Sold to voters as a way to cut \u201cwaste, fraud, and abuse,\u201d a more honest assessment of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) is that it\u2019s just a Big Brazen Bid to shred the social safety net.<\/p>\n
Naturally, the looming cuts to Medicaid and what they will mean for rural hospitals in particular has received the most press. But there are numerous other ways those in need of government assistance will be further pressed into poverty, including through a particularly narrow-minded Sophie\u2019s Choice: internet access or food?<\/p>\n
Last year, GOP leaders blocked bipartisan efforts to fund<\/a> an extension of the Affordable Connectivity Program<\/a> (ACP), which offered 23 million eligible households a $30-per-month voucher to help pay for internet service. As if letting the ACP die wasn\u2019t a big enough blow, OBBBA not only increases the paperwork burden required to qualify for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, it completely removes internet service costs as an eligible deduction.<\/p>\n More from Sean Gonsalves<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n In the context of SNAP, the \u201cdeduction\u201d refers to how an eligible household\u2019s net income is calculated, which is then used to determine how much households are entitled to receive in SNAP benefits. A lower net income translates into a higher allocation of benefits. Section 10005 of the law<\/a> prohibits \u201chousehold internet costs (e.g., monthly subscriber fees)\u201d from being used in the net income calculation. That means that families with internet access will have higher net incomes, and therefore get lower benefits.<\/p>\n \u201cFundamentally, the SNAP benefit calculation is about calculating what the household has available for food. That\u2019s why rent and utilities are factored in,\u201d explained Katie Bergh, senior policy analyst with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities<\/a>\u2019 (CBPP) Food Assistance team.<\/p>\n Contrast this change to 2019, when the first Trump administration sought to establish federal \u201cStandard Utility Allowances<\/a>\u201d across every state. At that time, internet service was considered to be an essential utility\u2014and that was before the COVID lockdowns turned internet access for all into one of the most bipartisan goals in all of politics.<\/p>\n But under OBBBA, and contrary to common sense, internet access is no longer considered essential, at least not for SNAP beneficiaries, despite repeated campaign promises to \u201cmake America affordable again<\/a>\u201d and to bring prices down \u201cstarting on Day 1<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Overall, as Bergh and two of her CBPP colleagues analyzed, more than 1 million children will see food assistance to their families cut substantially or terminated as a result of OBBBA\u2019s SNAP reductions.<\/p>\n The internet-or-food provision is completely disconnected from the lived experience of those who require both.<\/p>\n
\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n But in addition, at a time when internet connectivity is a must to meaningfully participate in the economy, Bergh told me that for SNAP recipients who manage to not get kicked off the program, they would receive a lower SNAP benefit if they have home internet service.<\/p>\n \u201cThe CBO [Congressional Budget Office] estimates that it would be about $10 [less] a month. And the impact is a pretty significant number of households: 65 percent of SNAP households, which is about 13 million households,\u201d Bergh explained, adding that of $186 billion in cuts to the SNAP program over the next decade, $11 billion of that is from eliminating internet costs from the Standard Utility Allowance.<\/p>\n Add to that the new, more stringent work requirements for SNAP recipients and you\u2019ll begin to see how the internet-or-food provision is completely disconnected from the lived experience of those who require both. Do you want your child to have two extra meals a month, or have internet access for schoolwork?<\/p>\n \u201cIn 2025, internet service is essential for employment and education. It\u2019s even more essential [for those on SNAP] to document their hours, potentially through online tools and definitely in seeking employment,\u201d Bergh said. \u201cWe have certainly seen access to benefits increasingly move online and, in some states, they have closed human services offices in some communities.\u201d<\/p>\n Former FCC nominee and now executive director of the American Association for Public Broadband Gigi Sohn puts it in even more stark terms. \u201cInternet access is not a luxury, it\u2019s a lifeline. Stripping internet costs from SNAP eligibility calculations effectively forces low-income Americans to choose between staying connected and putting food on the table,\u201d she told me. \u201cWe should be expanding digital access, not punishing those who can least afford to lose it.