Proposed Cuts To Food Stamps Program Could Be 'Horrific' In Hawai'i

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Honolulu, HI (Honolulu Civil Beat)

Under Republican proposals, Hawaiʻi could face more than $100 million in new costs to maintain the food stamp program.

Since Micah Naniole-Furutani injured his hand three months ago and had to leave his job as a security guard, the SNAP benefits he and his partner, Holli-Jae Macanas, have received have proved critical.

The federal food assistance program generally known as food stamps - officially the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program - supplies the couple and their 2-month-old daughter with $500 a month for groceries.

"It's helping us feed our family and survive," Naniole-Furutani said.

Macanas said the benefits provided a healthier diet in the final weeks of her pregnancy and make sure "our baby can get the nutrition she needs to grow."

Now the future of those benefits is in limbo.

Republicans have proposed about $300 billion in cuts to the SNAP program over 10 years to offset more than $4 trillion in tax cuts proposed by the White House. They hope to make up for revenue lost to those tax cuts by wringing savings from programs such as SNAP, which they criticize as being wasteful and encouraging dependence on the government.

Cuts of that magnitude, or anything close, could prove devastating to Hawaiʻi, with its high food costs and where 157,600 residents -- roughly 1 in 9 -- will receive SNAP benefits this year.

"We have a food insecurity problem in spite of our SNAP benefits," said state Sen. Tim Richards. "You cut the SNAP benefits, it goes from bad to ... absolutely horrific."

A 2024 report from Hawaiʻi Food Bank found that 1 in 3 children statewide live in households where access to adequate nutrition is limited or uncertain and meals are sometimes skipped due to an inability to buy food.

The GOP proposals for the SNAP program advanced last week out of the House Committee on Agriculture despite Democrats' attempts to push back.

"This bill doesn't just trim around the edges, it guts SNAP, one of the most effective, anti-hunger, anti-poverty programs we have," Hawaiʻi Rep. Jill Tokuda, a member of the committee, said in a statement. She called the proposed changes a "cruel, calculated choice ... that takes food away from hungry families on a larger scale than ever before in our history."

SNAP serves roughly 42 million people a year nationwide at a cost of $112 billion. Republicans are looking to cut the program in a number of ways.

They include limiting updates to a plan that calculates and revises benefit amounts, tightening application rules, and implementing new work requirements for SNAP recipients. Parents of children older than 7 would have to meet those work requirements; currently they are exempted if their children are younger than 18. Adults between 54 and 64 also would have work requirements.

One proposed change that has stirred particular alarm would shift SNAP program costs to states, partly tied to error rates from over- or under-paying recipients. The higher a state's error rate, the greater its share of SNAP benefits -- which are now 100% federally funded.

Hawaiʻi in the last fiscal year had an error rate of just over 8%, said Scott Morishige, administrator of the Benefit, Employment and Support Services Division at the state Department of Human Services, which runs the state's SNAP program.

At that rate -- which the federal government still has to verify -- the state would have to assume about $140 million more in costs to provide the same benefits, Morishige said.

Another GOP proposal would shift more administrative costs to states. Hawaiʻi now pays 50% of those, or about $26 million. Morishige estimated that under the proposed changes, its share would go to $40 million.

For context, the Hawaiʻi Legislature, with an eye on potential federal funding cuts across a wide swath of departments, in this year's budget proposal set aside $200 million to help address potential fiscal challenges statewide.

Richards, a Democrat, said should serious SNAP cuts come down the road, using that reserve to shore up the benefit program would "for me, be number one."

"You can lose program funding, maybe we don't resurface this road, but if kids are going to bed hungry, there's nothing more pressing than that," he said.

State Sen. Brenton Awa, the Hawaiʻi Senate Minority leader, said that while he supports SNAP benefits, the program would be improved if the state took on a greater role.

"I don't support cutting food from people in general," Awa said, "but I do support shifting the responsibility to states so that we can hopefully better oversee where money is being spent or used."

He said his analysis of the federal bill suggests some 15,000 Hawaiʻi residents could lose SNAP benefits were the changes to go through as proposed -- a calculation based partly on the effect of new work requirements -- and that would be acceptable.

"If you're able-bodied and you can work but you're choosing not to, then we don't think that person should be using the system," said Awa, who said he was speaking for state Senate Republicans.

As for covering any increased costs, Awa said the state would be able to do so, partly with funds from a $700 million settlement with two pharmaceutical companies announced this month.

"I do believe that we can pay for it," Awa said. "And it's our responsibility to do that."

Increases in state SNAP costs, paired with new work requirements, would make life harder for Hawaiʻi residents, according to the governor.

"These are funds that would otherwise support essential services like education, housing, and healthcare," Gov. Josh Green said in a statement to Civil Beat this week. "Proposals to increase the state's share of administrative costs and to impose stricter federal oversight, could place further strain on the systems we rely on to serve our residents efficiently and with care."

Critics of the proposals fear that dramatically increased costs could ultimately lead cash-strapped states to cut benefits to save money.

"This isn't just a budget cut, it's an economic double hit," said Lauren Zirbel, president and executive director of the Hawaii Food Industry Association, a nonprofit trade group. "Fewer federal dollars circulating in our economy and more pressure on local taxpayers, all while food insecurity remains alarmingly high."

