements and the current status of work requirement waivers.

The problem was that Novo Dia held the only keys to a USDA program dedicated to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program processing software and equipment for 1,700 farmers’ markets nationwide. Without Novo Dia providing this service, markets would have no way to accept SNAP — a disruption that would cost farmers income and SNAP recipients food.

If you’ve ever attempted to switch your cell phone provider but keep your actual device, you might be able to relate: Farmers’ markets had perfectly functional and expensive equipment that simply would not work with any other SNAP processing software. It’s the government equivalent of trying to keep your iPhone when you move from Verizon to AT&T.

This episode raised a lot of questions about the government’s relationship with tech companies tasked with administering public programs: How does it choose who to hire? How does it hold those companies accountable? And how do those decisions affect the daily lives of low-income Americans who rely on being able to access their benefits?

The answers are vitally important: Governments are increasingly relying on new technologies to sort applications, manage caseloads, and distribute benefits. How such technology is contracted, developed, and deployed will have real impacts on millions of low-income Americans.

Take, for instance, what happened in Washington, D.C. In the fall of 2016, the city’s Department of Human Services, along with the contractor Infosys Public Services Inc., replaced a computer system the District had been using since the early 1990s to enroll low-income residents in SNAP and cash assistance programs. The Food and Nutrition Service, the USDA agency responsible for administering the country’s nutrition assistance programs, issued a letter to the D.C. Department of Human Services, warning against launching the new system without having done adequate testing.

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But two months later, D.C. rolled out the system anyway — to repeated outages and glitches, including benefits not being loaded onto Electronic Benefit Transfer cards.

Frustrations between agency employees and customers ran so high that there were physical altercations in some enrollment offices, causing the union representing the workers to issue a formal grievance. The union asked that the agency return to using the previous technology or distribute hazard pay to employees.

Rhode Island, meanwhile, has been struggling to serve its SNAP recipients since it rolled out a new $364 million computer system in 2016 — known as the Unified Health Infrastructure Project — causing delays in distribution by the thousands. Recently, the Food and Nutrition Service threatened to withhold more than $900,000 in federal reimbursements due to Rhode Island’s continued failure to address a list of nearly 30 items related to system functionality, issuance of benefits, backlogs, certification, and more.

In turn, state Department of Nutrition Services Director Courtney Hawkins blamed Deloitte Consulting, the company contracted to build the computer system saying, “This formal warning underscores the fact that Deloitte has not yet delivered a fully functioning system that works on behalf of Rhode Islanders.” In April, the company apologized for its disastrous roll-out.

To date, two federal class action lawsuits have been filed against Rhode Island over its SNAP program. Recently, it was reported that the total cost of its new computer system had reached “$647.7 million through the 2019-20 federal fiscal year, with $138 million of that amount to be covered by state taxpayers and the rest by the federal government.”

Part of the problem in developing these systems is how the government chooses which companies to hire, said Dave Guarino, director of GetCalFresh, a project of Code for America. He notes that there are only “a small number of vendors who know how to navigate the procurement process, and they’re the ones who get the contracts.”

Thus, the proposal and bidding process limits the amount of competition and creates stagnancy in the technology developed for government programs. It also leaves out newer, smaller, and more innovative companies.

In theory, this is because the government process is designed to decrease risk, given the high amount of sensitive and confidential information managed by these systems, so it’s the well-known contractors with a track record of managing large projects who ultimately get the gig.

But Guarino says that government technology crises, such as IT disasters for SNAP recipients, highlight the need for a true shift in thinking about risk and agility. “We should be demanding better software and better experiences,” said Guarino. “But if we want government to be able to act more nimbly and quickly, we also need to be able to say that government can take more risks.”

While risk-taking can have downsides, Guarino said the best practice is to test new ideas “on a really small scale in a way that minimizes risk, but maximizes learning” — a concept that could have helped to prevent harm caused by the failure of the D.C. system roll-out, as problems could have been spotted and fixed with a relatively small control group.

Guarino also noted the importance of working with a broad range of partners to develop and administer technology, as well as dividing up tasks to “the best firm for each job.”

His own project, GetCalFresh, is one such successful model. GetCalFresh offers online SNAP applications for 36 counties in California, and its technology was developed to measure and remove barriers that often prevent low-income people from accessing their benefits. Users can easily submit SNAP applications by mobile phone or computer, often in fewer than 10 minutes, and can also send verification documents securely via their phones. And by working with a wide range of partners, including Code For America, state and county agencies, and organizations, Guarino said the project is more successful than it would be with a single entity at the helm.

“These things often aren’t talked about as dimensions of why poverty persists and why some poverty solutions don’t reach everybody they could,” said Guarino, “But they’re a really huge deal.”

The thousands of farmers and customers affected by the Novo Dia debacle would likely agree. And as D.C., Rhode Island and surely other places have proven, short-sighted decisions and worse implementation of new government tech can adversely impact scores of people. Indeed, if we want innovative, effective poverty solutions in today’s digital landscape, we need to think hard about tech.

