“Big Beautiful Bill” cuts to Medicaid, food aid raise alarm in Tennessee

From left, Ashlie Bell, a survivor of childhood cancer and director of Family Voices of Tennessee, and Dr. Megan Schwaim, executive director of the Tennessee Caregiver Coalition, address how federal cuts to food programs will affect Tennesseans. (Photo: John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout)

Advocates for low-income and disabled Tennesseans sounded the alarm Tuesday over federal legislation that could slash an estimated $1.1 trillion over the next decade from federal safety net programs that provide food and healthcare to millions of Americans. 

The package includes a $600 billion reduction in federal Medicaid spending over 10 years, impacting TennCare, Tennessee’s program, which currently covers healthcare costs of 1.4 million people, including two of every five children in the state. 

It also includes nearly $300 million in cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as “food stamps,” which helps more than 700,000 Tennesseans buy food. Some savings from SNAP cuts would then be used to increase farm subsidies. Both programs would establish new work requirements for adult recipients. 

Tennessee counties stand to lose a net $5.3 billion in federal help over 10 years if Congress approves the SNAP cuts even with increases in farm subsidies, one recent analysis found. 

Jeannine Carpenter, chief communications officer for the Chattanooga Area Food Bank, warned the proposed cuts to SNAP would create a surge in hunger among Tennessee families.

The food bank provided 17 million meals last year to families in southeast Tennessee and northwest Georgia, but, Carpenter noted, those efforts pale in comparison to the role SNAP plays in Tennessee. 

“For every meal we provide, SNAP provides eight,” she said. “So, if we take these benefits away, we’re talking about a food insecure population that cannot be cared for by our current charitable infrastructure.”

Speaking during a downtown Nashville news conference held outside the offices of Tennessee’s two Republican senators, Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty, Carpenter urged the pair to reject the cuts and “protect the very people they were elected to protect,” she said.

Medicaid cuts in the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” would largely come from new work requirements for adults and imposing more paperwork requirements that are expected to disqualify recipients unable to complete them. 

The work requirements could have a narrower impact on Tennessee, which has opted not to expand Medicaid, than other states. They apply primarily to non-elderly adults without disabilities. Most TennCare enrollees are children, their parents, pregnant women, seniors and people with disabilities. 

TennCare has an uneven history for the existing paperwork process it uses to enroll and then periodically verify people enrolled in the program. One government audit found that of the more than 240,000 children cut from TennCare between 2016 and 2019, only 5% were found to be disqualified from the program. Other children lost insurance because families did not fill out paperwork correctly. 

Neither Hagerty nor Blackburn responded to requests for comment about the bill left with their offices.

The Senate is expected to take up the package already approved by House Republicans later this month. GOP supporters of the bill say it is designed to root out  “waste, fraud and abuse” from the programs.

Analysis projects SNAP cuts will far outweigh subsidy bumps in Tennessee counties

An analysis by the Environmental Working Group, which has tracked farm subsidies for over the past three decades, found that just three of Tennessee’s 95 counties would see their net funding increase even with deep cuts to SNAP: Crockett ($32 million increase), Haywood ($32 million increase), and Lake ($1.2 million increase). 

The rest would see farm subsidy bumps far outweighed by SNAP cuts.

The group examined USDA county-level farm subsidy data and federal data for SNAP by county to determine how much funding each county stands to gain or lose should SNAP funding see a $300 billion cut and farm subsidies get a $35 billion boost under the bill. 

Tennessee’s most populous counties would lose the most, with Shelby County expected to see a net $1.2 billion decrease, followed by Davidson ($500 million), Knox ($301 million), Hamilton ($283 million), and Rutherford ($167 million). 

But more rural counties will also see significant reductions in overall funding.

“We have thousands of SNAP recipients in a single county that receives support to help their families eat on a daily basis, but that will get cut so that a couple hundred (farmers), maybe, will receive a few extra thousand dollars when it comes to harvest time,” said  Jared Hayes, senior policy analyst for the Environmental Working Group. 

These particular farm subsidies have higher payouts for larger commodity harvests, Hayes said, benefiting large-scale farmers over smaller operations.

“No matter what, people are going to be losing out in every single county. It’s just who is getting the money,” he said.