John Murphy, executive director of the Stone Soup Food Pantry in Marengo, speaks at a round table discussion Thursday on the impact of federal cuts to the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program. (Photos by Bill Dwyer/For Chronicle Media)

Two suburban U.S. representatives say a new law containing severe cuts to food assistance and other social programs will prove to be “devastating” to more than a million of Illinois’ most at-risk citizens and damage the state economy. 

U.S. Reps. Bill Foster, D-Naperville, and Sean Casten, D-Dowers Grove decried the recently enacted budget passed by a Republican-controlled Congress and signed by President Donald Trump that called for cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program. 

State and local officials are scrambling to figure out ways to address the impact of expected major shortfalls in federal funding. 

Foster and Casten, who appeared at a two-hour roundtable Thursday at the Northern Illinois Food Bank in Geneva along with local officials and representatives of other food banks, called the new law a giveaway to billionaires at the expense of average taxpayers. 

Foster said 23,600 people, 8 percent of residents in his 11th District are enrolled in SNAP.  

“With costs for everyday essentials surging under President Trump, these cuts threaten to push even more Illinoisans into food insecurity,” Foster said. 

“The way (the bill) was advanced, in the middle of the night, before people had a chance to read it, we’re still assessing … how the damage will play out,” he said.  

Casten of Illinois’ 6th Congression District called the Republican bill “evil in the biblical sense,” saying “Hundreds of thousands of Illinoisans will go hungry because Donald Trump and congressional Republicans cut food assistance programs in order to give their billionaire friends a tax cut.” 

“The way that they did these cuts is so deeply mean (spirited),” Casten said. “There’s structural things in here, like, ‘Let’s take off the inflation adjustments. So as painful as this is now, it’s going to be a little worse a year from now. A little worse the year after that.” 

The roundtable included members of the Kane and DuPage County boards and officials from food assistance groups in Aurora, Naperville, Will County and Marengo. It came a week after Republicans in Congress passed a bill containing the cuts to social programs. 

Congressman Bill Foster (left), D-Naperville; Northern Illinois Food Bank President and CEO Julie Yurko and Congressman Sean Casten, D-Downers Grove, listen to a speaker at a roundtable discussion at the Northern Illinois Food Bank in Geneva.

SNAP provides direct assistance to low-income families to supplement their grocery budget so they can afford healthy food. The two lawmakers noted that 1.8 million Illinoisans rely on SNAP benefits annually, and that the bill passed last week changes eligibility requirements that will put an estimated 360,000 people at risk of losing their benefits. 

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson has claimed that the 887-page bill, which passed 218-214 on July 3 along partisan lines, will “make this country stronger, safer and more prosperous than ever before.”  

In a recent interview with public radio station WGLT, U.S. Rep. Darin LaHood, R-Peoria defended the SNAP cuts, though he didn’t address any specific concerns.  

“Our social safety net, it should be a trampoline and not a hammock,” said LaHood, who represents the 16th District that includes Bloomington-Normal, greater Peoria and extends north to the Wisconsin state line.  

“Now that the economy is getting back on track and we’re out of the COVID (era) … we’ve got to put in place provisions that cut back on our spending, and SNAP is one of those,” LaHood told WGLT, arguing for work requirements to qualify for benefits. 

The 11th District’s Foster said that mischaracterizes the nature of many SNAP recipients. 

“The way (Republicans) are trying to explain this is “Oh, don’t worry, these are people who don’t really deserve the benefits,” Foster said. “But the true impact of these things is the paperwork, that has been deliberately designed to discourage people (from applying for benefits).”  

The 6th District’s Casten outlined the catch-22 reality of bureaucratic hoops facing many people with children under age 14, who would be required to work under the new law. 

“Suppose you’re a single parent who does not make a lot of money…” he said. “(But) you are able to work because there’s a Medicaid-funded program for your child. (Then) that program gets cut off… which means you can no longer work anymore, and suddenly you need food assistance and you can’t get it because you’re not working.”  

Several roundtable participants said previous reductions in assistance have already had distressing impacts on food availability, particularly green vegetables.  

Northern Illinois Food Bank President and CEO Julie Yurko, who moderated the discussion, said a 40-percent cut to funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture prior to passage of the recent bill had caused a loss of $3 million to $4 million.  

“Congress never voted on that,” Casten said. “Those cuts were unconstitutional.” 

“This is the time of year we should be seeing all kinds of produce coming through, and we’re just not seeing it,’ said Stone Soup Marengo Executive Director John Murphy. “By this time last year we were rolling in zucchini.” 

One Northern Illinois Food Bank recipient, an older woman who went on Medicaid after losing her job and asked not to be identified, said the volume and variety of foods available has diminished noticeably. 

“There’s not as much as there used to be,” she said, adding, “lots of potatoes and onions lately.”  

A participant identified as Terry, 60, a former truck driver and a Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program recipient, said the newest reductions are threatening to cut to the bone. 

“If it goes down further, it’s going to be a juggling act,” he said.   

Murphy’s colleague Lorrie Arient said the clients she sees are not lazy people just looking for a handout. 

“I have seen such an increase in what I want to call the middle-class poor,” Arient said. 

Casten stressed that Illinois voters need to understand the causes for the harm being done to local economies and to operations like large food banks and local food pantries.  

“We in the federal government have given (local officials) a horrible series of choices (to make)” Casten said.  

“As we take away what we were providing federally, we’re shifting the burden onto state and local government. And they’re going to have to decide to raise taxes… or cut services.”  

Foster said the new law passes 6 percent of direct Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program costs onto states and increases their administrative share to 75 percent from 50 percent. That is expected to cost Illinois an additional $700 million. 

“A lot of states, including Illinois, are going to be hard pressed to afford it,” the congressman said. 

Foster vowed to work to mitigate the impact of the funding cuts, saying “In Congress, I will continue working to ensure the Northern Illinois Food Bank and local pantries have the resources and support they need to feed our neighbors.”  

However, neither he nor Casten believe that that alone will be effective. 

“I wish I could tell you if we just made the moral case they’d come around,” Foster said of his Republican colleagues in Congress. “Unfortunately, that’s just not the world we live in.”  

Stone Soup’s Murphy said people need to be motivated to act and vote.  

“We have to inform the base, (tell people) this is what’s happening, get people motivated,” he said. “We have to explain to them, the money is not there, we don’t have the money to incentivize farmers to provide food to … food banks.”  

“I think the more we get the message out … the more effective we’ll be at the polls,” he said.