Connecticut officials knew there would be changes to federal social service programs after the On Big Beautiful Bill passed last summer. They didn’t know it would happen this soon.
WSHU’s Ebong Udoma spoke with CT Mirror’s Keith M. Phaneuf to discuss his article, “Report: SNAP benefits vanishing faster than CT officials expected,” as part of the collaborative podcast Long Story Short. Read Keith’s story here.
WSHU: Hello, Keith. You've investigated this study released by New Haven-based Connecticut Voices for Children that finds Connecticut underestimated the impact of federal cutbacks to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) under the Republicans' One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Was that a surprise?
KP: Well, there were some big surprises in it. I think everybody knew that we were going to be seeing some serious erosion of our SNAP participants. I think folks were surprised to see that the numbers appear to be showing nearly 63,000 adults and children who had been receiving SNAP no longer are. Basically over the last year, over the first year of what some folks call OBBA or the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and that's that's a very significant number when you consider that these are all households that are living pretty much at the poverty level.
WSHU: Okay, now I went to New Haven a few weeks ago, and Governor Lamont launched a one-time $300 SNAP benefit card program. Is that enough? Does that fill the gap?
KP: Well, let's break down quickly what the state has done. The short answer is no. You're correct, the governor did give out using funds from past state budget surpluses in accordance with the parameters set up by the state legislature, they distributed $300 grocery store gift cards to an estimated 25,000 residents. So that's not even half the amount we're now talking about, who have lost SNAP. And I should have also clarified, there are different changes in rules. There are changes in work requirements that have pushed these folks off SNAP. The problem is a lot of these people are deemed unemployable. It could be because of mental illness or other types of disabling conditions. But, an answer to your question, we know how much $300 goes for a family, and this is something that was designed to perhaps help tie these families over until the legislature, the state legislature, can decide if it wants to do more. The next legislative session doesn't even begin until January, so $300 to get you through six to seven months, that's $50 a month if you want to break it down, or $40 if you consider seven months. The only other funds that we've done, we've put about $24 million into food share and food banks, and please don't take this as a criticism of that network at all, the but it's important to note that the president of food share Jason Jakubowski has said the network of food banks and food pantries can solve roughly 1/8 of the problem when a subset of the population loses SNAP.
WSHU: How much does this help them? You know, $24 million. How does that help them replace the federal money that they lost?
KP: That's what I'm saying. It probably only helps them with about 1/8 of the problem. Let me give you an example in a small community, a town like Eastford, a lower income community in northeastern Connecticut, rural. The town does operate a food bank in connection with a local church. They have regular hours two days a month. So even if their supplies are good, there's only two times a month when you can get down there. Now you can call them and see if you can make a special appointment. We heard stories all this summer from food pantries in larger communities like New Haven, where they would open them and within a couple hours they'd have to close them, with a line still going out the door, because they'd exhausted their supplies. Food banks and food pantries can solve a fraction, and not even close to one half, of the problem of what happens when a population loses. Ultimately, the legislature is going to have to decide: Do they want to have a state-funded benefit, or are we going to see a large portion of the population become what they call food insecure?
WSHU: And it goes beyond that. Because you spoke with Fred Carstensen, the economist at UConn, and he says the state economy is actually affected by this. This is a part of what makes Connecticut work. Could you just explain that?
KP: I could explain it better by saying, unfortunately, poor households in Connecticut really can't save any money because they're living paycheck to paycheck. Any financial assistance that you give them, they turn around and recirculate right back into the economy. Most economists, and Fred agrees with this, estimates that for every dollar of SNAP benefits that get spent, it triggers about $1.50 in economic activity. It all goes right back into the economy. The family can't save it; they end up having to spend it. So that's going to translate, he said, ultimately into you know hundreds of job losses because we're talking about $155 million in SNAP benefits that won't be circulating in the economy. On top of that, because of changes ordered by Congress and President Trump, the SNAP program, which the federal government chiefly funds, but states administer, Connecticut state governments' cost of that will go up about $130 million. That's money that'll come out of the state budget that could have gone into other programs. There's no getting around it. In the next legislative session, the winner of the gubernatorial election and the general assembly are going to have a hard conversation, and they're going to have to look at: do we want to create a state-funded benefit to help cover the folks who were pushed out of SNAP benefits?
WSHU: Okay. So that's the stock reality we have to deal with, and it will have to be dealt with in the next legislative session.
KP: I would agree.
WSHU: Okay. Thank you so much, Keith.
KP: Thank you.
