H.R. 1 Will Make America’s Kids Hungrier, Less Healthy, and Deeper in Poverty
A Moral Gut-Check
No child in the United States of America should ever feel the pangs of hunger. Yet with the President’s signing of H.R. 1 – the the big, monstrous bill – President Trump and Congress have just guaranteed that more children will go hungry.
When we talk about the $186 billion in cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) under H.R. 1, we’re not debating some abstract line item buried in legislation. This is the largest cut to food assistance ever in the history of this nation.
We’re talking about whether millions of children get to eat or go to bed with empty stomachs. It’s as stark as that.
Some Trump Administration officials like Calley Means try to whitewash the devastating consequences of H.R. 1 – spinning increased hunger into some sort of twisted positive. For example, Means tweets:
To be effective, The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program should be going to people who need it – and and it shouldn’t be going to soda. One party has taken steps to protect SNAP.
These attempts to derail our public conversation with distractions – debating the merits of soda, a candy bar, birthday cakes, or chocolate milk – completely miss the point. There is nothing in H.R. 1 about soda or candy. H.R. 1 does nothing to address that.
Instead, what this bill does is ensure that more children in this country go to bed hungrier, sicker, and living in poverty.
The math could not be clearer. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) lays it out in black and white: $186 billion will be cut from SNAP. That means millions of children will be hungrier, in poorer health, and pushed deeper into poverty.
And why? Because the wealthy wanted more tax breaks. Because the NRA wanted cheaper gun silencers. Those were the trade-offs Congress and President Trump chose over feeding children.
The Bill Betrays Children and Enriches the Wealthy
It’s important to understand what H.R. 1 really does. This final bill doesn’t simply trim SNAP around the edges. It fundamentally rewrites the program in ways that will slash benefits, shift massive costs to states, and ultimately cut off help for millions of children and families.
Guardian reporter Steven Greenhouse contrasts the bill’s cuts of $1.4 trillion in “health and food assistance for non-affluent Americans” to the more than $3 trillion in tax cuts that “disproportionately help the wealthy and corporations” as “Robin-Hood-in-reverse” policies.
Specific to SNAP:
The federal government will cut SNAP by nearly $200 billion, gutting the very benefits that help families keep food on the table.
States will be forced to pay a dramatically higher share of SNAP’s costs and will be penalized for so-called “error rates” that mostly reflect paperwork issues, not fraud – and there is no reason to believe that states will actually have the funds available to pay their new “share” without drastically cutting other services or raising taxes.
Future increases in SNAP benefits will be tied to an outdated formula, effectively locking them to inflation without regard for actual food costs, ensuring that purchasing power erodes over time.
The impact will be brutal and tragic. Families will have fewer dollars to spend on food. More children will grow up in homes without enough to eat and child poverty will deepen. Each year, SNAP lifts about 8 million people out of poverty, including 4 million children, but these cuts will reverse that.
And yet, while children will be hungrier and families pushed further into hardship, the wealthiest households stand to gain the most. A recent CBO analysis found that H.R. 1 would reduce incomes for the poorest 10% of Americans by an average of 3.9%, while increasing incomes for the richest 10% by 2.3%, a staggering 6.2-point gap.
In short: fewer groceries for kids, bigger yachts for billionaires. That is the moral equation Congress signed off on and Means is somehow trying to defend.
The Bill Locks SNAP to Outdated Costs and Undermines School Meals
One of the most damaging provisions in H.R. 1 is its attack on the Thrifty Food Plan (TFP) — the core formula that sets SNAP benefit levels. Under current law, the USDA updates the TFP to reflect changes in nutrition science, food prices, and the realities of how families actually shop and cook. That’s what allowed SNAP benefits to finally rise in 2021 after decades of lagging behind what it actually costs to feed a family.
H.R. 1 changes that fundamentally. It limits updates to the TFP to once every five years and requires them to be “cost-neutral.” In other words, even if fresh produce or lean proteins get more expensive, SNAP can’t adjust beyond inflation. Over time, this ensures SNAP benefits will steadily erode against the true cost of a nutritious diet. Families’ purchasing power will steadily shrink, forcing more impossible choices between quality and quantity at the grocery store, which is exactly the opposite of what HHS Secretary and Means claim they want to address.
This is not some minor technical tweak. It’s a deliberate policy choice to make SNAP less responsive to the real cost of feeding a family – locking benefit levels to outdated assumptions even as grocery prices change.
