This Is the Moment to Stand Up for SNAP and SNAP-Ed

Food or Medicine? Dignity or Desperation? This Is What’s at Stake.

Across Northwest North Carolina, families are facing impossible choices. Do I pay the light bill or put food on the table? Do I fill my prescriptions—or feed my kids?

Now, federal budget proposals threaten to make those decisions even more painful.

The Senate’s plan includes up to $300 billion in cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) — with efforts underway to shift billions in new costs onto states and eliminate programs like SNAP-Ed, which provides essential nutrition education to families, schools, and communities across our region.

Let’s be clear: these aren’t just numbers on a page. These are groceries in a cart. Nourishment that helps children grow, and working parents get through the month. Meals that help seniors stay independent. These programs are lifelines.

And they are on the line.

SNAP Works. SNAP-Ed Works. Cutting Them Hurts.

In North Carolina, more than 1.4 million people rely on SNAP to help put food on the table. This includes families with children, older adults on fixed incomes, veterans, and people working long hours in low-wage jobs.

SNAP-Ed, often unseen but deeply impactful, helps people make the most of those benefits. It teaches healthy cooking on a budget. It equips kids with lifelong knowledge. It supports community gardens, nutrition classes in schools, diabetes prevention efforts in clinics, and much more.

Together, these programs form a foundation of food security and health in our state.

But Current Budget Proposals Would Change Everything.

If passed, this budget would:

• Slash benefits and make it more difficult for eligible families to access assistance.

• Shift billions of dollars in program costs to state and county governments, forcing cuts to other vital services.

• Eliminate SNAP-Ed entirely, wiping out nearly $11 million in North Carolina prevention funding that supports schools, senior centers, clinics, and nonprofits.

• Undermine our rural economy, our health system, and the dignity of people doing their best to get by.

We’ve been here before. And we know: Nonprofits cannot fill the gap. SNAP provides nine meals for every one that food banks can offer.

These cuts will not make SNAP more efficient, put families back to work, or support Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) goals; they will push more families into crisis while shifting new costs to our hospitals, local grocers, and taxpayers.

What We’re Fighting For

We’re not fighting for a handout. We’re fighting for:

• The right of every child to grow up nourished and ready to learn.

• The dignity of older adults who deserve a secure retirement.

• The stability of working families struggling to make ends meet.

• The health of our communities and the strength of our local economies.

This is a moment that demands moral clarity.

Do we invest in resilience, or turn our backs on it? Do we build systems that work, or tear them down with false narratives? Do we walk alongside our neighbors—or leave them

behind?

Take Action Now

As the Senate begins its deliberations, we need your voice.

• Call your Senators. Urge them to protect SNAP and SNAP-Ed in the federal budget.

  
  

  📞 Senator Ted Budd: 202-224-3154

  📞 Senator Thom Tillis: 202-224-6342
  

• Spread the word. Talk to your friends, your community, your elected leaders.
  

This is not the time for silence. It’s the time to stand together—for fairness, for health, and for the kind of community we all believe in.

Let’s make it clear: We will not let our neighbors go hungry. Not now. Not ever.