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) goes by many names depending on the state where you’re applying for services, but the basics are the same: Recipients are assigned caseworkers and they report their progress—as often as weekly—to show that they are participating in approved work-related activities for the required number of hours. TANF means constant check-ins and a complete loss of autonomy in any chosen career path for little in return. Cash assistance amounts are detrimentally low—sometimes less than $200 a month.

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In the new Farm Bill proposed by Rep. Mike Conaway (R-TX), Chairman of the House Committee on Agriculture, Conaway’s mission is to change the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, more commonly known as food stamps) to mirror the TANF program. Congressional Democrats adamantly argued against making such changes, which would reduce the number of people who can get the food assistance they need.

Conaway’s Farm Bill would make SNAP’s current work requirements even harsher. Nearly any non-disabled adult under age 60 who isn’t able to work 20 hours every week would only receive benefits for three months every three years. If they’re raising a child age 6 or older, they would still be subject to the new rules. If they’re unemployed or working a job that isn’t assigning them enough hours, tough luck. Much like TANF, people would need to check in monthly or risk losing their food benefits for 12 months for their first “failure to comply,” and 36 months for their second. Rep. Sean Maloney (D-NY) says that that this policy is simply “a backdoor way to kick people off the program.”

Agriculture Committee Ranking Member Collin Peterson (D-MN) argued against the changes several times in the committee’s nearly six-hour meeting on the bill. “You need to understand what you’re doing,” he pleaded. “When we put the work requirements into TANF and SNAP, one of the biggest problems is lack of flexibility.”

When I applied for TANF in 2007, I had to attend work preparation classes that were several hours long. Even though I’d worked full-time for more than 10 years, I had to learn how to write a resume, how to go online and look for jobs, and I was told I should consider a career as a secretary or a baker. I had to mark these career paths on a sheet, and tell my caseworker my plan to pursue those fields, even though that wasn’t my interest. Higher education, even at the local community college, wasn’t an option. All of this seemed for show, and a waste of everyone’s time, since I was a month away from giving birth to my first child and determined to be a writer.

Seven years later, as a possible TANF applicant again, I now had a bachelor’s degree. I’d still have to attend those same classes, but with the added stress of finding a child care facility that would accept TANF’s payments for my daughter to attend. Midway through reading the thick packet of paperwork my caseworker had mailed me to apply, I called to ask how much money I’d receive each month as a family of three. “Probably about 80 dollars more than your child support,” she said with a sigh. “It’s probably not even worth it for you to apply.” (If a custodial parent is already receiving a monthly amount in child support, the state reroutes the payments to the agency, and pays the participant directly instead.)

“Okay,” I told my caseworker, tucking the papers back into the manila envelope before I tossed it into the trash. I was not only a qualified applicant, but one the program was supposed to help. Yet TANF’s maze of paperwork is so incredibly difficult to work through that many people, like me, are discouraged before they even begin.

House Democrats voiced their concerns that Conaway’s Farm Bill would similarly overburden SNAP recipients and program administrators if it switched to running as a work program instead of a food program. The amount of paperwork that people would be required to file on a monthly basis—and that caseworkers would need to process—would require new systems, new employees, and training. While House Democrats argued that more than 2 million people would be kicked off SNAP or have their benefits reduced, and 265,000 kids would consequently lose automatic access to free meals at school, that wouldn’t be the end of the suffering—the travesty would continue as more people would lose benefits due to misplaced paperwork or being unable to meet a new work requirement due to a lack of transportation, or child care, or caring for a family member, or any number of reasons.

“States will be unable to provide the services expected of them. And rather than take on the cost of serving their clients … it’s very likely states will take the steps to cut them off all together,” says Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-OH).

Despite reports that more than half of households receiving SNAP are working households—a number that jumps to 80 percent in the years before and after qualifying for food benefits— Conaway wants to force recipients to provide proof that they are worthy of getting help with food. That they are, essentially, “legitimately poor.”

Fudge argued that a better approach would be to raise the minimum wage, noting that cafeteria employees in the building where the committee met that day made less than $2,000 a month, and therefore qualified for SNAP. “In fact,” she added, “raising the minimum wage to just $12 an hour would save about $53 billion in SNAP over 10 years.”

House Republicans on the committee didn’t seem to want to hear that side of the argument, though. Instead, by turning SNAP into a program like TANF, the amount of people able to get food assistance would dwindle. One can only assume that perhaps that’s the whole point.

Now, Congressional Republicans are trying to make it even harder for the frailest, poorest, and most vulnerable Americans to access food assistance. They seek to impose harsh new work requirements that will force some of the most marginalized Americans to run a convoluted labyrinth of wage and hour verification paperwork over and over again.

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It is a transparently cynical move to chop the program and take food from people who are hungry. Even those who do everything the system demands will be denied assistance—and I am absolutely certain of this, because it almost happened to me.

