Dear Senators Young and Banks:

I write on behalf of the over one million Hoosiers facing food insecurity, as well as the rest of us fortunate to not be, to respectfully and emphatically ask you to vote against the budget reconciliation bill before the Senate, which would cut $300 billion in funding for the Federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which helps people with low income buy nutritious food.

I am the president and CEO of the largest food bank in the state of Indiana. While our 21-county service area includes one-third of Indiana’s food insecure, we actually supply about half of the total meals that Indiana’s 11 foodbanks provide to Hoosiers facing hunger.

We do so primarily through our 300 pantry partners located in cities, small towns, and in the country throughout central and southern Indiana. About three quarters of those meals are distributed by faith-based organizations. We provide nutritious food: 69% of the food we distribute is rated “nutritious” by Healthy Eating Research guidelines and less than 1% is classified as “soda” or “candy” by Feeding America.

The vast majority of the Hoosiers we serve who can work, do work. About a third of them simply can’t: they are children, elderly, and/or disabled. Of the balance, three quarters of SNAP recipients work and 90% of those with children work. In Marion County, for example, two-thirds of food insecure households have at least one employed person.

Food insecurity in Indiana and around the country is getting worse.

Last year, Gleaners distributed an all-time record 53.5 million meals, 11% higher than the previous year and 10% higher than the year before the pandemic. So far, this year the need is surging even more. One in six Hoosier children are food insecure, as are one in eight Hoosiers overall. A recent study documents that for the first time ever food insecure Hoosiers now number over one million.

The cuts to SNAP contemplated by the budget reconciliation bill would be primarily achieved by purportedly “shifting,” in Indiana’s case, 25% of SNAP costs from the federal government to state taxpayers. In the 60 years this federal program has existed, states have never been required to pay any portion of SNAP benefits.

Indiana’s state government couldn’t absorb these costs even if it wanted to. The Indiana Economic Forecast Update recently presented to the Indiana General Assembly is already leading the state to cut programs in anticipation of reduced state revenues resulting from the negative fiscal impact of tariffs, federal employee layoffs and spending cuts, stock market declines, and limits on immigration.

If this proposed federal legislation becomes law, the responsibility to provide $356 million in SNAP benefits will shift from the federal government to Indiana state government. Assuming the state is unable to take this action, Hoosiers in need will lose access to 133 million meals.

For context, last year Indiana’s 11 food banks, all together, provided 108 million meals to Hoosiers facing hunger. Indiana’s food banks will simply not be able to replace 133 million meals. The more than 610,000 of our fellow Hoosiers who rely on SNAP, including 264,000 children and 82,000 senior citizens, will likely lose all or some of their SNAP benefits and simply not have enough to eat. These are our hard-working friends and neighbors, the vast majority of whom have at least one person working in their household.

Thus, make no mistake. If this bill becomes law, neither the state of Indiana nor its charitable food system will be able to prevent the needless, self-inflicted humanitarian and economic disaster it would cause Indiana and the country, harming not only those of us facing hunger, but all Americans.

Hunger is, of course, devastating to the hungry. Poor nutrition is a leading cause of death in the US, associated with the more than half a million deaths per year. The USDA projects that, as a result of poor nutrition, most children in America today will be obese by the time they are 35 years old. Children in food insecure households are more likely to have reduced immune systems, more communicable diseases, poor body weight, asthma, anxiety, and depression, use emergency rooms and have overall poor health. 

Hunger is also for society as a whole. Food insecurity adds $1.8 billion to annual healthcare costs for all of us just in Indiana, increases violent crime, reduces workforce productivity, and reduces the number of high school and college graduates entering the workforce.

The proposed cuts to SNAP will exacerbate these personal and societal costs of hunger. Accessibility to SNAP has been shown to improve health outcomes for children, lower suicide rates and slow memory loss. Moreover, the rise in SNAP participation during an economic downturn results in greater SNAP expenditures which, in turn, stimulate the overall economy.

The highly respected Commonwealth Fund evaluated the broader impacts of these SNAP cuts on state economies and estimates that in just the first year of the cuts, they would have led to a loss of 143,000 jobs and $1.8 billion in lost state and government revenue across the country.

The proposed cuts to SNAP are not based on it being an inefficient or wasteful program. Quite the contrary. SNAP is widely recognized as being highly effective and efficient in not only addressing hunger but also generating economic activity.

The cuts are being proposed because Congress has been tasked to find federal taxpayer money that can be used to pay for other administration policy priorities, most notably including, permanently extending the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (“TCJA”) which cut taxes primarily for corporations and wealthy individuals and removed deductions for ordinary tax payers for mortgage interest, charitable contributions, and state and local tax payments. Economists across the political spectrum are concerned extending the TCJA will increase inflation, and as recently observed in The Economist, “worsen America’s dire fiscal trajectory.”

For many Hoosiers and other Americans, most of whom have jobs to try to make ends meet, SNAP is a key part of them keeping their heads above water. These proposed cuts would not only plunge them deeper into poverty, but create related economic and societal costs for all Americans.

Please vote no on the budget reconciliation bill.

Fred Glass

President and CEO

Gleaners Food Bank of Indiana