President Donald Trump’s latest budget blueprint is out, and it again calls for eviscerating nearly every program that helps families afford the basics, including cutting the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)—the United States’ largest food assistance program, which helps nearly 39 million people get enough to eat—by a staggering $220 billion, literally shrinking the program by one-third. While presidential budgets are often considered dead on arrival, since they do not themselves become law, one particular proposed cut to SNAP poses an immediate and dangerous threat, given that Trump is trying to sidestep Congress to enact it by fiat.
Last December, Congress rejected President Trump’s attempts to use the 2018 Farm Bill to make deep cuts to SNAP. Immediately after this rejection, President Trump announcedthat he would cut SNAP unilaterally through administrative action. Following through on that announcement, the Trump administration last month released a proposed rule that would dramatically scale back eligibility for SNAP by curtailing states’ flexibility to help jobless or underemployed workers in hard-hit regions. By the administration’s own estimate, the rule would take food assistance away from some 755,000 Americans.
As new analysis from the Center for American Progress shows, if enacted, Trump’s proposed rule wouldn’t just hurt workers struggling to afford enough to eat—it would also hurt the American economy as a whole.