What Federal Cuts to SNAP Would Mean for Santa Barbara County

Changes to SNAP Would Also Lower Age of Dependents

Rep. Salud Carbajal blasted House Republicans’ proposed cuts to the SNAP program and called their efforts to reduce the age of dependents “outrageous.” | Credit: Ingrid Bostrom File Photo

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Federal budget cuts could make it harder for low-income families to eat. Last week, Republican lawmakers put forward a proposal to cut funding for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the country’s biggest federal food assistance program. The changes would roll back benefits, reduce the deductions people are able to take before determining their income, and expand the work requirements for the program. That includes lowering the age of dependents from children 17 years old and younger to those 6 and younger; caregivers with children 7 and older would have to work at least 80 hours a month to receive benefits.

Approximately 60,000 people in Santa Barbara County use SNAP benefits, which are called CalFresh in California. A little more than 7,000 of those people are children between age 7 and 17, according to the county’s Department of Social Services.

At a press conference on May 16, Erik Talkin, CEO of the Foodbank of Santa Barbara County, said that with cuts to SNAP, as well as the cuts to health care that are also proposed at the federal level, the Foodbank is expecting a bump in people needing food.

“This is being added to our current situation, where we’re looking at a $5 million cut in food that we are expecting in the coming year [primarily] from the USDA,” Talkin said at the conference. “That equals a quarter of the total of the food that we would be distributing.”

He said about 75 percent of folks supported through the Foodbank and its initiatives are families.

Talkin said that SNAP benefits pencil out to about $6.20 a day per individual. But, he says, it goes far in helping people spend money for groceries in their own communities. Without that support, the Foodbank can expect more people in need.

“It’s a very delicate balance between people getting support from federal government benefits and then needing to get emergency food locally,” Talkin said. “And once you tip that balance and try to put too much emphasis on expecting local agencies to feed the community, then it gets extremely difficult.”

Currently, Talkin said, the Foodbank is taking $1 million from its reserve and investing it in its farm-to-food-bank program to try to get more fresh produce for the Foodbank. This program allows the food bank to purchase from local farmers in the county. Talkin said this effort is an attempt to continue the USDA’s local food purchasing assistance program, which ends next month. But, he says, even with this program, the Foodbank would need continued community support to meet growing demand.

SNAP has cost the federal government more money post-pandemic. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that the federal government spent about $92 billion on SNAP in fiscal year 2020 but spent $125 billion the following year. The annual cost fell in 2023 to about $113 billion.

The proposal to reduce funding for SNAP, put forward by members of the House Agriculture Committee, said the cuts and changes will “[reinforce] work, [root] out waste, and [institute] long-overdue accountability incentives to control costs and end executive and state overreach.” The legislation comes as part of a reconciliation bill — a parliamentary tool that allows bills to pass with a simple majority in the Senate, rather than with 60 votes. Republicans hold a narrow majority of seats in both the House and the Senate.

At the press conference, District 24 Representative Salud Carbajal said that House Republicans are using the reconciliation process to push through what he called an unpopular agenda.

“Instead of protecting or strengthening this program, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle just voted to approve indiscriminate cuts and burn some requirements to lock people out of this critical safety net,” Carbajal said, adding that reducing the age of dependents for the programs is “outrageous.”

As of May 20, Republicans were finishing up the budget bill, with the aim to pass it this week.