The consequences don’t stop at the grocery checkout. Because children in households receiving SNAP are automatically enrolled for free school breakfasts and lunches through direct certification, cuts to SNAP enrollment ripple straight into schools.
When fewer families are on SNAP:
Kids lose automatic eligibility for free meals, and many parents may not know to fill out extra paperwork.
Schools get a lower federal reimbursement, making it harder to offer universal free meals through the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP).
More children show up to class hungry, with poorer focus, higher absenteeism, and worse long-term outcomes.
As Erin Hysom from the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) told Chalkbeat’s Kalyn Belsha:
The cuts to SNAP that are currently proposed will increase hunger in homes and in classrooms. It’s really going to be this kind of double whammy for families.
And because Summer EBT benefits that feed children when schools close are tied to SNAP benefit formulas, the squeeze continues right through the summer months – leaving kids with less support exactly when they need it most.
Shifting SNAP Costs to States Will Strain Schools, Health Programs, and Local Budgets
The legislation, signed into law by the President, doesn’t just slash SNAP funding for children and families. H.R. 1 also imposes a massive cost shift to states by requiring them to pick up billions of dollars in a share of the program’s costs, breaking a long-standing promise that nutrition assistance is a national responsibility.
Under this bill:
States will be required to pay up to 75% of SNAP’s administrative costs, up from 50% today.
They’ll also face new penalties tied to so-called “payment error rates.” If a state’s paperwork error rate exceeds 6% – something most states do – they will be forced to pay a direct share of SNAP benefit costs themselves.
It’s important to understand these “error rates” have almost nothing to do with fraud. They mostly capture innocent paperwork mistakes made by overwhelmed families or underfunded state agencies. Under current law, states already have to submit corrective action plans and can face financial penalties for persistently high errors. But H.R. 1 would dramatically expand those penalties by making states pay a slice of the benefits themselves.
The consequence is that states are now financially encouraged to impose much greater administrative burdens and paperwork barriers upon families.
States will also face a devastating strain on their state budgets – with kids likely to pay the price. As FRAC and state advocates have warned, these new obligations could force states to:
Raise taxes, often hitting working families hardest.
Cut funding from schools, public health programs, or local safety-net services to make up the difference.
Or scale back their own SNAP outreach and administration, making it even harder for eligible families to enroll.
The result is the same: fewer resources for kids. Less money for classrooms, school meals, mental health supports, child care, or afterschool programs – all so states can pay for a federal obligation “inside-the-beltway politicians” just dumped on them.
Furthermore, since every $1 in SNAP spending generates up to $1.80 in local economic activity, these cuts don’t just hit individual households. They also threaten small grocers, truckers, and especially farmers who depend on steady demand from SNAP purchases. Over the next decade, this law could wipe out billions in farm income and undercut entire rural economies.
Being Hungry Is Not Healthy, and No Child Should Be a Casualty of Politics
Although Calley Means and others try to spin these cuts as some twisted path toward “health,” arguing that SNAP shouldn’t pay for soda and that tougher rules are needed to keep the program focused, here’s the most important truth:
Being hungry is profoundly unhealthy.
Children who don’t get enough to eat are more likely to suffer from anemia, developmental delays, anxiety, and depression. They struggle in school, repeat grades more often, and have higher risks of chronic diseases like heart problems and diabetes later in life. They’re also more likely to become adults with lower earnings, continuing a cycle of poverty and poor health.
So when lawmakers cut SNAP, they aren’t improving kids’ diets. They’re guaranteeing more children go without meals altogether. That’s not just an attack on nutrition. It’s an attack on their futures.
The trade-offs couldn’t be clearer. This isn’t just about whether a low-income family buys a soda or a birthday cake. It’s about whether children have anything at all for dinner. It’s about whether they sit in a classroom with the energy to learn.
The Congressional Budget Office lays it out plainly: H.R. 1 will slash food assistance by nearly $200 billion, drive millions deeper into poverty, and hit the poorest households the hardest — all while handing the richest Americans a massive windfall.
This is the moral equation Congress chose and that Means embraces, but it is what the rest of us will be forced to live with.
No child in the United States should ever go to bed hungry. Yet this bill makes it certain that more will.
We have to stop letting our debates get hijacked by distractions and untruths. We have to look squarely at the real impact: millions of children who will grow up hungrier, sicker, and with fewer opportunities – all so the wealthiest households can take home even more.
What You Can Do:
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