\u201d<\/p>\n YOU DON\u2019T HAVE TO BE A BROADBAND POLICY EXPERT<\/b> to understand just how myopic it is to make it more difficult for financially strapped households to afford internet service. The fallout of the now-defunct Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) was a proxy. Nearly all of the same households that qualified for SNAP also qualified for the ACP.<\/p>\n A recently published Benton Institute for Broadband & Society study<\/a> examined the fallout from the demise of the ACP, finding through interviews with program participants that it \u201ccreated costs and tensions for beneficiaries that went beyond their losing the $30-per-month service subsidy.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhen the ACP program ended, the question for most people was not whether to keep service but how to keep it while juggling other household needs,\u201d Benton Senior Policy Fellow John Horrigan, the study\u2019s author, writes.<\/p>\n The \u201chow\u201d typically meant downgrading service, creating a cascade of additional challenges. \u201cDowngraded plans meant slower service, with the end result that not everyone in the household could be online at the same time,\u201d the report explains. \u201cHomework might unfold in shifts to take into account multiple students or a parent needing to work at home. Telehealth sessions might stall or drop \u2026 Those households had to absorb the costs (sometimes through taking on part-time work such as DoorDash delivery or housecleaning) or cut back elsewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n The new burdens of searching for the most affordable plans, fitting it into strapped household budgets, and rationing access created \u201ca tax on former ACP recipients\u2019 time,\u201d Horrigan writes.<\/p>\n The study also captured something that contrasts chain saw\u2013wielding OBBBA proponents, who claim that all these social safety net cuts are about \u201csaving\u201d taxpayer dollars.<\/p>\n One analysis showed that the ACP subsidy returned $2 in benefit for every $1 spent<\/a> on the subsidy, yielding $16.2 billion in annual benefits in the form of greater access to employment options and greater convenience. Another analysis<\/a> showed that for health care alone, the ACP created between $28.9 billion and $29.5 billion in annual savings.<\/p>\n That\u2019s just the data. But when it\u2019s downloaded into everyday lives, that\u2019s where the human toll comes into view.<\/p>\n \u201cEspecially being in the area that we\u2019re in, there isn\u2019t many options as far as internet, so we\u2019re kind of just stuck. And my bill has more than doubled since it [ACP] ended. I don\u2019t really have a choice. I live in an apartment building where I don\u2019t have any choice about what my internet provider is,\u201d said one former ACP beneficiary surveyed for the Benton study.<\/p>\n \u201cI have very limited mobility. I\u2019m bedridden. I have a live-in caregiver. I have a lot of telehealth visits, and the quality of the visit is not good. Sometimes I can\u2019t hear them, they can\u2019t hear me. Most times the session drops.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s always been expensive to be poor. OBBBA just made it more costly. In a short six months, we\u2019ve gone from the aspirations of \u201cinternet for all\u201d to exacerbating the digital divide for generations to come, just as AI and internet access have become central to Americans\u2019 economic prospects. Is this what makes America great again?<\/p>\n This story has been updated to reflect new estimates of the final version of OBBBA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sold to voters as a way to cut \u201cwaste, fraud, and abuse,\u201d a more honest assessment of the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":57993,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[18007,716,3232,42327,327,6972,1227,2189,712,80,42326,5620,42328,158,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-57992","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-internet","8":"tag-big-beautiful-bill","9":"tag-broadband","10":"tag-budget","11":"tag-budget-reconciliation","12":"tag-congress","13":"tag-food-stamps","14":"tag-health-social-policy","15":"tag-hunger","16":"tag-internet","17":"tag-politics","18":"tag-poverty-wealth","19":"tag-republicans","20":"tag-sean-gonsalves","21":"tag-technology","22":"tag-united-states","23":"tag-unitedstates","24":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114836979428512168","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57992","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=57992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57992\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n