Feeding Americans Is
National Security
Children. Grandmothers. Veterans with disabilities. The same program protects all of them — and cutting it doesn’t save money. It just moves the cost to emergency rooms, nursing homes, and prisons. Natalie Fleming will fight to protect and expand SNAP and school nutrition programs as a core national security priority.
“I met a frail elderly woman on the campaign trail who told me she receives $25 a month in SNAP benefits. That is less than a dollar a day. She is not lazy. She is not a burden. She is someone’s grandmother — probably stretched to feed a grandchild too. We are the wealthiest nation in the history of the world. There is no excuse for this.”
— Natalie M. Fleming, Idaho
Who SNAP Actually Serves
The political debate around SNAP is built on a fiction — that the program mostly serves working-age adults who could support themselves if they tried harder. The actual numbers tell a different story. 70% of all SNAP recipients are children, elderly people, or people with disabilities. The remaining 30% are mostly working adults whose wages simply don’t cover the cost of food. When Congress cuts SNAP, it is primarily cutting food from children, grandmothers, and the disabled.
Children
Roughly 20 million children receive SNAP each month. For many, the food provided by SNAP — combined with school breakfast and lunch — represents the nutritional foundation their developing brains depend on.
Elderly Adults
7.8 million low-income older Americans rely on SNAP. The average household with someone 60+ receives about $188 a month — barely $6 a day. The minimum benefit is just $24. Some, like the woman Natalie met, receive even less.
People with Disabilities
Disabled Americans are twice as likely to face food insecurity as non-disabled peers. Many cannot work. Many have high medical costs. Food assistance is often the difference between eating and not eating.
This is not an abstract problem
Idaho has one of the fastest-growing senior populations in the country. Rural Idahoans — many of them conservative, many of them veterans, many of them people who worked hard their whole lives — face food insecurity at rates that would shock most urban politicians. The nearest grocery store can be an hour away. Fixed incomes don’t stretch to cover food plus medication. And the minimum SNAP benefit — $24 a month — is an insult to the dignity of people who built this state.
Part I: Children — What Every Mother Has Always Known
Long before neuroscience had the tools to measure it, mothers knew: a hungry child is an angry child. A child who goes to school without eating cannot learn. A child who goes to bed without dinner cannot sleep. These are not parenting failures — they are physiological facts. And what science is now confirming, painstakingly, is that the effects of childhood hunger don’t just disappear when the child grows up.
Hunger during development leaves permanent marks on the brain
The prefrontal cortex — responsible for impulse control, empathy, planning, and the ability to pause before acting — is one of the most nutritionally sensitive structures in the developing brain. Zinc, iron, B vitamins, and protein are not optional ingredients for brain development. They are structural materials. Without them, the brain builds differently.
A landmark USC study found that malnutrition in the first few years of life is associated with antisocial and aggressive behavior all the way through age 17. The more nutritional deficits a child had at age three, the lower their IQ at age eleven — by as much as 15 points — independent of poverty, home environment, and other social factors. This isn’t correlation. The brain scans confirm it: the prefrontal cortex is measurably smaller and measurably less active in children who experienced early malnutrition.
Each additional year of food stamp availability in early childhood reduces the likelihood of a criminal conviction in young adulthood by 2.5 percent — with stronger effects for violent and felony convictions. The discounted social benefits from crime reduction alone exceed the cost of the program.
Adults who experienced malnutrition limited to their first year of life show measurably different brain response patterns decades later — particularly in attention and impulse control — compared to adults who were adequately nourished.
Poor nutrition characterized by zinc, iron, vitamin B, and protein deficiencies leads to lower IQ, which leads to later antisocial behavior. “This is a problem in America — not just a problem in the far-away developing world.” Iron deficiency alone affects 7–22% of American toddlers and adolescents.
The Two-Generation Timeline
This is why Natalie says it takes two generations to nourish the violence out of a society. The Food Stamp Program expanded nationwide in the early 1970s. The crime drop began in the early 1990s — roughly twenty years later, when the first children who grew up with food assistance reached adulthood. This is not a coincidence. Multiple research teams have now established the causal link between early childhood nutrition programs and reduced adult criminality. The children who were fed grew up differently.
The crime drop that nobody fully explained — until now
Criminologists spent decades arguing about what caused the dramatic American crime decline that began around 1993. Lead paint removal, the end of crack markets, more police, demographic shifts — all contributed. But one factor that is only now receiving serious scholarly attention is child nutrition. The Food Stamp Program reached national scale in 1974. The children born in 1974 turned 19 in 1993. Research published in the Journal of Human Resources found that each year of food stamp access in early childhood reduced violent felony convictions by more than the program-average 2.5%. Feed children, and you get safer adults — two decades later. Cut food assistance, and you plant seeds of instability that bear fruit long after the politicians who cut it are gone.
