U.S. senators in Washington, D.C., are working on revisions to President Trump’s sweeping tax bill to meet a self-imposed deadline of July 4. The version that passed in the House would cut food assistance under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, by nearly $300 billion in the next decade.
The left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says 7 million Americans would see that help end or “cut substantially.” Already, food pantries are preparing for a surge in people knocking on their doors. That includes the group Feeding Southwest Virginia.
It has a warehouse distribution center in Salem, Virginia, located in an impoverished mountainous part of the state, four hours south of Washington, D.C.
Feeding Southwest Virginia CEO Pamela Irvine has run the organization for 44 years. She says she looks a lot like the person who relies on her organization.
“When I look and think about my life and the challenges that our family had early on, and having $25 every two weeks to buy groceries, it looks like me.” she said. “During COVID, it looked like people who never expected to need food from a food pantry.”
In Appalachia, Irvine says the key pillar industries are mostly gone, and the face of hunger is changing.
“It’s not just people trapped in mountains or in areas that are so economically deprived that, really, they don’t have hope for gainful employment,” Irvine said. “It could also be people who had good jobs and now don’t have a job, and lost their job.”
Salem, Virginia, is a four-hour drive from Capitol Hill, though the fancy suits of Washington, D.C. seem a world away from rural Virginia. Irvine said she’s reaching out to senators, imploring them to protect health insurance and food assistance for the needy.
“I have to have hope that people don’t want to see other people, and specifically children, go hungry,” she said. “And that in America, people should not go hungry.”
Feeding Southwest Virginia sends boxes of food down a chute to members of a local church who will distribute the food. Irvine said the number of people in their neighborhood relying on the food bank has tripled in the last year.
Looking back at her 44 years of doing this work, Irvine said she thought America could end hunger and food insecurity.
“I was naive,” she added.
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Scott Tong produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Catherine Welch. Welch also adapted it for the web.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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