One analysis by the Century Foundation, a New York-based public policy research organization, found that if changes to the SNAP program go through as written, they could result in an average benefit cut of about $144 a month for Hawaiʻi households that get food stamps, and some level of cuts affecting 56,000 children statewide.

The $300 billion in cuts "represent a 30% reduction to the overall size of the SNAP program, much of which will need to come from loss or partial loss of households' benefits," said Century Foundation Senior Fellow Rachel West, who did the analysis.

The current average SNAP benefit in Hawaiʻi is $365 a person monthly.

The state "is monitoring very closely" the debate in Congress, Morishige said, and researching potential impacts. He cautioned that proposals are in the early stages of a long political process that still has to run through the U.S. Senate.

"We know that what we're seeing right now may not be what the final end result is," Morishige said. "For our clients, the people who are receiving SNAP benefits, we want you to continue to apply for benefits. We're committed to continue to get the benefits out to those in need."

Among other Republican proposals, one would make it harder for states to expand the program by altering income eligibility guidelines -- something Green did last September.

That change was based on a study by the University of Hawaiʻi Economic Research Organization that found that up to 14,000 households were missing out on food stamps due to a limit on monthly net income, or how much money a household had left every month after non-food expenses were deducted.

The policy change, which the state started to roll out in February, is projected to bring in an additional $40 million to $45 million a year in federal SNAP benefits to Hawaiʻi.

As things stand with the current proposals by congressional Republicans, the changes to SNAP would make similar expansions of the program much less likely in the future.

Advocates and recipients called SNAP a lifeline in a state with a high cost of living, where food costs are a notable burden.

For example, the Consumer Price Index for food in urban Honolulu rose 5.2% between March 2024 and March 2025. And since 2019, food costs have risen 30%. A 2023 study from the U.S. Department of Agriculture also found average grocery costs were 52% higher in Honolulu than on the U.S. mainland.

Against that backdrop, the impacts of major SNAP cuts would be severe, according to advocates for the program.

"You're going to end up seeing people going to the food bank because they can't make ends meet," said Nate Hix, director of policy and advocacy at the Hawaiʻi Public Health Institute.

The costs of cuts would play out on the dinner table, too, said Big Island resident Zahavah "Zee" Zaidoff, a substance abuse counselor whose family of three gets $708 a month in SNAP benefits.

After their first grocery shopping trip of the month, she said her family might have $250 left to get through the rest of the month.

"You cut that $150 for me and I'm left with $100 by the end of the month," said Zaidoff, who has advocated for SNAP benefits at conferences around the country. "You know what? I'm not buying fruits and vegetables."

For Naniole-Furutani and Macanas, the young Honolulu couple who have been getting food stamps since early March, any cuts would force similar tough choices.

Fresh fruit, vegetables and meats would be largely off the table, Macanas said. As would the coconut water she uses to enrich her breast milk with electrolytes for their daughter, Hunny. Fast food would become more of an option because it's cheaper.

Before the recent expansion, about $695 million in SNAP benefits flowed into Hawaiʻi each year.

Advocates for the SNAP program said its benefits ripple well beyond the households that get food stamps - and the impacts of cuts would be widespread.

"Not only does it provide money for people to use to purchase groceries or put food on the table, but it's a huge economic engine for Hawaiʻi, all of those federal dollars are being spent locally," said Daniela Spoto, director of food equity at Hawaiʻi Appleseed Center for Law and Economic Justice.

"They're being spent at mom and pop grocery stores," Spoto said. "They are being spent at corner stores, being spent at supermarkets, being spent at farmers markets. And they actually create jobs."

SNAP recipients represent a broad spectrum of Hawaiʻi residents.

According to the state Department of Human Services, nearly half of recipients in Hawaiʻi this month are between the ages of 19 and 64; 15%, or 24,000, are over 65, about the same number are under age 6; and a quarter are between 7 and 18 years old.

In 2024, almost two-thirds of recipients were in families with children and slightly more than a third were in families where someone worked, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning research organization.

In one slice of the SNAP picture, about 240 homeless adults between the ages of 18 and 24 -- many former foster youth -- rely on food stamps, said Efren Berrones, co-chair of the Oʻahu Youth Action Board, which advocates for policies to benefit homeless youth.

"For a young person experiencing homelessness in Hawaii, a SNAP card can mean the difference between surviving and falling through the cracks," Berrones said.

Even with their SNAP benefits, Naniole-Furutani and Macanas visit the Hawaiʻi Food Bank to supplement their groceries. That also allows them to save some canned goods for friends who are themselves short on food.

If their SNAP benefits are cut, Naniole-Furutani said they'll likely be visiting the food bank more.

They are among the 172,000 people the food bank already serves monthly on Oʻahu. It's not known how many food bank customers are already on SNAP, but one-third of them do receive some form of government benefit, said Amy Miller, the agency's president and CEO.

She noted that a USDA program that last year delivered $4 million of food to the Hawaiʻi Food Bank and its counterparts on Maui and the Big Island was just cut by the federal government, putting them under more strain.

In one signal of the economic distress many residents are feeling, Miller said the food bank is seeing twice as many customers as before the coronavirus pandemic.

"That's where we are today," she said, "before any of these other changes happen."

Hawaiʻi's Changing Economy" is supported by a grant from the Hawaiʻi Community Foundation as part of its work to build equity for all through the CHANGE Framework.

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