School Lunch: Congress Called It National Security in 1946
When President Truman signed the National School Lunch Act in 1946, Congress described it explicitly as “a measure of national security, to safeguard the health and well-being of the nation’s children.” That was not rhetorical flourish. During World War II, military recruiters were rejecting young men at alarming rates due to malnutrition-related health problems. Congress knew that the children eating in American schools in 1946 were the soldiers, workers, and parents of 1966. They were right then. We need to remember it now.
Part II: Elderly Americans — The Hidden Hunger Crisis
Food insecurity among older Americans has more than doubled since 2007. Nearly 7 million seniors are food insecure today, and researchers project that number will reach 9 million by 2050. Yet over half of elderly Americans who qualify for SNAP don’t receive it — turned away by paperwork, stigma, mobility barriers, and a system that wasn’t designed with a frail 80-year-old in mind.
The woman Natalie met — receiving $25 a month — isn’t an outlier. The federal minimum SNAP benefit for a one- or two-person household is $24 a month. That’s 80 cents a day. Groceries cost 29% more in 2025 than in 2020. Meanwhile, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed in July 2025 made the largest cuts to food assistance in American history — $186 billion over ten years — and is projected to strip food assistance from more than one million adults aged 55 to 64.
Food insecurity accelerates cognitive decline — the equivalent of aging 4.5 extra years
A nine-year longitudinal study tracking 4,578 older Americans found that food insecurity is associated with significantly faster cognitive decline — in memory, executive function, and orientation. The researchers found that the greater cognitive decline observed in food-insecure seniors was equivalent to being 4.5 years older. SNAP participation slowed this decline to rates comparable to food-secure seniors who didn’t need assistance.
Put plainly: feeding elderly Americans keeps their minds intact longer. Letting them go hungry costs us — in Medicaid, in nursing home admissions, in cognitive decline that strips people of their independence and dignity years before their time.
Food insecurity in older adults is associated with higher rates of diabetes, depression, high blood pressure, congestive heart failure, heart attacks, and limitations in daily activities. SNAP participation is a protective factor against accelerated cognitive decline — with effects equivalent to slowing brain aging by several years.
Over 7 years, food insecurity was associated with measurably faster decline in executive function among older adults. 5.2 million Americans over 60 reported food insecurity in 2020 — a number that has more than doubled since 2007.
Older adults living with grandchildren are twice as likely to face food insecurity — and more likely to prioritize the children’s food over their own. Grandmothers are quietly going hungry so their grandchildren don’t have to.
When seniors can’t afford food, they end up in emergency rooms and nursing homes
Malnutrition in older adults leads to faster muscle loss (sarcopenia), weaker immune function, slower wound healing, and more falls. Every hospital admission for a malnourished senior costs tens of thousands of dollars. Every premature nursing home admission costs Medicaid hundreds of thousands. The $24-a-month minimum SNAP benefit — even raised to something dignified — would cost a fraction of the downstream medical expenses that hunger creates. This is not charity. It is the most cost-effective healthcare intervention available.
Part III: People with Disabilities
Americans with disabilities face food insecurity at twice the rate of non-disabled adults. Many cannot work, or can work only part-time. Many have high medical costs that consume whatever income they have. Many live alone, without family support. For this population, SNAP is not supplemental — it is often the primary source of food.
The 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill expanded work-reporting requirements from ages 18–54 to ages 18–64. For people whose disabilities are not formally documented — whose physical or mental health limitations are real but don’t come with paperwork — this change means losing food assistance even when work is genuinely impossible. The burden of proof now falls on the most vulnerable people in America to prove, to a bureaucracy, that they are not capable of working.
The largest cut to food assistance in American history
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed July 4, 2025, cuts $186 billion from SNAP over the next decade — the largest reduction in the program’s 60-year history. More than 1 million adults aged 55–64 are projected to lose food assistance entirely. States will be required to absorb 25% of SNAP administrative costs starting in 2026 — costs that will fall hardest on states with large rural, elderly, and disabled populations. The minimum SNAP benefit remains $24 a month, while grocery prices are 29% higher than five years ago.
Part IV: Generational Prosperity — The Full Return on Investment
Here is the argument that should end the debate. This is not charity. This is not a handout. This is the highest-return public investment the United States government makes.
A landmark study by economists at UCLA, Stanford, and UC Berkeley tracked more than 17 million Americans born between 1950 and 1980 — following children who had access to food stamps in early childhood all the way into adulthood. The findings were unambiguous. Access to food assistance from conception through age five is associated with higher educational attainment, higher earnings, lower incarceration rates, better health, and longer life. The researchers calculated the full return to society: $62.25 for every $1 spent.
