A new analysis from the Congressional Budget Office says 3.2 million people would lose food assistance benefits under the tax and spending bill recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives. (Photo by Lance Cheung/USDA).
Being a freelance writer, I have had my own financial ups and downs. My own experience with poverty, and with paying bills that you really lack the funds to pay, leaves me flabbergasted by the short-sightedness behind the massive budget package that passed the U.S House of Representatives.
Republicans and conservatives have been calling it “a big beautiful bill,” but New Mexico’s own The Food Depot, which services nine New Mexico counties, says the only result will be even greater challenges to access food and healthcare.”The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities writes that if the bill passes unchanged, it would be the first time in the modern history of the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Programs “that the federal government would no longer ensure that the lowest-income families with children, older adults, and people with disabilities in every state have access to the food assistance they need.”
Local and national groups concur. And I believe them.
These organizations point out blatant inconsistencies in the bill’s rationale, revealing its intent is not to lift spirits, or instill the down-on-their-luck with training and knowledge. It’s to punish them.
The most talked about aspects are the additional work requirements for nutritional assistance and Medicaid recipients. The revisions display a grave misunderstanding that poverty is layered, complex and full of pitfalls. Able-bodied SNAP recipients already fulfill work requirements, with exemptions for those who are taking care of children, or over age 55. The provisions in the U.S. House bill eliminate most exemptions, like a clean slate that erases all familial differences, or capabilities. The new provision—which will heavily impact New Mexico, where 61% of SNAP recipients are families with children—orders that any parent with a child over six years old will have to meet work requirements.
The new requirements can easily undermine households already in tenuous situations. Obviously, people who qualify for nutritional assistance have even less ability to pay for child care. How much harm will forcing a parent to leave the house and systemically abandon a very young child do?
Furthermore if the family or single parent faces a set of circumstances that leaves them unable to meet the new work requirements, what happens? The household loses its SNAP benefits. The bottom line is that this means less food for the child. The proposal promises a drastic uptick in child hunger. What kind of society snatches food from families with children?
The bill would also impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients, forcing them to prove they’re consistently working, which is basically an excuse for additional paperwork—additional red tape in a system that is already clogged with it. The overwhelming majority of Medicaid recipients already work. A 2023 analysis found that 71% of Medicaid enrollees were in school, or employed, and a significant number of the “unemployed” were caregivers of some kind, staying at home for the sake of sick family members. Healthcare furthermore is a human right that should be available to all Americans, regardless of income or ability to make a regular paycheck.
GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson cavalierly claims the bill is harmless. “What we’re talking about, again, is able-bodied workers, many of whom are refusing to work because they’re gaming the system,” he stated on the Face the Nation TV show, and opined, “There’s a moral component to what we are doing.”
Alas, Johnson’s moral component is based on an obsessive zeal to stereotype the recipients of assistance with the lie that all people who aren’t financially solvent are consequently lazy, shiftless or criminal. Like most distorted morality imposed by self-righteous groups, it’s worsened by the refusal to examine the GOP’’s own hypocrisy and self-interest. The “big beautiful bill” includes a massive tax cut for the wealthy.
It’s a matter of cutting services to the have-nots to provide benefits for the very rich. It’s a matter of kicking one group off the rolls to afford tax cuts that bolster the other. The U.S. Senate can do better than this, and should reject this “ big beautiful bill” and its contemptuous elitist morality.
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