By Mark Richardson, Arizona News Connection
Children's health and nutrition advocates fear changes in eligibility requirements for federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits could begin affecting Arizona families and their children as early as November of this year.
The budget bill passed by Congress includes $186 billion in cuts to the program.
January Contreras, president and CEO of the Arizona-based Children's Action Alliance, said adding more work regulations, limiting benefit levels and shifting the cost to states will have a major effect on whether children are fed at school.
"When we're talking about a kid having enough to eat, it is a basic need that in the United States of America," Contreras contended. "We should still say is a priority that's worth protecting."
In 2024, more than 900,000 Arizonans participated in the program. Experts said under the Trump administration's "One Big Beautiful Bill Act," tens of thousands of Arizona families would lose access to nutrition assistance. Congress cut it and other assistance programs in order to extend the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
One of the provisions in the Trump administration's budget bill involved shifting the cost of benefits like the nutrition program to state and local governments but advocates said there is little support in the Arizona legislature for spending additional funds on the program, and private charities will need to pick up the slack.
Summer Grandy, director of community impact for the nonprofit Flagstaff Family Food Center, said it will be a tall order.
"These cuts are going to make food banks and the people interacting with food banks significantly increase," Grandy projected. "That's a really heavy ask after we've already seen a significant increase in people coming to us post-pandemic."
Grandy noted another part of the budget bill cuts funding for hunger research. She stressed the Trump administration is trying to ignore the problems it will cause.
"The recent ending of food insecurity research by the USDA implicates that they know the damage this is going to cause across communities," Grandy asserted. "They do not want to be held responsible for it."
