Food aid is being cut across the board in the US. 42 million poor Americans, many of them children, face cuts of between $95 and $235 per month per household. The average per capita payment will drop to $6.10 per day, or about $2 per meal.
This egregious attack on the most vulnerable in American society is shared between the two major political parties. The emergency food aid program introduced during the Covid-19 pandemic will be repealed on March 1, 2023, under the Omnibus Budget Act passed by Congress last December and signed by US President Biden.
Further cuts for the poorest Americans are already planned. They are part of both the budget bill and Biden’s decision to lift the public health emergency (PHE) and declare the coronavirus pandemic over effective May 11, 2023. Biden’s decision stands in stark contrast to the fact that COVID-19 continues to kill hundreds of people every day in the US alone and thousands worldwide.
The cuts also include the reopening of a determination process to review eligibility for food aid, Medicaid health care and other welfare benefits. This process was suspended in March 2020 when the outbreak of the pandemic forced the Trump administration to declare a national emergency. Millions of families and individuals will now be successively excluded from these benefits through the review by the end of the year.
Food aid cuts (officially SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) began as early as February 1, and 18 US states, all Republican-run, began cuts as soon as legally possible. The month-long phase-in of the cuts ends on March 1, after which the remaining 32 states plus the District of Columbia, Guam and the US Virgin Islands will also implement these cuts.
The number of people affected by the cuts as of March 1 is staggering. In the 16 largest US states, these are: California – 2.93 million people; New York – 1.61 million; Texas – 1.34 million; Illinois – 1.06 million; Pennsylvania – 1.04 million; North Carolina – 813,000; Michigan – 705,000; Ohio – 673,000; Massachusetts – 629,000; Washington – 518,000; Virginia – 470,000; Oregon – 416,000; Alabama – 393,000; New Jersey – 388,000; Maryland – 360,000; and Wisconsin – 347,000 people.
The cuts in food aid are particularly bad and reactionary as they come at a time of high food price inflation. According to the US Department of Agriculture, overall food prices rose 11.4 percent in 2022, faster than in 2021. Eggs led the way with a 32.2 percent increase, due in part to bird flu. Fats and oils were up 18.5 percent, poultry was up 14.6 percent and other meats were up 14.2 percent. Grain and baked goods prices rose 13 percent.
Millions of low-income people, most of them from the working poor, now have to pay these higher prices with significantly reduced food aid. Further cuts are planned. The Congressional Budget Office expects overall food aid spending to fall this year due to cuts in emergency aid funds and to stagnate over the next decade.
As a result, according to the Food Research and Action Committee, a research and lobbying group in Washington, millions of people will be “starved.” The organization warns, “The biggest increase will be among older adults, whose monthly SNAP benefits will be slashed from $281 to $23.”
Hunger is becoming a mass phenomenon. Grossly underfunded food banks and other charities are becoming increasingly stressed. In Georgia, where the cuts have already taken effect, the Atlanta Community Food Bank reported a 34 percent increase in demand.
The US administration under President Biden declares that Russia is committing “crimes against humanity” in the war in Ukraine. At the same time, the United States government is conducting what can only be described as a “crime against humanity.” However, there is no Presidential speech on the food aid cuts, and no “bold” secret visits to Michigan, Mississippi or West Virginia in which the President would show his solidarity and compassion for those struggling to survive. That’s because Biden himself, along with those he likes to call his “Republican friends,” is the perpetrator of this crime.
Biden’s war on Russia and his war on the poor and working class at home are directly linked. The US government has already spent $110 billion on the war against Russia in Ukraine, deliberately provoked by NATO’s expansion across Eastern Europe to Russia’s borders. That’s roughly equivalent to the $113 billion annual cost of the entire SNAP program and more than triple the amount expected to be “saved” by the cuts imposed on March 1.
The total number of Americans affected by the food aid cut (42 million) is even larger than the population of Ukraine (39 million). The US ruling elite doesn’t give a damn about either of them. The people of Ukraine are being burned as cannon fodder in the war against Russia, which the US has instigated to bolster its claim to dominance over the Eurasian landmass. Food aid recipients are being stripped of the modest funds to fund this war and the even larger sums needed for the worldwide operations of the American military machine, including an imminent war with China.
There are no glaring headlines in the newspapers or breaking news in digital media about the looming catastrophe for 42 million Americans, who combined have the population of even the largest state. Not a single senior congressman, either Democrat or Republican, has protested and issued a statement to that effect. And, of course, they all voted in favor of this policy last December.
The silence of the so-called left wing of the Democratic Party is particularly notable. Not a word is heard from Senator Bernie Sanders. On his website, he has said that Donald Trump’s Republican administration’s cuts in food aid are “outrageous.” But if the cuts come now under Joe Biden’s Democratic administration, the self-proclaimed “Democratic Socialist” will lose his vote.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her group of reps affiliated with or associated with the pseudo-left Democratic Socialists of America have also not spoken out against the food aid cuts. Ocasio-Cortez also denounced Trump’s food aid cuts. She explained that the program is vital to working people and that without it her own family “may have starved.” But now, with Democrat Joe Biden at stake and her own six-figure salary as a congresswoman, the starving masses are no longer Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s concern.
To struggle against the austerity measures that are plunging tens of millions of people deeper into poverty and misery, the working class needs its own independent alternative to capitalist politics. Working people must break with the existing political structure of the two-party system. Democrats and Republicans are both irrevocably committed to defending the profit system and the global interests of American imperialism. The working class must find a new way.
The Socialist Equality Party, sister party to the Socialist Equality Party in the US, calls for building a political movement of the working class that is independent of the two-party system and opposed to capitalism and imperialist war. We advocate a socialist program that puts the needs of working people first, rather than corporate profits and private wealth.
There are sufficient resources in American society to end poverty, starvation, disease and premature death. But these resources are under the control of a ruling elite that is a tiny fraction of the population. These trillions of dollars are the product of the labor of tens of millions of working people. They must be available to the working class and not be monopolized by Wall Street or plugged into the Pentagon’s war machine.
Workers must demand the reversal of all welfare cuts. They must fight for the introduction of a minimum income sufficient to ensure a decent standard of living for the entire population and to eradicate hunger and poverty. They must also engage in a massive public program to rebuild run-down neighborhoods, streets, hospitals and schools.
This can be funded when the assets of pandemic profiteers and other billionaires are confiscated, and when all industries, utilities, transportation and finance become public property, managed democratically in the interests of working people.
This requires a revolutionary struggle against the capitalist system, and this requires the building of a new revolutionary party of the working class. The Socialist Equality Party is that party. We urge working people and youth to contact us, study our program and perspective, and make the decision to join the SEP.