A few years ago, I was sick and getting sicker. I was not yet sick enough for surgery but far too sick to work.

I have Crohn’s, a chronic, incurable inflammatory bowel disease that causes my immune system to shred portions of my own small intestine. On a certain level, it’s a simple plumbing problem: the small intestine is like a long flexible pipe that brings food from the stomach to the large intestine, winding and twisting back and forth in the abdomen. When scar tissue builds up, it constricts the pipe, making it too narrow for most foods to get through. And then the pipe can clog.

Those clogs are called “small bowel obstructions” and, unlike a backed-up sink, they’re a potentially life-threatening medical emergency. I’ve experienced the special hell of having a tube shoved up my nose, down my throat, through my stomach and into my small intestine. I’ve watched as that tube sucked small bits of almond out through my nose. And, with some of the finest professors of surgery Harvard Medical School has to offer, I’ve discussed the odds that I’d live through emergency surgery if suction didn’t work.

After the almond incident, my physicians prescribed a strict low-residue and low-FODMAP diet. I was highly motivated to adhere to it; I understood the stakes. But as I got sicker and became unable to work, I could barely afford any food, never mind the diet my physicians prescribed. I didn’t have any income. So I applied for SNAP.

First, I faced an extensive application. But, more importantly, I was told that a face-to-face interview was required, and that the Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance (DTA), the state agency charged with administering SNAP, scheduled the interview on their timetable. As an applicant, you showed up when they told you, where they told you—or no food for you.

My life at this point consisted of debilitating symptoms: constant diarrhea, severe abdominal pain, nausea that even powerful prescription anti-emetics barely controlled, anemia, arthritis, and crippling fatigue. But despite my failing health, I had not been declared disabled by any government agency.

Under the current SNAP eligibility rules, an “Able-Bodied Adult Without Dependents” (ABAWD) between the ages of 18 and 49 can only receive 3 months of SNAP benefits in any 3-year period if they do not meet the existing SNAP work requirements. Yes, there are already work requirements for SNAP, but Congressional Republicans are pushing for still more draconian rules. They assure us that just as disabled folks are supposed to be exempt under the current rules—an exemption that has proven elusive—they will be exempt under the new regulations, too.

However, proving disability to the government is exceedingly difficult. First, it virtually requires ongoing, meaningful, affordable access to comprehensive medical care. Without medical records, government agencies are loathe to find an applicant disabled. (Yet, conservatives are also working to roll back access to health care at every turn, including by imposing work requirements on Medicaid, making care even more of a challenge to obtain.) Proving disability also often requires the cooperation of overworked health care providers in completing legal forms they’re not trained to deal with. Doctors are taught to diagnose and treat, not judge someone’s capacity to work against specific, highly technical legal criteria. And it means a lot of work for the applicant—work they may be too sick to do.

When I was eventually healthy enough to apply for Supplemental Security Income (SSI), it took dozens of hours of work from me to gather, review, and collate my voluminous medical records (over 500 pages). It took even more time to complete the application forms Social Security sent me. I approached the work and writing that formed the basis of my SSI application like it was an appellate case before the Massachusetts Supreme Court. In total, just applying for SSI took me more than two months of working whenever I was medically able. I was fortunate enough to get approved for SSI at the initial application stage. Many people my age don’t.

Because I was so sick, I asked DTA to conduct the interview for my SNAP application via telephone. I also asked that the call be in the afternoon because my symptoms were a bit more manageable then. As an attorney, I had the benefit of knowing that the Code of Massachusetts Regulations, part of the law that governs SNAP applications, required that DTA grant my request. But DTA didn’t reply—or at least, I thought they didn’t reply.

Despite giving DTA my full, complete, and correct address, that’s not where they were sending letters. They failed to include my apartment number on the mail they sent me. (As if I lived in a house, when I couldn’t even make the rent on my half of a tiny one-bedroom apartment.) DTA screwed up, I never got their mail, and I wasn’t receiving SNAP.

I called my DTA caseworker, just as I was supposed to do. I would call and then wait on hold for 30 to 45 minutes. An operator would then answer, and transfer me to a voice mailbox. (I wasn’t given the option of directly dialing the extension.) If the voice mailbox wasn’t full, I would leave a message. If it was full, which was usually the case, I would have to start over. After another 30 to 45 minutes on hold, I’d ask the operator for a different case worker, and leave that person a message. I repeated this process daily.

While waiting for DTA to return my many messages, I could never, ever allow the phone to go unanswered—they simply wouldn’t try calling again. No matter how sick I was, no matter if I was vomiting or toileting or running a 103° fever, if I missed a phone call from DTA, during my next interaction with them, they’d accuse me of “non-compliance.”*

Usually the person returning my desperate messages was someone who didn’t “know the file” and whose only reply to my desperate questions like “What do I need to do in order to schedule the formal interview?” was “Sorry, can’t help.” I was slipping through the cracks.

