FRAC Chat

In this #FRACTurns50 blog, FRAC’s Founding Executive Director, Ron Pollack, shares the organization’s critical role in the expansion of the Food Stamp Program, known today as the Supplemental Nutrition Program (SNAP). Millions of households rely on SNAP as the first line of defense against hunger. As the fallout of COVID continues to deepen, the number of SNAP applications is skyrocketing. It is crucial to protect and strengthen SNAP during this time.

The COVID-19 virus presents particular challenges for low-income people. To ensure those who lack resources to stockpile food and other basic necessities, and who rely on school breakfast and lunch to help feed their children nutritious food, administrators and legislators should consider adapting Disaster SNAP and disaster provisions of other federal nutrition programs to provide nutrition resources for low-income consumers and to make up for disrupted school meals service; suspending implementation of rules changes that weaken SNAP benefits and enrollment; and increasing SNAP benefit amounts to bolster the program’s countercyclical impacts.