The Hawai‘i Foodbank, the state’s largest hunger-relief nonprofit, has some startling facts at hand. Its 2023 study showed nearly 1 in 3 Hawaii households are food insecure, meaning they struggle to get or afford adequate food.
That’s much higher than the national proportion of
1 in 7 households that are not reliably able to get enough to eat, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And given that Hawaii housing and other costs also strain the budget, the realities of basic survival in Hawaii can be dire.
What’s worse is that families soon may have less access to not only food — but also to information that could help guide them out of insecurity. The reason: The cuts in the tax bill proposed by the U.S. House would reduce funds for key federal programs by an estimated $300 billion.
These are the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), less formally known as “food stamps,” nationally shrinking the appropriation by 30%. Hawaii has expanded SNAP benefits: Recipients can have earnings up to 200% of the federal poverty line. Those more generous eligibility limits are needed in this state because families are saddled with other higher-than-average costs.
The allotment of funds to each state varies according to household incomes. As of last year, a family of four in Hawaii received up to $1,759 a month in SNAP benefits. The 2024 total value of SNAP benefits in this state topped $60 million, according to the governor’s office. And, as Hawaii’s U.S. Rep. Jill Tokuda pointed out, these federal dollars have a ripple effect through the isle economy.
Further, the federal proposal would basically end an education and community-outreach arm, known as SNAP-Ed, on Sept. 30. The SNAP-Ed allotment for Hawaii is about $1.57 million, with classes and outreach efforts to link people with food resources in their own communities.
The impact: An estimated 158,000 low-income seniors, families and single adults in this state could lose that lifeline to access food and nutrition education. Through classes, outreach marketing and work on policies, SNAP-Ed aims to help people stretch their dollars so they can afford to make better choices in food and fitness.
For example, many SNAP recipients don’t know that the benefits can be spent at farmers’ markets, sources for healthier foods. And outreach includes learning to grow food and which fruits and vegetables thrive in the tropical environment.
Many people opt for unhealthy processed food because they tend to be cheaper, said Jean Butel, director of the SNAP-Ed program at the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resilience, University of Hawaii at Manoa.
These proposed cuts, both to SNAP and SNAP-Ed, are basically penny-wise and pound-foolish. Once people fall through the safety-net gaps, bringing them back to a sustainable health level becomes more difficult for them, and more expensive for the community in the long run. It would be far better for the federal government today to move more carefully through the fiscal hunt for wasteful spending, trimming excess with a scalpel rather than an axe.
There have been proposals that to get more health benefits from the taxpayers’ investments, “junk foods” could be made ineligible for SNAP purchasing. Currently benefits can be spent on any food for home preparation, excluding hot foods or other edibles served for immediate consumption. Alcohol, tobacco and nonfood items are ineligible.
Such proposals to improve effectiveness are worth considering. But clumsy legislating to sharply diminish a benefit that helps low-income Americans, already threatened with cuts in Medicaid and other programs, is unacceptable.
When congressional senators review the tax bill the House has sent them, they must do better.
