On Tuesday, the House narrowly approved a Republican budget proposal calling for $2 trillion in federal spending cuts. The proposal specifically calls for the House Agriculture Committee to find $230 billion worth of reduced spending, which will be challenging without touching the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. At the same time, cabinet officials in the current administration support limiting what can be purchased through the program. In Oregon, food banks across the state have been seeing increased need in their communities. Matt Newell-Ching is the policy manager at the Oregon Food bank. He joins us to share what demand is currently looking like across the state and how it’s preparing for potential cuts and restrictions to federal programs.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. On Tuesday, the U.S. House of Representatives narrowly approved a Republican budget blueprint calling for $2 trillion in federal spending cuts. The proposal specifically tasks the House Agricultural Committee with finding $230 billion to cut, which will be challenging without touching the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which used to be known as food stamps. At the same time, cabinet officials in the Trump administration support limiting what can be purchased through the program. Food banks across Oregon have already been reporting increased need in their communities. Matt Newell-Ching is the policy manager at the Oregon Food Bank. He joins us now. It’s good to have you on Think Out Loud.
Matt Newell-Ching: Thanks so much for having me, Dave.
Miller: Can you give us a sense for demand for food aid in Oregon right now?
Newell-Ching: Yeah, so last year alone at Oregon Food Bank through our network of over 1,200 community-based food pantries, meal sites, free food markets, we distributed over 91 million meals. That’s 110 million pounds of food, and that’s a 31% increase as compared to the previous year, compared to 2023.
That means that we had over 2.5 million visits from Oregonians across our food assistance site. And so a 31% increase. USDA released a report late last year that indicated that hunger today is 1/3 higher than it was prior to the pandemic. And so this is something that we see in communities. It’s reflected in the data and we shouldn’t be surprised because we’re seeing the persistently high costs of food, high costs of housing in Oregon, as well as the expiration of pandemic era assistance are some of the reasons that we think that that’s the case.
Miller: But a lot of it has to do with inflation. I mean, cost of eggs or whatever, so directly tied inflation means more food insecurity.
Newell-Ching: Yeah, I think that it’s pretty straightforward. When costs are higher at the grocery store, things get squeezed. We know families often have to make these really impossible choices between paying for rents, paying for utilities, paying for food. When the price of food goes up, then there’s less money for those other things and so often folks will come to food pantries to help supplement the gap between their wages and the costs of life.
Miller: Is there enough food for the people who are coming for help? Is the supply of food assistance commensurate with the need?
Newell-Ching: Yeah. To put it in perspective, we are part of a web of food assistance programs, right? So the biggest anti-hunger program in Oregon is SNAP, is the supplemental nutrition assistance program. It helps over 700,000 Oregonians put food on the table. We now have 94% of schools across Oregon who are offering free meals to all kids, breakfast and lunch. That’s really, really great. We want to get to 100%, but in that context, we sometimes refer to ourselves as the safety net below the safety net. So, when incomes aren’t enough to put food on the table, and when SNAP benefits run out, sometimes food pantries will see increased demand later in the month because food stamps typically last a family about three weeks out of a month. And so when those costs get higher, we absolutely see more people.
Miller: So if you’re the safety net below the safety net, then SNAP would be the official governmental safety net?
Newell-Ching: Yeah, so programs like SNAP. There’s also WIC for women, infants, and children, for moms who are pregnant, kids through, their 5th birthday. School meals, another really big one. And then there are programs that help childcare centers provide kids with food. And there’s some other target there of a flow of funding that goes to food banks as well from the federal government.
Miller: So let’s turn to those different federal flows. The new budget resolution, as I mentioned, calls for $2 trillion in cuts that could target programs like Medicaid, which we talked about earlier this week, and we’ll talk about it again, I’m sure, and SNAP, which I mentioned in my intro. What are you expecting right now? There’s a big black box out there of possibilities. What do you think is most likely?
Newell-Ching: Oh, it’s really tough to crystal ball what Congress is going to do. I’ll just say, it’s just really hard to believe that in a time when so many people are struggling to afford food, that there are real viable proposals to take food away, take food assistance away in the form of SNAP and school meals, and even funding for food banks. I think our plan A is that we want to collectively raise our voices, and make sure these cuts don’t happen in the first place.
We’ve seen similar proposals in Congress. In 1996 famously they tried to make massive cuts to school lunch, and that didn’t work out so well. We’ve seen these proposals, these are not new proposals, I should say. And there’s a history of these things being proposed and then not getting across the finish line.
That being said, we’re holding two truths right now. These are real threats.We absolutely need to be worried about them and prepare as if they could happen. But we also need to find our agency in this moment, tell the truth about what these programs mean for our families. My family, I’m one of the reasons I do this work is that my parents needed SNAP when they hit hard times. My mom was in a car accident, couldn’t work for 6 months, and my family needed SNAP. That helped them get through. My life is better off today because of that. Nearly half of Americans live in a household that has participated in SNAP at one point or will participate in SNAP at some point in our lives. We have stories to tell and those stories are powerful and just encourage everyone to find your voice, and make it known to your elected leaders that cuts right now are not acceptable.
Miller: So that is the advocacy side, but as you said, you’re trying to do two things at once, and part of it is preparing for cuts that may come. What does that preparation entail? What can you do if these cuts do happen?
Newell-Ching: Yeah, well, unfortunately, Dave, it’s not entirely hypothetical right now. So that one, the round of funding freeze ‒ this is what, January 28th? ‒ we were all like, “What’s happening,” and we had lots of questions and fear from community members. Is my SNAP gonna get cut? What does this mean for school meals? That type of thing. And what we did find out is there was a program that is actually still frozen. Essentially, what USDA does is they purchase food from farmers or food producers that’s in surplus that eventually makes its way to food banks. And so I won’t bore you with the details, but the long and short of it is that starting in April, we’re going to see 30 fewer truckloads of food that would have been in the pipeline from that federal funding program, right? And so we…”
Miller: 30 truckloads in Oregon alone.
Newell-Ching: In Oregon alone, that’s right. Yeah, many more. Oregon demographically about 1% of the country. So you figure, yeah, many, many more throughout the country. So this is real. We are certainly asking our partners how can we all come together in this moment? And also, if these cuts come to fruition, that is going to dwarf in comparison, like these 30 truckloads of food, the extra demand that we would see if people started losing SNAP benefits.
Miller: In the time we have left, I want to ask you about another issue here. Republicans in the state legislature have introduced a bill to audit the Oregon Food Bank, saying that you’ve strayed from your mission by entering political debates. What’s your response?
Newell-Ching: There’s a hearing on this bill. The Oregon Food Bank already gets audited, and we post our audit. You can go to our website right now, Oregonfoodbank.org and look at our IRS filings 990 and our audits. We’re very proud of the transparency that we provide. Our mission is to end hunger and its root causes. And so we take both of those parts of our mission very seriously. But we know that we can’t food bank our way out of hunger. It’s not enough if we’re in instances like these when there are big cuts to the federal level. If you’re talking about hundreds of thousands of people who are potentially being cut off of SNAP, there’s no way we can food bank our way out of that. And so we have to raise our voices and speak the truth about what these policies mean for our communities.
Miller: Matt Newell-Ching, thanks very much.
Newell-Ching: Thanks so much, Dave.
Miller: Matt Newell-Ching is policy manager at the Oregon Food Bank.
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