Elizabeth Butler goes from one supermarket to the next in her home town of Martinsburg, West Virginia, to ensure she gets the best price on each item on her grocery list.
Along with 42 million Americans, she pays for those groceries with federal food subsides. That cash doesn’t cover the whole bill for her family of three.
“Our food doesn’t even last the month,” she says. “I’m going to all these different places just to make sure that we have enough food to last us the whole month.”
But that money may soon run out, as Congress gears up to vote on what US President Donald Trump has coined his “big beautiful bill”.
The food subsidy programme that Ms Butler uses – called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as SNAP – is one of many items on the chopping block, as Congress tries to reconcile the president’s seemingly conflicting demands to both lower taxes and balance the budget.
The Senate is due to vote on their version of the bill by the end of the week. If it passes, it will then be voted on by the House, at which point it will be sent to Trump to sign. He has pressured both chambers of Congress, which the Republican Party controls, to pass the bill by 4 July.
SNAP offers low-income households, including older Americans, families with children and people who are disabled, money each month to buy groceries. In West Virginia, one of the states with the highest rates of poverty, 16% of the population depends on the benefit.
The state is also a reliable Republican stronghold and voted overwhelmingly for Trump in November, when he ran on the promise of reducing the cost of living for Americans, including the price of groceries.
“When I win, I will immediately bring prices down, starting on Day One,” he said at an August news conference surrounded by packaged foods, milk, meats and eggs.
Months after the president made that pledge, the prices of commonly purchased groceries like orange juice, eggs and bacon are higher than they were the same time last year.
It’s a fact that has not gone unnoticed by Ms Butler: “The president hasn’t changed the food prices yet and he promised the people that he would do that.”
Trump has argued, without providing an explanation how, that spending cuts in the 1,000-page budget bill will help bring food prices down: “The cut is going to give everyone much more food, because prices are coming way down, groceries are down,” Trump said when asked specifically about cuts to SNAP.
“The One, Big, Beautiful Bill will ultimately strengthen SNAP through cost-sharing measures and common-sense work requirements,” a White House official told the BBC.
Republicans have long been divided on how to fund social welfare programmes like SNAP and Medicaid. While many think the government should prioritise balancing the budget, others, especially in impoverished regions, support programmes that directly help their constituents.
As the bill stands, Senate Republicans are proposing $211bn (£154bn) in cuts with states being partly responsible for making up the difference.
In theory, passing the bill should be an easy political lift, since Republicans control both chambers of Congress and the White House.
But since the bill includes cuts to programmes like SNAP and Medicaid, which are popular with everyday Americans, selling the bill to all factions within the Republican Party has not been an easy feat.
Reports of private frustration and dissent about potential cuts to Medicaid and SNAP have leaked in recent weeks, showing the internal wrestling happening within the party.
West Virginia Senator Jim Justice told Politico in June that he has warned fellow Republicans that cutting SNAP could cost the party their majority in Congress when voters head to the polls again in 2026.
“If we don’t watch out, people are going to get hurt, people are going to be upset. It’s going to be the number one thing on the nightly news all over the place,” Justice said. “And then, we could very well awaken to a situation in this country where the majority quickly becomes the minority.”
A recent poll by the Associated Press/NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 45% of Americans think food assistance programmes like SNAP are underfunded, while only 30% think the funding levels are adequate. About a quarter of respondents thought programmes were overfunded.
This is not the first time the party has wrestled with cuts to SNAP, said Tracy Roof, a University of Richmond professor who is currently writing a book on the political history of SNAP.
Under the Biden administration, Congress allowed expanded benefits implemented during Covid to be phased out, despite both Republicans and Democrats warning Americans could go hungry.
“One thing about is that it has bipartisan support, more than any other anti-poverty programme,” Prof Roof told the
Content adapted by the team from the original source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czx0e9p9nrko
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