Because I am a lawyer, I knew that if I could somehow hang on long enough, I could eventually get my case before an administrative law judge. And, because I am a lawyer, I knew how to keep a log of every single SNAP related phone call I had in a way that a judge would understand and likely find credible. I knew which conversations I was legally allowed to record, and which I wasn’t. I knew what was important to include in the notes I took during every call. Or I did sometimes. Other times the pain, the fatigue, and the brain fog from the methotrexate—a chemo drug used to treat autoimmune diseases—was too much and I couldn’t think straight. I could only hope they didn’t call then.

And then one day, after weeks of waiting and dozens of hours spent trying to fight my way through the red tape, I finally got a piece of mail from DTA. I opened the letter outside. It was summer, and I wasn’t supposed to be in the sun because of one of the medications I was on. They denied my application because I didn’t attend the “in-person interview.” I sat in the street and cried—and I wasn’t supposed to cry, either. After choking down homemade oral rehydration solution, I got to work on this:

What you’ve just read is, essentially, a legal complaint and a motion for a hearing before an administrative law judge. Although the letter is just two pages, dozens of hours of research went into drafting it. Not to mention four years of college, two years of public health graduate school, and three years of law school that enabled me to research the pertinent state and federal statutes and regulations, as well as find and analyze all the relevant legal rulings. In response, DTA reversed the denial and awarded benefits retroactive to the date of my SNAP application. The entire process had taken 10 weeks.

My question for Congressional Republicans is this: Could you—while in constant pain, malnourished, dehydrated, and terrified of eating the wrong thing because it could kill you—have done better? Adding more punishing work requirements for nutritional assistance will harm some of your most vulnerable constituents.

In the wealthiest country in the world, you shouldn’t need to be a lawyer to get a little help with food.

* Editor’s note: A DTA spokesperson says that subsequent to the author’s applying for benefits, the agency has made numerous “reforms,” including: a “simplified SNAP application,” a mobile app for smart phones, a web-based portal for clients “to self-service and view their information,” and allowing any available caseworker to assist an applicant.

For several years, when I worked a scattered schedule of hours cleaning houses while putting myself through college and raising my young daughter on my own, I always carried around three months’ worth of income and expenses in a purple folder. Because of my irregular schedule, and the hand-written personal checks I received instead of pay stubs, it seemed as if I constantly needed to prove to someone that I was, in fact, in need. That I was verifiably poor.

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The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, otherwise known as food stamps) was the one program we could rely on back then, even though it was difficult to sign up for it sometimes. It was, by all accounts, predictable, and something I could budget for. Most importantly, by checking the “SNAP” box on other paperwork, like my daughter’s free school lunches, our utility assistance through the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), and both of my daughters’ Medicaid, I automatically qualified for benefits. No questions, no long phone conversations, no missing work to spend an afternoon waiting to talk to a caseworker. This is called broad-based categorical eligibility, and it faces extinction, joining many other cuts in the House Agriculture Committee’s 2018 Farm Bill.

During almost six hours of recent debates over the bill, dubbed the “Conaway Bill” after Committee Chairman Mike Conaway (R-TX), who presented it without much sub-committee discussion beforehand, House Democrats spent the majority of the time angrily raking the proposed repeals and amendments surrounding the nutrition program focused on food insecurity.

“This bill as it is written kicks people off the SNAP program,” the committee’s ranking member, Collin Peterson, a Democrat from Minnesota barked in his opening statements. “The chairman calls it self-selection. Call it whatever you want, it’s reducing the SNAP rolls.”

The “self-selection” Peterson is referring to is Conaway’s plan to force people to complete additional paperwork. SNAP would now require recipients to prove they have worked enough hours to qualify for the program by submitting statements at the end of every month. If a person fails to do this, they’d lose benefits for 12 months; the next time for 36. That’s four years of being ineligible for food benefits for not submitting a single piece of paper or failing to meet the work requirements for a single month. Conaway refers to this as self-selecting because he considers any failure to complete paperwork to be the same as a recipient opting out of the program on their own accord. Representative David Scott (D-GA) argued it was “additional duplicate confusing paperwork requirements” put in the bill “designed to confuse folks.”

When I was in need, I had to reapply for a program every few months, whether it was SNAP, WIC coupons for milk and cereal, or child care grants. Since I was self-employed and supplemented my income with student loans, I had to provide proof of the hours I spent in clients’ homes, either by receipt of deposit of monies earned or a statement from the client. It was exhausting, labor-intensive, and often meant many hours on the phone, or at the department’s office, waiting for several hours in line—time that cost me jobs and money.

