‘Drop in the bucket’: Illinois measures to offset SNAP cuts will not alleviate problem

CHICAGO — Illinois mother of four and food delivery driver Aubrey Lewandowski says she immediately started rationing the food she had left after getting a text alerting her that her Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits may not come through next month.

Lewandowski will be forced to choose between buying healthy food for her four children and paying rent and utility bills if the federal government does not allocate emergency funds by the Nov. 1 deadline.

She is one of roughly 1.9 million people in Illinois and 42 million across the country who depend on SNAP benefits each month. Illinois oversees the distribution of $350 million in federal SNAP benefits to qualifying low-income and disabled individuals and households each month.

Illinois and other states sued the Trump administration earlier this week, arguing that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has the money to continue paying SNAP benefits using contingency funds appropriated by Congress for emergencies such as the government shutdown that began Oct. 1.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani indicated in court Thursday morning that she would issue a ruling later in the day. She appeared to favor arguments requiring the government to allocate billions of dollars in emergency funds for SNAP.

Pritzker’s executive order

While awaiting Talwani’s ruling, Gov. JB Pritzker signed an executive order allocating $20 million in state funding as a stopgap measure to support Illinois’s seven food banks, which supply over 2,600 food pantries across the state.

Half of the funding comes from the state’s Budget Reserve for Immediate Disbursements and Governmental Emergencies Fund, or BRIDGE, and the rest comes from the Illinois Department of Human Services. Lawmakers put $100 million into the BRIDGE fund last year to deal with emergencies caused by federal funding changes.

Pritzker said at an unrelated news conference Thursday morning that the federal government had decided to shut down the SNAP machines, meaning the state could not deposit funds directly into SNAP accounts even if it wanted to. He called the decision “insidious.”

Food assistance advocates and state officials acknowledged that the state funds to food banks would not be enough to fill the gap left by shutting off federal funds. Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton called the funding “a drop in the bucket” at a news conference Thursday morning.

Kate Maehr, executive director and CEO of the Greater Chicago Food Depository, said food pantries in Cook County alone support more than 900,000 people, amounting to an estimated $45 to 50 million in weekly benefits for that area alone.

To make the $20 million gift from the state go as far as possible, Maehr said the food banks will prioritize purchasing shelf-stable foods like dry rice and pasta.

In the previous 24 hours, Maehr said food banks in the area had received an uptick in phone calls from people asking how they could help. But she has also heard that donors are fatigued, with most food banks in the state now serving double the number of people they served prior to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the last year, the seven food banks that serve Illinois all hit record numbers of monthly visits, according to Maehr.

She attributed that increase to rising costs of food and housing and disinvestments in people’s safety nets.

Even if SNAP funding is resumed immediately, Maehr said, another crisis looms. New rules going into effect on Dec. 1 will result in 17,000 legal immigrants having their SNAP benefits revoked, Maehr said. Nearly 400,000 additional people in Illinois may lose their SNAP benefits in March 2026 amid new paperwork requirements to demonstrate employment, according to the governor’s office.

“We are bracing ourselves,” Maehr said. “It’s not for one crisis, but for a series of crises.”

Advocates argue the ramifications for the state stretch beyond the direct hunger of SNAP recipients, but also to store owners, suppliers and ultimately Illinois farmers.

Grocer sees Catch 22

Liz Abunaw owns and operates Forty Acres Fresh Market, an independent grocery store in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood, a west side area where years of disinvestment have made access to fresh and nutritious foods a challenge.

The market opened its doors less than two months ago, but Abunaw said it is already facing a crisis.

“SNAP accounts for up to 20% of our revenue,” Abunaw said. “So, what does that mean when our customers who use SNAP cannot shop at our store anymore?”

Like Lewandowski choosing between paying utility and other bills or buying food for her kids, Abunaw said she must make choices between payroll, rent and inventory.

It impacts the employees who she cannot afford to pay and the suppliers whose products she can no longer afford to buy, Abunaw said.

“This is a domino effect that will reverberate from families to grocery stores to suppliers all the way down to our farmers if this madness is not stopped,” Abunaw said.

Every dollar in SNAP assistance results in a $1.50 economic boost for communities, according to Illinois Department of Human Services Secretary Dulce Quintero. That comes out to a $7.2 billion annual impact on the state’s economy.

The SNAP program, also known as food stamps, has been administered continuously by the federal government for over 60 years and has never halted benefits, even during a government shutdown, Quintero said. Stratton called it a “false choice” by the Trump administration.

“They are choosing to let SNAP funds run out,” Stratton said. “President Trump is deliberately letting families go hungry, taking food off of the tables of children and weaponizing hunger for political leverage.”

An estimated 45% of SNAP households include children, and 44% include a person with a disability.

For parents like Lewandowski, who has two children diagnosed with autism and one with sensory processing needs, SNAP benefits provide access to the foods that meet her son’s needs but are not always available at food banks or pantries.

While she does rely on those resources, Lewandowski said the fresh produce, cheese, eggs and milk that her children need to grow up healthy are not always available there.

“I want to be able to provide my children with the best nutrition they can have. Healthy children do better in school, and they don’t get sick,” Lewandowski said.

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.