Gleaners Food Bank: proposed federal legislation “would create needless, self-inflicted humanitarian & economic disaster for Indiana and country”

Submitted

Editor’s note: The following statement was submitted to The Hamilton County Reporter on Monday afternoon and is presented to readers in full.

Fred Glass, president and CEO of Gleaners Food Bank of Indiana, warned on Monday that, “Proposed legislation now making its way through Congress would create a needless, self-inflicted humanitarian and economic disaster for Indiana and the country, harming not only those of us facing hunger, but all Americans.”

Last week, the Agriculture Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives approved proposed legislation that would cut $300 billion in funding for the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which helps people with low income buy nutritious food. The full House is expected to vote on that legislation this Thursday.

These cuts would be primarily achieved by purportedly “shifting,” in Indiana’s case, 25 percent of SNAP costs from the federal government to state taxpayers. In the 60 years this federal program has existed, states have never been required to pay any portion of SNAP benefits. Indiana’s state government couldn’t absorb these costs even if it wanted to.

The Indiana Economic Forecast Update recently presented to the Indiana General Assembly is already leading the state to cut programs in anticipation of reduced state revenues resulting from the negative fiscal impact of tariffs, federal employee layoffs and spending cuts, stock market declines, and limits on immigration.

If this proposed federal legislation becomes law, the responsibility to provide $356 million in SNAP benefits will shift from the federal government to Indiana state government. Assuming the state is unable to take this action, Hoosiers in need will lose access to 133 million meals.

For context, last year Indiana’s 11 food banks, all together, provided 108 million meals to Hoosiers facing hunger. Indiana’s food banks will simply not be able to replace 133 million meals. The more than 610,000 of our fellow Hoosiers who rely on SNAP, including 264,000 children and 82,000 senior citizens, will likely lose all or some of their SNAP benefits and simply not have enough to eat.

These are our hard-working friends and neighbors, the vast majority of whom have at least one person working in their household.

Hunger is, of course, devastating to the hungry. Poor nutrition is a leading cause of death in the U.S. The USDA projects that as a result of poor nutrition, most children in America today will be obese by the time they are 35 years old. Children in food-insecure households are more likely to have reduced immune systems, more communicable diseases, poor body weight, asthma, anxiety, and depression, use emergency rooms, and have overall poor health.

But hunger is not only devastating for the hungry, but also for society as a whole. Food insecurity adds $1.8 billion to annual healthcare costs just in Indiana, increases violent crime, reduces workforce productivity, and reduces the number of high school and college graduates entering the workforce.

The proposed cuts to SNAP will exacerbate these personal and societal costs of hunger. Accessibility to SNAP has been shown to improve health outcomes for children, lower suicide rates, and slow memory loss. Moreover, the rise in SNAP participation during an economic downturn results in greater SNAP expenditures which, in turn, stimulate the overall economy.

The highly respected Commonwealth Fund evaluated the broader impacts of these SNAP cuts on state economies and estimates that they would have led to a loss of 143,000 jobs and $1.8 billion in lost state and government revenue across the country in just the first year of the cuts.

The proposed cuts to SNAP are not based on it being an inefficient or wasteful program. Quite the contrary. SNAP is widely recognized as being highly effective and efficient in not only addressing hunger but also generating economic activity.

The cuts are being proposed because the House Agriculture Committee has been tasked to find federal taxpayer money that can be used to pay for other administration policy priorities, most notably including, permanently extending the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (“TCJA”) which cut taxes primarily for corporations and wealthy individuals and removed deductions for ordinary tax payers for mortgage interest, charitable contributions, and state and local tax payments.

Economists across the political spectrum are concerned extending the TCJA will increase inflation, and as recently observed in The Economist, “worsen America’s dire fiscal trajectory.”

“For many Hoosiers and other Americans, most of whom have jobs to try to make ends meet, SNAP is a key part of them keeping their heads above water,” Glass observed. “These proposed cuts would not only plunge them deeper into poverty, but create related economic and societal costs for all Americans.”