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A proposed budget released Monday showed up to 25% cuts to the federal government’s contribution to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistant Program, a food assistance program that supports more than 700,000 and was previously 100% federally funded.
Rhea Gates, farm assistant at Wild Child Farm, chats with customers at the Tuesday Lane County Farmer’s Market as they inspect Gates’ table full of fresh lettuce, potatoes, basil, green onions and other fresh produce.
Gates’ customers pay by card, cash and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, also known as food stamps, a program that is now facing drastic cuts.
SNAP recipients make up more than half of Wild Child Farm’s customer base at the market, Gates said, and cutting funding to the program would mean a loss for their business. It would also mean their SNAP customers — primarily seniors, families with children or students — losing assistance they need, which upsets Gates.
“That’s actively taking food out of people’s mouths,” Gates said. “And our big thing is feeding people.”
Oregonians could face substantial cuts to SNAP, under the proposed U.S. House Agriculture Committee’s budget, which was released Monday. The cuts are part of the $230 billion Republicans are attempting to shave off the federal budget to make room for President Donald Trump’s tax cuts.
If the budget is passed, states would have to pay for between 5% and 25% of their SNAP costs. It is not yet clear where Oregon falls in that range. The budget also would require states to pay for 75% of their SNAP administration costs instead of the current 50%.
On a Tuesday morning video press conference with U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, Gov. Tina Kotek and other national Democratic leaders, U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley said the cuts to SNAP in Oregon would mean the loss of “$400 million plus or minus” of funding.
“We do not have the kind of money that it would take to maintain the program at the current level if these cuts go through,” Kotek said. “It will just not happen, and people will go hungry in Oregon.”
SNAP benefits assist more than 700,000 Oregonians, more than half of whom are children, seniors or people with disabilities, according to Kotek. Each SNAP dollar generates $1.50 to $1.80 in economic activity, Kotek said, and more than 3,500 businesses in Oregon take SNAP benefits.
Kotek said her office has not had time to run numbers on the number of Oregonians who may be impacted by cuts, but knows it will be many thousands of people if 25% of Oregon’s SNAP funding is cut.
“We’ll have to decide which people will get that benefit,” she said. “I don’t think we can make that choice and shouldn’t have to make that choice.”
Back at the Tuesday market, Gates talked about their own experience with food insecurity.
Gates receives produce from the farm they work on but relies on SNAP to buy the rest of the food they need. If cuts come to fruition, they may have to move back in with their parents to be able to eat. They worry about others who don’t have anyone to fall back on.
“When you’re living in a scarcity mindset, when you’ve been that poor for a really long time, speaking from my experience, you start thinking things like, well, I guess I just won’t eat,” Gates said. “I’ll save this for another meal.”
On the video call, Kotek spoke about her experience working for the Oregon Food Bank before her career in politics.
“I learned directly from that work, from our families, our seniors, our veterans what it means for people to skip meals to pay their rent or pay for their medications or simply go hungry,” Kotek said. “I’ve seen the resilience of our communities, but I’ve also seen how fragile food security can be for too many of our neighbors.”