By repealing the broad-based categorical eligibility, severing the link between SNAP and programs like free school lunches and LIHEAP, many people would be forced to submit applications for several kinds of benefits separately, even having to show actual utility bills to get the amounts deducted from their income. Currently, folks who qualify for LIHEAP get a standard utility allowance, much like the standardized deductions in taxes. “This is a backdoor way to kick people off the program,” said Rep. Sean Maloney (D-NY), calling out the unfairness in severing the ties between SNAP and LIHEAP. “You exempted elderly people from producing utility bills but you didn’t exempt disabled people.” In a later round of questioning, Maloney repeatedly asked the chairman and other committee members why this was, paused, and said their silence was the answer he needed.

In my office, I ran my hand over that weathered, purple folder before placing it in a larger one labeled “Single Mom Stuff.” A box full of old paperwork sat next to my feet, including a half-inch thick packet of documents I’d compiled just three years ago in an attempt to receive a grant for child care. In it, I’d tried to explain what I did as a freelance writer, and how I’d managed to work up until that point with a months-old infant and older kid in first grade. When the letter came to tell me I made $100 too much to qualify, I called my caseworker, who said, “Well, you work late at night when your children are sleeping, anyway, so you don’t really need child care.” I almost hissed at her that working until 2am wasn’t exactly by choice.

For 2 million people who would lose SNAP benefits under the new Farm Bill, and the millions of others who would eventually “self-select” to no longer receive them, either by not getting a utility bill or proof of work hours submitted on time, it undoubtedly won’t be by choice, either.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to reflect the latest version of the proposed House Farm Bill. 

The conspicuously named HOPE Act (Act to Restore Hope Opportunity and Prosperity for Everyone), introduced by Mississippi State Representative Chris Brown, passed the House and Senate and is now expected to be signed into law. The legislation reads like a compilation of all-time favorites from a conservative wish list: It would enrich a private contractor by outsourcing the work of verifying people’s eligibility for social-support programs, including Medicaid and SNAP (food stamps); throw people who likely qualify for assistance off of these programs; and make it more difficult for people to get food and income assistance in the future.

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It does all of this under the guise of helping people—Rep. Brown described the bill as “an incredible opportunity” to help people “move out of welfare dependency and poverty to a better life.” It’s also about eliminating fraud, supposedly, though legislators offered no proof that this is a problem in the state.

The HOPE Act applies to all Mississippians who receive Medicaid, TANF (income assistance), or SNAP. Anyone enrolled in those programs will have 10 days to reply to a written request for information proving eligibility, as deemed necessary by a private contractor hired by the state. That deadline would be tough for anyone to meet, but the fact that many program beneficiaries are disabled, unemployed, lack stable housing, or are simply living under the everyday pressures of poverty makes the deadline all but impossible for many people.

“Just getting that notice to program participants can be a real challenge,” said Matt Williams, the director of research at the Mississippi Low Income Child Care Initiative. “Then you’re talking about making sense of a lot of highly technical information, and putting that in written form too.”

Currently, a Mississippi Department of Human Services (DHS) caseworker determines eligibility by sitting down with an applicant and sorting through liquid assets, utility bills, loans, child-support payments, child-care costs, employee pay stubs, and other sources of income and expenses. It’s a time-consuming process, but the agency has been rewarded for doing it well. Between FY2012 and FY2014, the department received $8.75 million in bonus federal funds for its SNAP-payment accuracy rates.

Under the HOPE Act, however, that kind of reciprocal relationship and guidance will be gone. “People will have to figure out on their own how to acquire the requested information and then explain it—in writing—within 10 days,” said Williams. “If they don’t, they’re going to be kicked off.”

Rep. Brown and other proponents claim that the state will save money through this privatized system. But the assertion is belied by the state’s own analysis, which was conducted by a private firm that supports the legislation. It estimated a cost of $10 million to $12 million, with about $2.5 million covered by state taxpayers. Williams said even that would be hard to come up with given the state’s tax and budget cuts over the past two years. But the actual cost will likely be much higher, and the study wrongly assumed that the federal government will pick up most of the tab for the privatized system. Tennessee considered nearly identical legislation and found that it would run $81 million with the state covering 95 percent of the cost. The legislators killed that bill.

“We will be out millions of more dollars that could have benefited children, the elderly, and disabled people who are already neglected due to budget cuts,” said Williams.

The HOPE Act will also make it more likely that childless adults between the ages of 18 and 49 will be limited to three months of SNAP benefits in any three-year period, unless they’re working. Under current law, the governor can apply for a waiver to this time limit during periods of high unemployment—during recessions, or for particular regions with high unemployment rates, like the Mississippi Delta. Now it will be up to a hostile state legislature to ask for the waiver. Moreover, if any household is found to be out of compliance with any requirement of SNAP or TANF, the children lose benefits, too.

Mississippians can thank the Foundation for Government Accountability—an ally of the American Legislative Exchange Council and an affiliate of the Koch-funded State Policy Network—for providing Rep. Brown with the model for this legislation. The right-wing group’s past efforts include mandatory drug-testing for TANF recipients in Florida. Studies showed that there was no greater incident of drug use for people who receive benefits than the general public—and a lower rate compared to all Floridians—so the court struck it down as an illegal search and seizure. The drug-testing also cost the state far more to implement than it saved in benefits denied to the handful of people who tested positive.

