Every few years, when Congress turns its watery eyes toward the nation’s subsidy-rich Farm Bill, it chomps hard on the bit that is food stamps. This year was no exception. Between the Democrat plans for $4 billion over 10 years, and the Republican goal of nearly $40 billion over the same period, a compromise — at least among lawmakers in D.C. — has been struck. Congress is now shuttling through a 10-year, $9 billion reduction to the nation’s Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, or SNAP. That’s on top of unilateral reductions to the program in November after the 5-year recovery package ran out.
Yes, it’s politics. Yes, it’s about subsidies and food security. But it’s also about human rights, says Dr. Deborah Frank. Frank is the founder and principal investigator of Children’s HealthWatch. Frank has researched the cumulative risk factors in children’s households, such as food, energy, and housing insecurity and their impact on children’s health and development. She comes to the research naturally, as a practicing physician whose clients are primarily families on public insurance or with no insurance at all. She is currently the Director of the Grow Clinic for Children at the Boston Medical Center and is professor of Child Health and Well-Being at Boston University School of Medicine.
She doesn’t mince words when it comes to the impact slashing the nation’s food safety net will have on the millions of children who rely on it for their nutrition, and she recently testified to the Senate Agricultural Committee on the consequences of the cuts now hitting the books.
Joanne Zuhl: Regarding the impact on children, what do you know that you want lawmakers to understand?
Dr. Deborah Frank: That hunger is a health issue for everybody, particularly for children, starting during gestation. If the mother is hungry during pregnancy, the child will be smaller and sicker and the effects go on throughout life.
Early childhood is when the baby’s brain is going to increase two and a half times — two-thirds of the adult size — with adequate nourishment. Nutrition is the building block of the brain. Nutrition is an essential part of our immune system. Humans who are malnourished are more susceptible to infection and they stay sicker longer. And often they are left underweight by the infection and catch the next infection. Which is why we see such a tight connection between children’s nutrition and hospitalization.
It’s been calculated that a $20 billion cut in SNAP (which is about the combined impact of the November cuts with the current legislation) will lead to a $15 billion increase for diabetes alone. People who have diabetes have to eat a very specialized diet and eat very regularly, particularly if they are on medication. On the other hand, if they’re only able to afford what is called high glycemic index foods like soda pop, chips and bread, potatoes — you can fill yourself up for not a whole lot of money but they tend to make your blood sugar race up and down and there are more complications to diabetes.
If you’re trying to save society money, that’s not how to do it. What you’re doing is increasing all kinds of impairments, learning ability, hospitalizations, behavior problems, and ending probably with a wash or worse in health care and education cost. And SNAP in particular: It’s the only kitchen table program in that it feeds all members of a family. You can’t go to a fast food restaurant and spend your SNAP there. All of the other programs (that provide food), they only feed people in congregate settings. So when you have a blizzard and those kinds of situations, they’re closed.
The dose is too low and it’s going to get lower.
J.Z.: And according to the statistics, SNAP cuts could have a disproportionate affect on communities of color.
D.F.: It affects impoverished communities. It’s not a racial or an ethnic issue. It’s a poverty issue. I’m sure you can make a strong argument that if you’re concerned about social mobility, depriving children’s bodies and brains, and also making their mothers hungry and sick, pushes them further back from the starting line. There are people who can overcome it. But we can do much better. We took it as a national public health measure and goal to make sure all people in the United States have access to an adequate diet and a healthy life.
J.Z.: In economic terms, sicker children need more health care resources: The average pediatric hospitalization costs $11,000. It seems that there’s a passing of the buck in costs here. Who picks up the tab?
D.F.: If you’re interested in saving health care costs, the dumbest thing you can do is cut nutrition. Food is the cheapest medicine, someone told me once. Bad food keeps you alive but it also has toxicity. The long-term costs are in the degradation of human capital.
J.Z.: From the context of the future generation’s potential for “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” in a sense, this sounds as much like a constitutional issue as a fiscal policy matter.
D.F.: It’s a human rights issue, the fact that it transcends the U.S. Constitution. In fact, stuff like the Universal Declaration of the Rights of the Child, the right to adequate food is one of the rights. I come at this from a very medical perspective, but if you talk to people who are more philosophical, from their perspective it is a huge human rights violation.
J.Z.: What should people do? It seems both sides seem ready to compromise at this point on a $9 billion cut.
D.F.: It’s $9 billion for the Farm Bill, plus the wholesale cuts in November after the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act expired. So essentially, it’s like a $20 billion cut. You can tell your state senators: Do not compromise this budget. Do not accept the $9 billion cut. And make it an issue in the next round of elections. How many more hungry children do you want in Oregon?
