In a 51-49 vote, a massive spending package cleared the U.S. Senate Saturday night moving one step closer to the president’s desk. <\/p>\n
Included in the list of programs on the chopping block for funding — The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. <\/p>\n
Food insecurity experts worry slashing funding for food programs like the Supplemental Assistance Program will leave thousands of families hungry.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would be very detrimental to a lot of families,\u201d Jessica Clark said.<\/p>\n
Clark said the benefits the federal aid program known as SNAP offers are very helpful.<\/p>\n
She knows because they were a lifeline for her during a time of crisis.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was huge, it was life changing because I could keep my car to go to work. I only got about 200 dollars a month, which was way less than I would have gotten in child support, but that 200 dollars went to my car payment so I could keep going to my job and I used it as a steppingstone off of it,\u201d Clark said.<\/p>\n
Although she no longer relies on SNAP, she worries for those who do.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think families will be devastated and I think they\u2019ll have to choose between making electricity or gas payments, or feeding their kids, it\u2019d be awful,\u201d Clark said.<\/p>\n
According to the San Diego Hunger Coalition, more than 400,000 San Diegans participated in SNAP as of April of this year.<\/p>\n
In California, the program is known as CalFresh.<\/p>\n
They say the proposed cuts could force CalFresh to remove 67,000 recipients from its program, increasing a monthly meal gap they say cannot be filled solely by charitable food programs.<\/p>\n
A sentiment echoed by Carissa Casares with feeding San Diego who is equally worried about the potential cuts.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you think about the people that are, you know, at risk right now of experiencing food insecurity, we\u2019re talking about seniors, we\u2019re talking about children, we\u2019re talking about parents we\u2019re talking about military families, there are no one is exempt from it,\u201d Casares said.<\/p>\n
Natalie Barreda said she knows teachers who are trying to figure out a plan for students and their families who depend on the program to keep food on their table.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s literally taking resources from a community that\u2019s already in a really rough spot,\u201d Barreda said.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s unclear if the package will pass the house ahead of the fourth of July deadline.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a 51-49 vote, a massive spending package cleared the U.S. Senate Saturday night moving one step closer…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":23892,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,990,3549,7264,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-23891","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-food","12":"tag-san-diego","13":"tag-sandiego","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-united-states-of-america","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","18":"tag-us","19":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114765410173659778","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}