Cutting
food aid promotes hunger, not work
You may have heard about the
Trump administration’s latest attack on very poor Americans: a punitive new restriction that will cut SNAP
benefits for 688,000 people. SNAP, formerly known as food stamps, is our
country’s most popular and effective nutrition assistance program.
Growing up, my family got food
stamps — and oh, I hated it. I hated standing in line at the grocery store,
knowing we’d be paying with coupons that would brand us as “poor” to anyone who
noticed.
And yet I loved the fact that we had food. As a growing kid, I knew what it was like to come home to a bare kitchen. Those dreaded vouchers meant we got cheese, milk, fruit, eggs, cereal, beans, tortillas, and yes, sometimes even ice cream.
That food — and the stability
that came with it — sent me on my way. Because I wasn’t hungry in school, I
could pay attention. And I excelled.
I scored in the top few percentiles on every standardized test I ever took. I got into college, where I scraped by with some low-interest loans, scholarships, and waitressing jobs. And now I make a good living for myself.
In fact, I’ve paid more in
taxes over the past 25 years than my family ever got in government assistance.
But I haven’t forgotten our past, and that’s why I strongly support making SNAP
available to all families who need it. They deserve the same leg up we got.
That’s why threats to SNAP —
from the latest attack on “work-capable adults” without kids to other changes
that would throw kids off school lunch assistance — make my blood boil.
We don’t know what hardships
these people targeted by the latest rule face. We do know they are very, very poor,
earning less than $2,200 a year, according to Feeding America.
The stereotype floated by Trump
is that adults without children are freeloaders, but how do we know that? How
do we know they didn’t get laid off from their jobs six months ago? How do we
know they are not in school? How can we presume to make assumptions about them
or walk in their shoes?
Taking food away from very poor
people doesn’t promote work — it just makes them hungrier.
Think about it. Could you go
out every day looking for work if your stomach was empty? Would you hire
someone whose belly growled at you from the other side of the interview desk?
This is just one in a series of
efforts by the administration to literally take food off the table for millions
of Americans. A recent analysis by the Urban Institute
found that if all of Trump’s attempts to restrict SNAP had been in place in
2018, 3.7 million would have lost SNAP benefits.
You’d be looking at all sorts
of Americans being harmed — the elderly, the disabled, low-income women. And,
sadly, children. Children like me.
SNAP is as an investment. As my
mother-in-law used to say, “First feed the face, then teach right from
wrong.”
How can we expect kids who are
hungry, ignored, or penalized for being poor to succeed? How can we expect
under-nourished adults to lead productive lives, or seek self-improvement, when
they’re scrounging through dumpsters looking for lunch?
My plea to anyone reading this
is to lend your support to continued funding of anti-hunger programs. My
brothers and I were worth that small investment 40 years ago. Don’t we owe the
same to the kids and adults who are worth it today?
Sherry Brennan lives in Los
Angeles with her teenage son, where she works in the TV and streaming video
business and devotes time to social safety net causes. This op-ed was
distributed by OtherWords.org.