When you think of the hungry, chances are you think of someone that doesn’t look like you, someone who doesn’t live near you. We tend to believe that hunger happens elsewhere – and to other people. It certainly doesn’t happen to our senior citizens, the generation that raised us. Or, does it?
Right now – here in Ohio – hunger is prevalent among our aging population. We’re seeing them lining up at our foodbanks and pantries. We’re tending to malnourished seniors in hospitals and clinics.
President Trump’s proposed budget would undoubtedly make a bad situation even worse.
First, some basic and irrefutable facts:
• In his 2018 Fiscal Budget, President Trump is calling for massive cuts, which includes slashing the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by $192 billion over the next 10 years.
• Part of those cuts would be made by shifting an estimated $600 million per year in costs to the State of Ohio once fully implemented. However, Ohio is grappling with a state budget deficit of its own nearing $1 billion, which all but assures a bridge to maintaining these benefits is impossible to construct. The President’s proposal would allow states like Ohio to cut SNAP benefits to keep their budgets balanced.
• Ohio has already felt deep cuts to SNAP. Since 2013, $1.2 billion in SNAP benefits have been eliminated through across-the-board cuts and other changes, and aren’t coming back.
• Federal budget cuts will impact not only SNAP, but also meals on wheels funding, home utility assistance programs, Medicaid and others – cuts that will be devastating here for Ohioans in need and seniors on fixed incomes – and will drive even more people into our food lines.
Quality food is essential for good health. Seniors who face ongoing hunger have been found to be more than two times more likely to report fair or poor health status. So, it should be no surprise when we take access to quality food off the table for seniors and others in need, these so-called budget savings come back to bite us in significantly higher healthcare costs.
Ohio is a rapidly aging state and seniors are the fastest growing segment of the state’s population. Projections for the year 2020 suggest that in 86 percent of Ohio’s counties, one in four residents will be over the age of 60. Furthermore, 84 percent of SNAP recipient households in America contain children, people with disabilities or senior citizens. Compounded with the reality that we’re in an age where more and more seniors, regardless of their means, are in the untenable position of having to provide for grandchildren and adult children, it’s unconscionable to think that we’d cut the strings of such a vital safety net for people in need.
As someone who works closely with seniors and sees firsthand how critical SNAP benefits can be for our aging population in Ohio, we cannot afford to balance a budget on the backs of people whose very real need will, as a result, only get worse.
We cannot let Ohioans in need go hungry. We must do all we can to reach out to our members of Congress to protect SNAP funding. The fate of the hungry is in our hands.
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