Whatever the costs of Mississippi’s new system, proponents claim that they will be more than offset by savings as the private contractor discovers “fraud” and kicks people off of assistance, particularly Medicaid. However, Illinois used a similar system and found that more than 80 percent of cancelled Medicaid cases were simply due to a lack of response from the recipient, and nearly all of them ended up qualifying and reenrolling. The number of cases referred for fraud investigation was, in fact, “negligible.”

Mississippi’s move comes as conservatives across the country are kicking people off of needed assistance, under the pretense of freeing them from “dependency,” or giving states “flexibility” to better meet a community’s needs. Next up? More governors will likely seek waivers from protections for Medicaid recipients so that they can impose new work requirements, higher premiums, and time limits—and offer more largesse to the wealthy.

This post first appeared on The Nation. It has been modified slightly from the original. 

Once again, FOX News has completely mischaracterized the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), claiming that the President is “buying votes” by keeping millions of Americans on the SNAP rolls despite the “full economic recovery.” That statement is demonstrably false and racially tinged.

Here’s why it’s false:

First, whether or not an individual person is enrolled in SNAP is ultimately the responsibility of state governments, most of which are now run by conservative Republican governors. The federal government sets broad SNAP eligibility guidelines but states actually “enroll” people.

Second, the President isn’t running for office again. As he noted in his recent State of the Union address, he’s already won two campaigns and is finally free to carry out the remainder of his term focused on substance over politics. So, the claim that he’s keeping people on the SNAP roles to buy their votes is absurd on its face.

Third, out of the 20 states with the highest rates of SNAP participation, 16 voted for Governor Mitt Romney in the 2012 Presidential race and the same states overwhelmingly voted for Senator John McCain in 2008.

Fourth, the SNAP rolls rose during the presidencies of both George W. Bush and Barack Obama because poverty rose during both presidencies, even in times that the stock market was soaring. The FOX segment also fails to take into account the great lengths individuals have to go to in order to enroll in the SNAP program, which by the way, has a fraud rate of about 1 percent (about half the criminality rate of the U.S. House of Representatives). The implication that signing up for SNAP is easy just isn’t true. It’s far easier for billionaires to get their tax refunds than for hungry Americans to get SNAP.

Hunger is a massive problem in America. Despite growth at the top of the economy, in 2013 there were 49 million Americans who were food insecure. The reason 46 million Americans are now on SNAP is not because the President is attempting to buy votes or persuade people with handouts. It’s because hunger is a huge problem, which our government has failed to take on to the extent necessary to adequately fix the problem. Because child nutrition programs are also inadequate, 16 million American children live in households that lack sufficient food. (See: http://billmoyers.com/2015/01/26/ending-child-hunger-in-america/)

It’s also offensive and false to imply that hungry Americans and SNAP recipients don’t want to work. USDA has found that—with regard to families with children suffering from food insecurity and hunger—68 percent contained at least one adult working full-time, 10 percent had at least one adult working part-time, 7 percent had an unemployed adult actively looking for work, and 7 percent were headed by an adult with a disability. The main problem is low wages and few jobs, not laziness.

Here’s why the FOX segment is racially tinged:

Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney and much of the right blamed their 2012 loss on higher minority turn out and the supposed gifts that Obama gave to minority voters. This Fox broadcast is playing off similar racial stereotypes, despite the fact that the plurality of SNAP recipients are white.

The largest reason for hunger in America today is conservative policies that reduce wages and slash social safety nets. The very conservatives who pushed the policies that sunk our economic ship shouldn’t complain when we are forced to provide life preservers in the form of food for the drowning. It’s no wonder the most conservative states are also the hungriest.

The reality is that all of us, including every employee at Fox News, relies on government sometimes. Fox News Founder and head Roger Ailes majored in radio and television while at Ohio University; this government-run – arguably socialist institution – provided a vital push to Ailes’ career.

Shame on FOX for perpetuating race-baiting, victim-blaming lies and half-truths to the American people. They deserve more, including a government that doesn’t allow its people to go hungry.

SNAP has helped to keep food on the table and in the fridges of families for five decades. It is also a program that helps keep kids and families healthy in times of need.  Yet, despite its success, SNAP often faces political attacks that result in cuts to its funding.

One significant cut occurred almost a year ago on November 1, 2013. Every family participating in SNAP saw their benefits reduced, meaning less food and fewer meals.  The impact of this and other cuts helps to show the importance of SNAP and demonstrates why it should be strengthened and celebrated instead of demonized and diminished.

It is critical that we learn and share more about SNAP—what it really does for families and why it is so important to millions of Americans.  We need to help people understand that the program is a strong anti-poverty measure that helps families thrive.