Oregon is an example of a state that had one of the worst child hunger issues. I would think people would be very worried about what’s going to happen next.
This isn’t a partisan issue. Fixing hunger is one place that people ought to be able to get together without partisan issues.
It’s very hard to work if you’re sick and cold and hungry and worried about where you’re going to sleep tonight. If all your time and-energy goes into survival, it’s very hard work. Also the experience of being repeatedly hungry impairs children’s ability to function in a knowledge-based society.
J.Z.: So it’s more vital now than it was, say, 50 years ago?
D.F.: Absolutely! Today we’re in a knowledge-based economy. You can’t just go out on a farm or into an industrial setting and get a decent wage. I don’t think it was so important when cognitive skills were not basically the only pathway to economic participation.
What used to happen was kids were very undernourished until they got to the army and got to school, and then they would have some physical “catch,” an environment that improved their diet.
J.Z.: There are a lot of issues that the federal government has trimmed back on – housing and other social services among them. In this case, where do you see the line between federal responsibility and social obligation?
D.F.: I think it’s at all levels of society. It is in our country’s self interest. It is a federal, state and local, nonprofit and individual responsibility. But really and truly, just like protecting the borders of our country is a priority of our federal government, so should be protecting the brains of our kids.
Multnomah County’s response
This past month, the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners
heard testimony from food stamp recipients about the potentially
devastating impact of cuts to the federal program. More than 20 percent
of Multnomah County residents rely on the program to supplement their
nutrition through hard times.
Now those residents will have to
deal with Congress’ decision to shave $9 billion from its budget over
the next 10 years, much in the form of assistance to families. These
cuts come on top of the across-the-board reduction in benefits in
November as a result of the expiration of the 2009 stimulus package.
In
Oregon, about 800,000 individuals — one in five Oregonians — are on
food stamps, totaling $1.2 billion in assistance. As such, Oregon has
one of the highest rates of food stamp use in the nation, a residual
effect of the lingering economic slump that means more people working
fewer hours at lower wages. On average, SNAP benefits pay about $1.40
per meal.
Few people have viewed this issue from as many angles
as Liesl Wendt, who is serving as interim County Commissioner for the
campaigning Deborah Kafoury. Wendt is on leave from her work with the
state’s self-sufficiency programs at the Department of Human Services.
She is also a former policy advocate for the Oregon Food Bank. She was
also the executive director of 211Info, the statewide reference center,
which manages more than 250,000 calls for assistance each year.
“The
potential of roughly $9 billion over 10 years will have an even more
significant impact to Oregon and Multnomah County,” said Liesl Wendt.
“These are dollars going directly to support people’s nutrition and the
local economy. The ripple effect is significant, and the nonprofit
sector, while an incredible system, cannot make up for the loss of such
support from a public structure such as SNAP.”
Oregon is one of
the states that participate in the so-called heat-and-eat program, which
is being targeted by the cuts. That program leverages low-income energy
assistance benefits to bolster SNAP benefits for low-income families.
The legislation now in the pipeline would limit that program, and other
bills would further restrict payments based on energy assistance.
“In
that program alone, more than 18 percent of families benefit from the
program and are still struggling to make ends meet,” Wendt says.
Oregon’s
SNAP usage soared in the second half of 2009 with the impact of the
Great Recesssion. It has remained high under the pall of high
unemployment and low-wage options in the recovery. In November, when the
boost from the federal stimulus package expired, the reduction was the
equivalent of losing $1.2 million per month for Multnomah County SNAP
recipients, according to county figures.
Locally, Wendt says, both nonprofit and government agencies will have to adjust as people fall through the cracks.
“In
the short-term, support for local food pantries and programs such as
energy assistance are going to be critical,” Wendt says. “In the longer
term, the city, county and state, along with our partners in the private
sector, are going to need to ramp up training and skill building
efforts so that those who are underemployed, unemployed especially
including the long-term unemployed, have an opportunity to build skills
that match what employers need.”
According to the Oregon
Department of Human Services, in 2012, 112,000 Oregonians worked
part-time involuntarily due to business conditions – two and a half
times more than in 2007. And the vast majority of the jobs lost in the
Great Recession, 88 percent, were middle-wage positions paying between
$25,000 and $50,000 salaries. Most current and former SNAP recipients
work less than full time, according to the state Department of Human
Services.
“It’s clear that the way the economy is rebuilding is
still leaving far too many people on the sidelines. In many ways these
cuts are a canary in the mineshaft and a call to focus in a more
concerted way on creating a path to living-wage jobs.”
This article appears in 2014-01-31.