By the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute and GEEARS: Georgia Early Education Alliance for Ready Students
The budget reconciliation bill, which recently passed the U.S. House, would completely restructure the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), transferring costs to the state and likely resulting in significant cuts to food assistance for families. The House’s proposal also completely eliminates the Nutrition Education and Obesity Prevention Grant Program, also known as SNAP-Ed, the educational arm of SNAP.
Of the many cuts to essential social safety nets in the budget, this blow to SNAP is one of the most egregious—and most urgent.
SNAP benefits, once known as food stamps, are used by families whose incomes are near or below the poverty level or by those experiencing a temporary crisis. Put simply, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance is grocery money. For about 700,000 Georgia households, including 213,000 families with young children, SNAP can represent the difference between a pantry that’s stocked or bare; a child with a full belly or a grumbling one. Overall, SNAP reduces recipients’ likelihood of experiencing food insecurity by 30%.
For children ages birth through five, who are in the midst of the most critical brain development of their lives, SNAP can literally be a lifesaver. When a very young child is undernourished, they don’t simply suffer from tummy pangs, lethargy, and other heart-wrenching symptoms of hunger. They may also experience decreased cognition and motor skills and attention problems. Children in food-insecure homes are 90% more likely to be in fair or poor health and 30% more likely to be hospitalized. They’re more likely to experience asthma, anemia, and developmental delays.
There would never be an optimal moment to make cuts to SNAP, but 2025 is a particularly bad time to do so. As we’ve all experienced, grocery prices are higher than ever. In a recent survey commissioned by GEEARS, 50% of parents with young children indicated that they had difficulty affording food over the previous year.
And let’s not forget, when families can’t afford groceries, local grocers also feel the pain. According to the Georgia Budget & Policy Institute, “In 2023, Georgia issued more than $3 billion in federal SNAP benefits. Individuals then spent those benefits in about 10,000 retailers throughout the state. The National Grocers Association estimates that at grocery stores alone, SNAP benefits helped generate more than $343 million in grocery industry wages in Georgia. Rural areas disproportionately benefit from SNAP as they are more likely to utilize SNAP compared to metropolitan areas.”
In a recent interview on 11Alive, Senator Raphael Warnock made a similar point, noting that “taking food literally out of the mouths of hungry children” is not just a “moral moment,” it’s a financial one. “We know that for every dollar invested in SNAP, it generates about $1.80 to the Georgia economy.”
That economic blow is disproportionate to the savings the government would achieve with its cuts. Each SNAP recipient receives an average of just $6.20/day. What’s more, the education program, SNAP-Ed, which would be completely eliminated by the cuts, equips SNAP-eligible families with practical tools and resources to make healthy food choices and stretch their food budgets, fostering healthier home environments and lifelong habits. In Georgia, for example, Quality Care for Children has utilized SNAP-Ed funds to help 15 child care programs build and maintain teaching gardens. They’ve improved menus in another 30 child care programs and reached thousands with educational programming and a produce-focused cookbook.
Proponents of the SNAP cuts argue that states can shoulder more of the program’s burden. But multiple experts have found that this shift will not be sustainable for Georgia. According to the Food Research & Action Center, the new proposal would impose an unfunded mandate on states, shifting to them between 5% and 25% of SNAP benefit costs starting in 2028. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a cost shift of 5% for Georgia today would be about $162 million, twice as much as the state spends on the Childcare and Parent Services program. Additionally, the bill proposes increasing states’ administrative costs from 50% to 75%. It could leave Georgia with an administrative cost increase of more than $55 million. These increased costs would force our lawmakers to choose between raising taxes, cutting other programs, or limiting SNAP access.
Our youngest children are the most impacted by food insecurity. Four in five households receiving SNAP funds include a child and over one third of all SNAP benefits go to families with children under age five. It’s for these little ones that we must fight to preserve SNAP and SNAP-Ed, which are proven to reduce food insecurity, improve child health and developmental outcomes, support early learning programs and caregivers, and promote lifelong healthy eating habits.
To let your elected officials know how much you value SNAP and urge them to protect its funding, use GEEARS’ Action Alert to phone and email them today.
Take the snap from those “so call homeless” ppl that’s able to work but to lazy or works and paid under the table. They sell their csrd every month for drugs and lives with family and give to the children. The children are the ones in need