Part Two: How Dare They Take Food From Children
Justice Starves When We Let the Rich Feast First
Author’s Note:
This is Part 2 of my series on the Big Beautiful Bill, a law that manages to turn cruelty into policy and greed into virtue.
In Part 1, I wrote about how slashing Medicaid will strip millions of Americans of health care and condemn tens of thousands to early graves so billionaires can gild their yachts.
This second installment focuses on how the same law rips food from the mouths of children, families, and the elderly by gutting the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
And based on my research, it has become clear that a Part 3 is necessary — to fully expose the myths and lies about poverty and the poor that make such policies possible, and to show how the Big Beautiful Bill exploits those misconceptions to justify its cruelty.
If justice means anything, it must mean seeing through the lies.
Image generated by AI with reference input provided by the author using the prompt, ‘Create an image that depicts a ‘A child, elderly person, and a disabled person looking concerned and worried as they look down to read a letter informing them that they will no longer receive SNAP”,’ Created by ChatGPT (Open AI), July 2025.
How dare they.
Alongside its brutal Medicaid cuts, the Big Beautiful Bill slashes SNAP by an estimated $186 billion over the next decade that will cause 22.3 million families to lose some or all of their SNAP benefits — a staggering blow to the largest and most effective anti-hunger program in America. This is not trimming fat. This is cutting to the bone and then some.
SNAP currently helps about 41 million Americans put food on the table. Nearly two-thirds of recipients are children, the elderly, or people with disabilities — people not “gaming the system” but simply trying to eat.
And yet Congress and the president saw fit to snatch even that away.
Why?
So billionaires can build bigger champagne cellars and add more zeroes to their investment accounts.
We should be clear about what SNAP does. It is not a luxury. It is not welfare fraud. It is not some bloated entitlement. It is one of the most effective, efficient programs we have for fighting poverty and hunger. The average benefit comes out to about $6 a day — hardly enough to dine on steak and caviar, but just enough to keep a family afloat.
When you cut SNAP, people do not magically become self-sufficient overnight. They go hungry. Parents skip meals to feed their kids. Children show up to school unable to focus, their stomachs growling. Pregnant women deliver lower-weight babies. Food pantries run dry. People get sick. And some die.
What happens when SNAP is cut?
We know exactly what happens, because we’ve seen it before:
Local economies suffer — every SNAP dollar generates up to $1.50 in economic activity, supporting farmers, grocers, and communities.
The USDA estimates that 41 million Americans rely on SNAP. The Center on Budget & Policy Priorities confirms that most are children, elderly, or disabled. And yet the architects of this bill have no problem throwing them under the bus — then backing the bus over them just to make sure.
Image generated by AI with reference input provided by the author using the prompt, ‘Create an image that depicts a ‘A mother sitting at dinner table showing her children why there is no food on the plates and no food in the pantry”,’ Created by Google Gemini (Open AI), July 2025.
Desmond was right: poverty is a policy choice
In Poverty, By America, Matthew Desmond argues that poverty persists not because it is inevitable, but because we choose to tolerate it — or worse, to create it. We underfund the IRS so the ultra-wealthy can cheat the system, then claim there’s no money left to feed hungry kids.
That is exactly what’s happening here: the government could collect more from tax cheats at the top, but instead chooses to gut SNAP and Medicaid to bankroll billionaires.
We have the money. What we lack is the morality.
Growing poverty, growing consequences
This is not just cruel. It is reckless. When hunger spreads, desperation follows. When families are forced to choose between rent and food, crime often rises. When children grow up malnourished, their potential — and our future — is stunted.
You cannot build a healthy, prosperous America on empty stomachs.
Justice demands more
How dare they take food from children’s mouths to line their own pockets? How dare we let them?
Hunger is not inevitable. Poverty is not inevitable. They are deliberate choices written into law.
This bill made the wrong choice — for all the wrong reasons.
We cannot let justice starve while the rich feast first. We cannot let this stand.
Every member of Congress who voted for this should have to look into the hollow eyes of a hungry child and explain why their dinner was less important than another yacht.
But they won’t. Because they know there is no justification.
And if you happen to be one of the Americans who nodded along when Senator Mark Mullin said, “We don’t pay people to be lazy,” or when Congressman Steve Scalise sneered about “able-bodied men living in their mothers’ basements playing video games,” or when Congressman Pat Fallon spat out his caricature of the poor as people who just need to “get off the couch, stop eating your Cheetos, stop buying your medical marijuana, and watching TV” — then do yourself a favor: hold your breath until you read Part 3. Because the reality about poverty — who it touches, how hard it is to escape, and who is really gaming the system — is not just different from what these purveyors of misinformation claim. It is the opposite. And believing their false narratives isn’t just cruel. It keeps us all poorer, sicker, and weaker while the ultra-wealthy laugh all the way to their tax havens.
How dare they.
How dare we let them.
Steven Teske is a retired judge who presided over juvenile delinquency and child abuse and neglect cases and in superior court presiding over adult civil and criminal matters. He has testified before Congress on four occasions and numerous state legislatures on law and policy reform. He has a Masters in Political Science and a Doctor of Jurisprudence. He is currently a trial attorney and a consultant and lecturer.