The Impact of Federal Budget Cuts on Struggling Families: SNAPped (Part 1 of 2)
Mya Whitson (l-r), Lexie Tescham and Geraldine Paredez Vásquez talk about the impact of federal budget cuts on struggling, vulnerable families.
by Jonathan Gramling
Editor’s Note – Since the interviews for this article were conducted, the federal government shutdown ended and it is in the process of restoring services including the funding for the SNAP Program. Yet we feel that this article is still relevant as many of the cuts in President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” are still having an adverse impact on the most vulnerable in our society. The restoration of SNAP benefits may have only slowed the bleak future they are facing.
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Lexie Tescham, a resident of the YWCA’s Third Street housing program, admits that she made mistakes in her youth, committing and being ajudicated for some crimes and being dependent on drugs. She has been trying to change her life for her and her two-year-old daughter. She is walking the straight and narrow and is three years into recovery.
“I did six months of in-patient and a year of out-patient and I am slowly getting back on my feet as a mother,” Tescham said.
But Tescham is fighting an uphill battle to become a working, independent mother. It seems that invisible forces — and not so invisible forces — keep her pinned down in her vulnerability and dependency.
“One of the things that I have been trying to do is to get employment,” Tescham said. “I’m in two work programs right now. I looked at my calendar for the month of October and I did six interviews. And it’s not for a lack of me trying for work because I’ve been working my butt off to find employment. And I didn’t realize the effect of my criminal history, the things I did to survive and not because I am a bad person, would have such a lasting effect on every single thing that I do.”
The labor market is not kind to people in Tescham’s situation.
“I’m at a point with job seeking that I am actually burned out” Tescham said. “The job economy right now is horrible too. Finding something that is not just minimum wage that can put food on the table, pay the bills, pay the rent. Having to decide between Christmas presents and necessities, I’ve already told my older son that Christmas isn’t going to be like it normally is. I have to tell them right away.”
And so Tescham and her children are dependent on public and private subsidies to survive.
“Right now, in this moment, food stamps and child support is how I survive,” Tescham said. “That’s how I pay my bills. It’s how she has her diapers, how she has her wipes and milk. So right now because I am in the middle of looking for work, not having that backbone of food stamps, I don’t know how we are going to eat. We’ve been utilizing food pantries that we don’t normally use. We go to the Luke House for dinner. And we’re doing that and it’s only the beginning of November.”
Tescham has seen how things are getting worse for a lot of people.
“I am seeing more people in those spaces,” Tescham said about food pantries. “Normally when I call and schedule, they have time for me to come in that day at the food pantry. The woman at the food pantry told me that they are booked out for 3-4 days right now, just to get into the pantry.”
And other cuts are negatively impacting her children’s future.
“My daughter is two-years-old,” Tescham said. “We were looking to get her into Head Start. Head Start funding is gone. It’s all going to have a ripple effect down to the food pantries, down to everything.”
Recent moves to cut spending end up creating more reliance on federal funding and programs, becoming more costly to the federal government and people in the long run.
“I have goals for myself and for my daughter,” Tescham said. “I didn’t want to be on food stamps a year from now. I didn’t want to have to use these programs. I am a very empathetic person where I want other people to have food on their tables as well. I had goals in place to have employment, have an apartment, things like that. Those goals that I have to better my life are going to be set back because I’m still going to be on BadgerCare, still on Food Stamps, still relying on subsidized childcare. I don’t want to live like that.”
Tescham tries to keep her spirits and hope alive even when it seems to be a hopeless situation and she is determined not to do the things that got her in trouble when she was younger. It could involve making some excruciating and painful decisions.
“When I wake up every single day, I want to be a healed and not hurting person who helps other people,” Tescham said. “I wake up and try to smile and be positive and have my daughter wake up in a beautiful environment. I’m breaking generational cycles, so that my daughter will be flourishing. Now this is a set-back in where I am because I’m having to worry about my basic needs of being able to eat.
I was at the food pantry on Monday last week. And when I was taking things out, I was like, ‘My daughter would eat that. My daughter might try that. Everything that I did was with the intention of her. I would go hungry if I could watch my daughter eat. If that’s what it has to be, then I don’t have to make that decision.”
Other life-saving services are threatened with cuts as well, including affordable housing.
“I have no idea what I would do if the Y couldn’t offer us housing,” Tescham said as she began to cry just at the thought of it. “The first thing would be to find somewhere for my daughter to go. I don’t even want to think about being homeless. On top of it, I am in recovery too. Trying to keep my head up and make the right decisions every single day for my daughter is hard. In this moment, I just need to be able to continue to be at the Y. I have my plans for the day when I can no longer be at the Y. I am having a conversation on how I am paying my rent today because I should have gotten my Food Stamp deposit yesterday. The money that is in my pocket right now, I need for groceries. But I have to have a conversation about my rent after this.”