That’s why on Thursday, October 30 from 2:00-4:00 ET, the Center for Hunger-Free Communities, Witnesses to Hunger, and over 40 other organizations will tweet and post about SNAP using #snap4SNAP.  We will post pictures, information, and stories about SNAP, and we hope you will join us.

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Members of Witnesses to Hunger are kicking off the #snap4SNAP campaign today at TalkPoverty with these reflections on the role of SNAP in their lives:

“My youngest daughter, Prayer, is 5 years old and has severe food allergies – to wheat, eggs, peanuts, and tree nuts. To keep her healthy and safe I need to buy her food from specialty stores, which costs a lot of money. With the cuts to SNAP, it has been even more of a struggle to make sure she gets the food she needs. And in that process, I’ve had to make tough choices, taking away some of the money I allot for food for my other daughter in order to feed Prayer. Taking food away from one mouth to try to feed the other – it’s terrible. And if I can’t get the proper nutrition, I’m of no good to either one of my daughters.”

Juell Frazier, Witnesses to Hunger, Boston

Juell is the mother of two girls. She graduated from medical assistance school, and is working on getting a Bachelor’s degree in human services. Juell wants to see changes in Boston, including holding landlords responsible and creating clean and safe environments for families.

“Families depend on SNAP every month. Any cuts to SNAP were just crazy – they make things harder for families who are already struggling.”

Tiffany Ross, Witnesses to Hunger, Philadelphia

Tiffany is the mother of one daughter, Zaniyah. Zaniyah’s father, Troy, was shot and killed while Tiffany was still pregnant. Tiffany was living in a homeless shelter for young mothers, and is now in an apartment subsidized by the shelter. She completed a community college program on a scholarship and now works as a pharmacy technician.

“I know what it is like to struggle to feed your family.  I have four children and I rely on SNAP to ensure my kids and I have enough to eat.  As the cost of food increases, it gets harder and harder for parents like myself to feed our families.  I already know that I am not giving my children the nutrients they need simply because I cannot afford it.  Like all other SNAP participants, I received a cut in November. And now, since I live in New Jersey, I will face another major cut thanks to “heat and eat” provision cut from this year’s Farm Bill. I cannot tell my children, ‘I’m sorry we don’t have anything for dinner tonight.’  My 14 year old eats 4 or 5 times when he comes home from school because his class eats lunch before 11 o’clock each day.  He is hungry when he gets home and I do my best to try to fill his belly. Any reduction in SNAP benefits will mean I have to take money from paying my bills to use at the grocery store since I don’t have any buffer to help make up for this loss, meaning my son will be hungry.  My SNAP benefits already did not last for the month. I was already struggling to keep food on the table. SNAP needs to be protected, and supported! Not taken away from families who are just trying to do right by their kids.”  

Anisa Davis, Witnesses to Hunger, Camden

Anisa is the mother of four children and grandmother of a 4 year-old. She is helping to raise her grandson while her daughter works two jobs, and she is also supporting her oldest son, a full-time college student.

No parent should have to worry about whether their child will be ok, whether there will be enough food for them to eat

“I already work to stretch my SNAP benefits by shopping around for the best deals and I go to three food pantries – but especially after the November 1^st cuts last year I still don’t have enough to last the month, and it has increased my stress and decreased my food supply.  My son loves bananas and I would love to encourage him to eat more fruits but I can’t afford them and they aren’t available at food pantries.  No parent should have to worry about whether their child will be ok, whether there will be enough food for them to eat, whether you will have dinner for them after school but I do worry.”

Bonita Cuff, Witness to Hunger, Boston

Bonita is a mother of five, ranging in age from 6 to 26. She currently cares for her young niece whose parents both work but cannot afford safe childcare; once her niece goes to pre-k Bonita hopes to return to full-time employment to better the lives of her family members.

“I go to the pantry at the New Haven Salvation Army. I took a picture of the sign outside that says, ‘Emergency Pantry.’ It says it’s an emergency, and before I could use it as an emergency. But since the cuts to SNAP, the pantry is now a part of my monthly budgeting for food.”

Kimberly Hart, Witnesses to Hunger, New Haven

Kim is an advocate for social and economic injustices.  She is also a member of Mothers for Justice, the New Haven Food Policy Council, and the Food Assistance Working Group. 

“It’s a tragedy that we constantly have to prove that we exist.  With the November 1^st cuts we were again pushed further and further away from the assistance we need to provide stability for our families.  We are taught as children to fight for what we believe in and take a stand.  Witnesses to Hunger will continue to do just that.”

Barbie Izquierdo, Witnesses to Hunger, Philadelphia

Barbie is the mother of one son and one daughter. She was featured in the documentary A Place at the Table, sharing her experience of struggling with food insecurity and the cliff effect. Today, Barbie is an honor-roll student at Ezperanza College where she studies criminal justice.

