Arizona’s Food Stamp Crisis Is Coming for the Rest of the U.S.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**Natalie Kitroeff** (0:31)
Hi there.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:32)
Hi, my name is Anna.

**Olivia Natt** (0:33)
I'm with The New York Times.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (0:34)
We're talking to people about SNAP and what it's like in Arizona right now.

**Olivia Natt** (0:37)
Can I ask you a couple of questions in the shade?

**Natalie Kitroeff** (0:39)
Yeah.

**Olivia Natt** (0:39)
Okay. It's hot out today.

**Jason DeParle** (0:43)
I'm Jason DeParle. I'm a reporter for The New York Times. I cover poverty issues and I'm here with my colleagues, Olivia Natt and Anna Foley. We're outside a food stamp or SNAP office in Phoenix, Arizona. I just took a look inside the office. There are people sitting on the floors. There are people in wheelchairs.
There are people on crutches. There are people wearing worn out looks of long weights that aren't yet over.

**Olivia Natt** (1:12)
How many times do you think you've been to this office?

**SPEAKER_5** (1:14)
Oh my goodness. This month and this year?

**SPEAKER_7** (1:19)
This is going to be like my fifth time.

**SPEAKER_8** (1:21)
Your fifth time trying to get SNAP?

**SPEAKER_5** (1:24)
Mm-hmm.

**SPEAKER_7** (1:24)
Come to these places, it's just like work itself.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (1:29)
From The New York Times, I'm Natalie Kitroeff. This is The Daily.
The United States is undergoing one of the biggest changes to its social safety net in recent history, with huge numbers of people dropping out of the government's food assistance program. Nowhere has it been more dramatic than in Arizona.

**SPEAKER_5** (1:53)
For some reason or another, my food stamps application keeps getting lost, quote unquote lost.

**Jason DeParle** (2:00)
I don't have any income.

**SPEAKER_8** (2:03)
I don't know no food.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:05)
Probably be homeless in a couple of months.

**Olivia Natt** (2:09)
How many meals are you eating a day right now?

**SPEAKER_5** (2:12)
One.

**Olivia Natt** (2:14)
One.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (2:17)
Today, my colleague Jason DeParle explains why so many people there are suddenly losing access to this key benefit and the implications all this could have for the rest of the country. It's Wednesday, August 5th.
Jason, we want to talk to you today about these drastic changes that have been made to the food stamp program known as SNAP. When Trump's big beautiful bill passed about a year ago, we understood that Republicans were planning to pay for it by making cuts to the government's welfare programs. You have been following that story all the way to Arizona. So just walk me through why you went there.

**Jason DeParle** (3:06)
Arizona is the place in the country that's had the largest reduction in food stamps since the passage of the big beautiful bill. The rolls there have fallen in half.
450,000 people have lost nutrition aid there.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (3:20)
That's just a huge number.

**Jason DeParle** (3:22)
Yes, includes more than 100,000 children as well.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (3:25)
And why is that? Why has the drop-off been so steep?

**Jason DeParle** (3:28)
The law imposed dramatic changes in the SNAP program, but mostly deferred those changes until after the midterm elections. Arizona was the state that moved most aggressively to make changes.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (3:40)
And Jason, just remind us what those changes actually were and the argument that Republicans made for why they needed to implement them.

**Jason DeParle** (3:50)
Republicans saw SNAP as a bloated program. It had more than doubled in size since 2000 About one in eight Americans get SNAP, and its annual cost had exceeded $100 billion.
They thought it needed reigning in. They thought it served as a work disincentive. They thought that offering people nutrition aid persuaded some not to work, or not to work as much as they could. They were concerned that some people committed fraud to get on it. But those were all longstanding concerns. What really drove the changes last year in Congress was the need for money to finance President Trump's tax cuts, which I think it's worth remembering largely went to the wealthy. The reason they did what they did when they did it was because they wanted money for President Trump's tax cuts.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (4:37)
How do they go about shrinking the program? What do they actually do?