Each month, one in six people in Oregon receive help from the government-run Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — more commonly known as SNAP or food stamps — to put food on their table.
About half of them are seniors, people with disabilities and children, according to the Oregon Department of Human Services.
But with the recent passage of Congressional Republicans’ domestic policy bill, those benefits could be at risk for many Oregonians.
As food insecurity rises, some regional food bank providers fear the bill’s cuts to SNAP will strain a system already burdened by a drop in food supply since February. The result, according to food assistance advocates: More families will face days with fewer nutritious meals.
“The idea that we are going to send hundreds of thousands of people into hunger is a very, very worrying, sad moment for me,” said Scott Cooper, the executive director of NeighborImpact, which provides anti-poverty services in Central Oregon. “We’re trying to do something about it, but there’s only so much you can do.”
Federal cuts
The legislation, called “The One, Big, Beautiful Bill,” is President Donald Trump’s signature legislative accomplishment and coincides with his broader efforts to reshape the federal government’s role in American life.
The bill slashes social safety net programs like SNAP and Medicaid while extending previous tax cuts and adding some new ones, including for some tips and overtime pay. It also increases funding for national defense and border security.
The bill makes it harder for people to qualify for SNAP. One example: People must continue to hold a job while receiving benefits until the age of 64, rather than the previous age requirement of 54. They also must provide proof of their employment to the government to qualify.
Republicans have hailed the bill’s passage as a major step toward fiscal responsibility, with the potential to ramp up economic activity and improve affordability for Americans. Party members have argued that the SNAP program is managed poorly and prompts people to rely too heavily on the government while avoiding employment.
U.S. Rep. Cliff Bentz, a Republican and Oregon’s only member of Congress to vote yes on the spending bill, did not return a request for comment.
Roberta “Bobby” Davis, who provides regular meals at an American Legion post in the small Oregon town of Sheridan, had a different take than Republicans on the administration’s cuts to the SNAP program.
“That’s killing people, it really is,” Davis said. The group provides about 100 lunches in a day in the rural Yamhill County community.
“They cut back and they cut back,” Davis said. “What used to be for $20 you got a whole bag of groceries, now you’ll get the two or three pieces and that’s it.”
The bill’s passage comes as a growing number of people are seeking help from food banks in Oregon and Southwest Washington. Total visits to those facilities increased from about 860,000 in 2019 to 2.5 million in 2024. As many as 740,000 people get help from SNAP monthly, according to Oregon figures.
Before the Republican bill passed, food banks already had been grappling with the United States Department of Agriculture’s decision to cancel its food purchase program through the Commodity Credit Corporation.
In Central Oregon alone, Cooper said his organization served about 88,000 fewer meals last quarter, a drop of more than 110,000 pounds of food, including cuts to meat, eggs and dairy.
“I don’t believe it’s that hard or that expensive, to be honest, to take the abundance that we have in this state and in this country and redistribute it to make sure no one is hungry,” said Cooper.
State subsidies
The cuts will not be immediately felt in Oregon. An amendment to the bill makes it so states with especially high error rates — or the rate at which a state either over or underpaid benefits — can put off the costs associated with SNAP cuts for a year. At just over 14%, Oregon has one of the nation’s highest such rates.
The Oregon Department of Human Services estimates the state will face $425 million in new yearly costs due to the bill starting in 2028. How the state plans to cover those costs remains unclear, but Oregon may have to reduce or even eliminate its own SNAP coverage, the agency said in a recent analysis.
“This would leave tens of thousands of people in Oregon without food and create sharp disparities between states, undermining the promise of a national food program,” the agency said.
Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek has directed state agencies “to urgently evaluate impacts of the federal budget to Oregon.” The governor’s spokesperson said in an email Monday that the analysis is ongoing.
“The Governor believes that every dollar stripped from those families and put towards the top 1% is a moral failure,” said Elisabeth Shepard, the governor’s public affairs and communications director. “But Oregon does not have the state resources to bear the weight of those costs.”
Democrats have decried the bill as disproportionately benefitting the wealthy at the expense of the working class people, accusing Republicans of taking the wrong measures to reduce costs.
“It’s astounding to me that we live in the wealthiest time that you could be alive right now, and for us to say the only way that we can work through this problem is through cuts to food and medicine,” said Matt Newell-Ching, senior manager of public policy at Oregon Food Bank.
Oregon bills fail
In the state Legislature, where Democrats hold a supermajority in both chambers, lawmakers missed several opportunities to address the problem this year, as the state’s financial challenges doomed bills that sought to pull from the state’s general fund for food assistance.
At least three bills to expand services in Oregon — for students and people who lack legal documentation proving U.S. citizenship — died in the legislature this year.
“We as a state did not take sufficient strides to address hunger in the 2025 (legislative session),” Newell-Ching said.
Oregon lawmakers went home for the summer two weeks ago, capping off a monthslong session in which they passed a budget that included cuts to anti-poverty services like eviction prevention.
While juggling a number of high-dollar legislative proposals — a failed transportation package among them — lawmakers learned in May that they would have about $500 million less to spend than expected for the state’s next budget.
State Sen. Wlnsvey Campos, a Democrat from Aloha, described Trump’s bill as “class warfare.”
Having served as the co-chair of a legislative subcommittee focused on human services budget and policies, Campos said Oregon will be ill-equipped to pick up the steep costs as the state continues to spend on other crises, such as housing and behavioral health.
“The federal government is abandoning us here,” Campos said. “What that could very well mean are some pretty direct and devastating impacts on food security.”
Jon Makler, who manages a food program for the Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon, said reductions in SNAP benefits could add strain elsewhere for Oregonians already struggling with cost of living.
He expects more people will seek the organization’s help for the first time as the loss of food benefits sends them over a financial edge.
“There are people who have been making it, right?” Makler said. “They’ve been making ends meet. And this is the change that pushes them over. This is what breaks them.”
This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.