Over 1.6 million low-income North Carolinians receive health benefits through SNAP – the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. 43 percent of them are children. About one in five children in the state live in food insecure households.
But that number could climb. The North Carolina Senate passed a provision in its new budget that cuts one of the requirements to receive SNAP benefits, and that could lead to other implications for hungry kids.
“If they lose their SNAP eligibility, then at the same time they automatically lose their free or reduced lunch eligibility,” said Rob Thompson, senior policy and communications advisor for NC Child.
NC Child is an organization that promotes public policy benefiting North Carolina children. Thompson said SNAP currently has two eligibility factors. The person applying must either be under a certain income level, or should fall under categorical eligibility. This means they’re eligible for other federal benefits, and are therefore eligible for SNAP.
Thompson said the provision in the Senate’s budget would eliminate the second category.
“Maybe a two-parent household working basically minimum-wage jobs, doing their best to try and put food on the table for their family,” he said. “And this proposal would really pull the rug out from under them and punish their children by eliminating a great source of food.”
Rob Thompson spoke with WCHL’s Aaron Keck.
According to a report from NC Child, a projected 50,000 children would lose food benefits from the cut, including free and reduced lunch in schools.
Thompson said this loss can then leak into other areas of a family’s budget as they try to make up for the lost assistance.
“When you take away something as substantial as food benefits, you’re putting pressure on all other areas of the family budget,” he said. “So you could see not only decreased access to nutrition but maybe more foreclosures, more evictions, more people losing their cars. The effects of this can really be cascading.”
If it passes in the full budget for the General Assembly, the cut will leave 482 children in Orange County without food benefits. But for it to pass, the NC House of Representatives either has to also pass it in its budget or has to agree to the provision during the reconciliation process between the two budgets.
Thompson said cutting it won’t save the state any money since it’s a federally-funded program.
“There’s no impact on the state budget by making this decision,” he said. “The state budget-writers aren’t saving any state money. They’re just cutting budget for a federally-funded program. So, it’s really hard to understand the motivation for doing this.”