Join us this Thursday as we snap into action to celebrate SNAP.  You can take part by signing up here or simply hop on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram on Thursday from 2:00 – 4:00pm ET and search for #snap4SNAP.

Because hunger is an ongoing problem in America, our nation has steadfastly supported a federal nutrition assistance program that feeds hungry families as it boosts local economies. Though some politicians disingenuously argue otherwise, it still does both of those things very well.

SNAP reduces food insecurity and, in 2012 alone, lifted more than 4 million Americans out of poverty. More than half of those individuals—2.1 million—were children, who are potentially the most devastated by hunger due to increased risk of poor health, hospitalizations, developmental delays, behavioral problems and low academic achievement. Of course, food insecurity causes harm at every age, and SNAP is effective as well for millions of seniors and working-age adults in blunting the harshest impacts of hunger and poverty.

In terms of economic benefits, SNAP creates markets, and spurs economic growth and jobs in both rural and urban communities, at grocers, farmers’ markets, military commissaries, manufacturers and farms. In addition, because SNAP beneficiaries spend 97 percent of their allotments in the month they are issued, the economy as a whole benefits. Research conducted by Moody’s Analytics and USDA estimate that there is between $1.73 to $1.79 in economic growth per $1 of SNAP benefits.

With so many proven advantages—not to mention a historically recognized moral and bipartisan responsibility to care for our nation’s most vulnerable citizens—why do so many leaders attempt to justify cutting the program, or trot out tired reform proposals we know won’t work?

For example, the recent Farm Bill cut SNAP benefits and access to the program in several ways, hurting low-income, hungry people as well as our economy.

Most recently, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan doubled-down on a warmed over bad idea when he proposed to take 11 safety net programs, including SNAP, and convert them into a single block grant for states, with few minimum standards other than the kinds of harsh conditions for beneficiaries that Rep. Ryan favors.

Ironically, the weaknesses of programs converted into block grants—how they lose support over time as their goals are watered down, funds are diverted to more politically powerful constituents, and the grant become less effective and more vulnerable to attack—are highlighted by Rep. Ryan’s companion proposal. He would expand the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) to childless workers—a good step—but pay for it by eliminating the Title XX Social Services Block Grant, as well as other low-income programs, including the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program for children and the Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program.

Such proposals are a waste of policymakers’ time and focus. Our nation would be much better served by implementing thoughtful solutions to hunger that focus on expanding opportunity and reducing poverty, rather than weakening programs that support working and unemployed adults, children and seniors.

First and foremost, we need to improve economic outcomes for families in the workforce through better wages, benefits, and supports like the EITC and the refundable Child Tax Credit. We need to strengthen child nutrition programs so children have access to food both in and out of school. We also need to improve SNAP so people have more resources to purchase a healthy diet. The current, woefully inadequate monthly allotments are based on the outmoded Thrifty Food Plan (TFP), a descendant of a diet developed for emergency use in the 1930s.

A recent Institute of Medicine report found that SNAP benefits are not enough for most beneficiary households—and don’t do enough for food security and food purchasing power. Other research—including USDA’s own analysis of a recent (temporary and now eliminated) benefit increase provided through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act—has shown the powerful effect of a healthier allotment.

Fifty years after our nation’s legislators took on the fight against hunger, today’s leaders need to put politics aside.  It’s time to acknowledge SNAP’s necessity and value; correct its shortcomings and build on its strengths; and celebrate its historic contribution to the well‐being of America and its people.

Yet much has changed in the past 50 years. Demographic shifts, insufficient access to jobs that pay decent wages, and an economy that increasingly serves only the wealthy few pose a new set of challenges. Meanwhile, several components of our system of work and income supports have grown weaker and been cut back—Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, is the poster child of this troubling trend—and today far too few individuals and families get the help they need and deserve in hard times.

Too bad, but this is all someone else’s problem, right?

Wrong.

As my colleague Melissa Boteach points out in her column published earlier this week, four out of five Americans will experience at least one year of significant economic insecurity—defined as living in poverty or near-poverty, or needing to turn to unemployment insurance or another form of public assistance—at some point during their working years. Yep, you read that right: four out of five.  Perhaps even more staggering: half of us will experience three years or more of significant economic insecurity.

While poverty might be a condition we associate with “other people,” just take a look at the most common precipitating factors: Job loss. Birth of a child. Illness. These are life events that could hit any of us. While some paint poverty as something that only happens to flawed people, or a condition affecting a stagnant, marginalized minority, in reality it’s something most of us will encounter at some point in our lives. As Dr. Mark Rank, whose research yielded those staggering findings, wrote in the New York Times: “Put simply, poverty is a mainstream event experienced by a majority of Americans.”

In the coming months, the Center for American Progress poverty team will explore policies that strengthen and modernize our nation’s safety net, and promote economic mobility for families on the brink. Since we’re all in this together, shouldn’t we ensure that our social contract provides adequate protection amid the ups and downs of life?