Fred Glass, president and CEO of Gleaners Food Bank of Indiana, emphasized today that: “The reconciliation bill moving toward final consideration in the United States Senate would be a disaster for the food insecure, other Indiana workers, and every Hoosier.”

After the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry proposed cutting the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by $211 billion, the Senate Committee on Finance proposed cutting Medicaid by $1 trillion, the largest healthcare cuts in history.

SNAP helps over 600,000 Hoosiers buy groceries, and Medicaid provides health coverage for over 1.8 million Indiana children and adults.

These programs are proven, effective tools to fight hunger and promote health.

The proposed Senate bill would:

• Cut 15%, or $214 million, of food access to Hoosiers in need, the vast majority of whom work, if they are able to do so. This is the equivalent of 80 million meals that neither the state of Indiana nor its charitable food system will be able to replace. More than 600,000 Hoosiers, including 264,000 children and 82,000 seniors, rely on SNAP to buy their groceries and will go hungry as a result of this legislation, with all the corresponding negative health and economic consequences for them and the rest of society.
• Shift $46 million in SNAP administrative costs to Indiana taxpayers.
• Federally mandate red tape claimed to be solutions for problems that don’t exist but will have its real intended effect to reduce or eliminate food and healthcare benefits to workers, children, seniors, veterans, the disabled, and the sick.
• Remove Medicaid as an essential lifeline to Indiana’s rural hospitals and the Hoosiers they serve. United States Senator Ed Markey has identified the following rural hospitals in Indiana as at risk for closure if the Senate bill passes: Davies Community Hospital, Memorial Hospital of Logansport, Community Hospital of Bremen, Ascension St. Vincent hospitals in Randolph, Jennings, Clay, and Washington counties, IU Health Jay Hospital, Franciscan Rensselaer, Sullivan County Community Hospital, Adams Memorial Hospital, and Harrison County Hospital.
• Adversely impact the economy by slashing the positive economic impact of SNAP which generates $1.50 in economic activity for every $1 spent on groceries and costing tens of thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars attributable to the kind of cuts contemplated by this bill.

“All Hoosiers deserve access to food and healthcare,” Glass observed. “This bill will deny both with catastrophic impacts on all Hoosiers and our communities.”