The chain from a school lunch to a taxpaying adult
Access to adequate nutrition in early childhood → better brain development → improved reading and math scores → higher likelihood of high school graduation → higher college attendance → higher lifetime earnings → more taxes paid → less reliance on public assistance → lower incarceration rates → lower social costs. Women who had food stamp access as children were measurably more economically self-sufficient as adults — higher employment, higher income, lower poverty rates, less dependence on public assistance. They didn’t become lifelong welfare recipients. They became the workforce.
The children we feed today are the taxpayers, the soldiers, the nurses, the teachers, and the parents of 2045. Cutting food assistance now is not fiscal conservatism. It is borrowing against the future productivity of American children to pay for tax cuts today.
Children with access to food stamps before age 5 were 16 percentage points less likely to be obese as adults, had lower rates of diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease — and women had measurably higher earnings, higher graduation rates, and lower rates of poverty than comparable women who didn’t have access.
Food stamp access from conception through age 5 was associated with gains in productivity, economic self-sufficiency, neighborhood quality, and physical health in adulthood. The lifetime value returned to society: $62.25 per $1 invested — including higher tax contributions and reduced incarceration costs.
SNAP participation in early childhood leads to improvements in reading and math, increased high school graduation rates, increased college attendance, higher home ownership, and higher retirement savings — a cascade of economic self-sufficiency that begins with a school lunch.
Cutting SNAP is the most expensive thing Congress can do
Every dollar cut from SNAP for children does not disappear — it reappears, with interest, in special education costs, juvenile justice, adult incarceration, Medicaid, disability payments, and lost tax revenue. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the OBBBA’s SNAP cuts at $186 billion through 2034. Independent economists estimate the downstream costs — in worse health outcomes, lower earnings, and higher social services spending — will far exceed that figure. This is not a budget cut. It is a budget transfer — from the food budget of poor children to the future budgets of hospitals, prisons, and welfare programs.
Meanwhile, every $1 billion in SNAP benefits generates $1.54 in economic activity as families spend benefits at local grocery stores, supporting agricultural jobs, truck drivers, stock clerks, and the entire food supply chain. In rural Idaho, that multiplier is not abstract — it is the difference between a local grocery store staying open or closing.
“We are not debating whether to spend money on these children. We are debating whether to spend it on school lunch now, or on prisons and hospitals later. The math has been done. Feeding children costs $1. Not feeding them costs $62. Any senator who votes to cut SNAP and calls it fiscal responsibility is either ignorant of the research or hoping you are.”
— Natalie M. FlemingNatalie Fleming’s Position
What Natalie will fight for in the United States Senate
- Raise the minimum SNAP benefit — $24 a month is not a benefit, it is a symbol of contempt. The minimum should reflect what food actually costs.
- Protect elderly and disabled recipients from work-reporting requirements — People who cannot work should not be required to prove it to keep food on the table.
- Restore the $186 billion in SNAP cuts imposed by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and fight any future cuts to core nutrition programs.
- Fully fund school breakfast and lunch programs as a non-negotiable national security priority, with no work requirements, no means tests at the schoolhouse door.
- Expand SNAP outreach to seniors — over half of eligible elderly Americans don’t receive benefits they’re entitled to, because the enrollment process is designed for people with internet access, transportation, and energy to navigate bureaucracy.
- Index SNAP benefits to actual food costs — benefits should reflect what food actually costs, adjusted in real time, not once a year after inflation has already done its damage.
- Protect SNAP from state cost-shifting — making states pay for 25% of administrative costs will cause states to cut corners and deny benefits. The federal government should bear this cost.
“Cutting food assistance doesn’t save money. It just moves the cost to emergency rooms, nursing homes, and prisons — and adds interest. Every dollar we invest in feeding children now saves seven dollars in social costs later. Every dollar we invest in feeding elderly Americans saves many times that in avoided hospitalizations. This is not a welfare debate. This is a budget debate — and the math is not close.”
— Natalie M. Fleming⚠ What Congress Just Cut — And What It Will Cost Idaho
- $186 billion cut from SNAP through 2034 — the largest food assistance cut in American history.
- Work reporting requirements expanded to age 64, threatening food access for more than 1 million adults aged 55–64.
- States now responsible for 25% of SNAP administrative costs — states with high elderly and rural populations, like Idaho, will bear disproportionate burdens.
- The minimum SNAP benefit remains $24 a month — 80 cents a day — while grocery prices are 29% higher than in 2020.
- Utility allowance changes will reduce benefits for households that can’t produce documentation of heating and cooling costs — a particular burden for elderly renters.