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- Author, Ana faguy *
- Author's title, BBC News
Elizabeth Butler goes from one supermarket to another in her hometown, Martinsburg, West Virginia, to ensure that she gets the best price in each item on your purchase list.
Together with 42 million Americans, pay those foods with federal subsidies. That money does not cover the entire invoice of his family of three members.
“The food does not last a month,” he says. “I go to all these different sites just to make sure we have enough food for the whole month.”
But that money could end soon, since Congress is preparing to vote what the president of the United States, Donald Trump, has coined as his “great and beautiful law.”
The food subsidy program used by Mrs. Butler – called supplementary nutritional assistance program, commonly known as SNAP – is one of the many items in the cutting block, while Congress tries to reconcile the apparently contradictory demands of the president to lower taxes and balance the budget.
The Senate must vote its version of the bill soon. If approved, it will be voted on the House of Representatives, at which time it will be sent to Trump to sign it.
The president has pressed the two chambers of Congress, which controls the Republican party, to approve the law before July 4.
The policy behind the SNAP cut
SNAP offers households with low income, including older adult Americans, families with children and disabled people, money every month to buy food.
In West Virginia, one of the states with the highest poverty index, 16% of the population depends on this benefit.
The State is also a reliable republican bastion and voted overwhelmingly to Trump in November 2024, when it appeared with the promise of reducing the cost of the lives of Americans, including the price of grocers.
“When I win, I will immediately lower prices, starting the first day,” he said at a press conference in August surrounded by packaged foods, milk, meat and eggs.
Months after the president made that promise, the prices of the edibles of usual purchase, such as orange juice, eggs and bacon, are higher than at the same time last year.
It is a fact that has not gone unnoticed by Butler: “The president has not yet changed food prices and promised people to do it.”
Trump has argued, without giving an explanation of how, that the expenses of expenses in the budget project of 1,000 pages will help lower food prices: “The cut will give everyone more food to everyone, because prices are going down a lot, the edibles are going down,” Trump said when he was specifically asked about the cuts to the SNAP.
“The 'Great and beautiful' Law will ultimately strengthen SNAP through costs to distribute common sense costs and requirements,” said a White House official to the BBC.
Republicans have been divided on how to finance social welfare programs such as SNAP and Medicaid. While many think that the government must give priority to balance the budget, others, especially in impoverished regions, support programs that directly help their voters.
In its current version, the Republicans of the Senate propose cuts for a value of US $ 211,000 million, and the states will be partly responsible for compensating the difference.
In theory, approving the bill should be an easy political task, since Republicans control both cameras of Congress and the White House.
But as the bill includes cuts in programs such as Snap and Medicaid, which are popular among Americans on foot, selling the project to all the features of the Republican party has not been an easy task.
Image source, Getty Images
“If we are not careful, people are going to be hurt”
In recent weeks, reports on frustration and private dissensions on potential cuts to Medicaid and Snap have been leaked, unveiling the internal struggle that is being fought within the Republican Party.
The senator for West Virginia, Jim Justice, told the political environment in June that he has warned his Republican comrades to cut the SNAP could cost the most majority party in Congress when the voters return to the polls in 2026.
“If we are not careful, people are going to be hurt, people are going to dislike. It will be the number 1 theme in the central news everywhere,” Justice said.
“And then, we could either arouse a situation in this country where most quickly becomes a minority.”
A recent survey by the Associated Press and NORC Center for public affairs Research agency revealed that 45% of Americans think that food assistance programs such as SNAP are underground, while only 30% think that financing levels are adequate. About a quarter of the respondents considered that the programs are superfinant.
This is not the first time that the party faced the cuts to the SNAP, said Tracy Rof, a professor at Richmond University who is currently writing a book about the political history of SNAP.
Under the administration of Biden, the Congress allowed the extended benefits that had been launched during Covid to be progressively eliminated, despite the fact that both Republicans and Democrats warned that Americans could go hungry.
“One of the characteristics of the SNAP is that it has bipartisan support, more than any other program against poverty,” said Professor Roof to the BBC.
But this time is different.
Image source, Getty Images
“One thing that distinguishes this period from the previous efforts to cut social assistance programs has been the disposition of Republican legislators to vote in favor of things regarding those that apparently, unofficially, they have many concerns,” he says. “Before there were always moderate Republicans, especially in the Senate, but in both cameras, which resisted concessions.”
She attributes that submission to two things: the fear of annoying Trump and the little fear of the public reaction of the public by the representatives who occupy seats in the congress in which they can be easily re -elected
The BBC contacted Congressman Riley Moore, who represents Martinsburg, West Virginia, about the impacts of the cuts for his voters, but did not respond.
Moore voted in favor of the Initial Chamber project, which included the cuts to the SNAP.
The Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, who had been one of the most critical of the cuts, has been softened since then: Hawley declared to the media Notus that “he has always supported” most of Medicaid's cuts and that “it would be fine” with most of what the bill contains.
“The only thing that has kept my family alive”
Father of Dos, Jordan, who has asked that his last name is not used in this article, has survived the last three years for the benefits of SNAP.
He and his wife get about US $ 700 per month to feed their family of four, but still hurry.
The 26 -year -old says that his wife has had difficulty finding a job and at the same time taking care of the two children they have, so if the changes to the SNAP program impact his family, he is already prepared to act and get a second job.
“I will make sure what is necessary to feed my family,” he says.
He and other citizens of West Virginia are closely following what is happening with the law in Congress.
Cameron Whetzel, 25, grew in a family that depended on Snap. But when he and his wife tried to request the benefit, he learned that winning $ 15 was too much to opt for him, he said.
“It is not good that I have to double my salary to buy food,” Whetzel said, adding: “We have not bought eggs for four months because they are too expensive.”
It is frustrated, he says, because the authorities in Washington do not understand the impacts of the cuts they are supporting in Congress.
“Making a federal cut that then falls to the state, which is already in trouble, is like kicking a horse on the ground,” says Whetzel. “Whether it is believed in a small government as if it is believed in a large government, the government has to provide someone, somehow.”
*With additional information from Bernd Debusmann JR
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