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One piece of President Trump's tax and spending bill would make big cuts to the SNAP food assistance program. The Congressional Budget Office estimates almost 3 million people would lose SNAP benefits. So before the votes in the House overnight, we called up Linda Jones. She co-founded Alabama Childhood Food Solutions. She told Michel Martin how many people there are in need.
LINDA JONES: We've had, like, a 30% increase from just last year with our children's bags. We're now doing, like, 2,600 kids a week with a backpack ministry.
MICHEL MARTIN, BYLINE: And the backpack ministry - remind us what that is?
JONES: The backpack ministry's where we feed children that don't get enough food during the week at school, and we give them food for the weekends. And then our family size, where we give families groceries - like, 70 to 80 pounds every time they come in - that is increased from 600 to 1,200 families that we're feeding. And it's just growing by leaps and bounds.
MARTIN: Why do you think it's gone up so much so far?
JONES: Well, I think it's because of the food prices - you know, like, eggs, $8 a dozen. Who can afford that? And milk - so high. Everything was so high. We've had people to come in and said that, you know, they got food stamps, even, but that doesn't give them anything but bread and milk by the time they get out of the grocery store. That's it. So that's where - they come to us to get other food.
MARTIN: One of the things that this bill would do, especially with Medicaid and SNAP, it would now be linked to work requirements.
JONES: Yes. And I don't know how that's going to work because some of the people - granted, some of them could work, and I agree with that. Those that are capable of working should work. But some of them, you look at them, and you think, man, they could go out and go to work. But once you start talking to them, it's a different story entirely.
MARTIN: It's my understanding that a lot of people who get Medicaid and/or food stamps already work. Is that true?
JONES: Yes. Yes. I think so.
MARTIN: So tell me more about that. If they already work, like, what's the story? Like, why do they need this food help?
JONES: Some of them that we feed come in and get food, and they said, you know, they lack $1 or $2 to qualify for being on food stamps, or they've lost their food stamps because they move. We had some children in our backpack ministry, where this young boy was getting food every week. He came in and asked the teacher if he could possibly get his bag early because they had no food in the house whatsoever. So come to find out, there was a dad that had seven children whose wife took the youngest child and left him abandoned with the other children, and this man and his family were just hanging on by a thread. But we came in, and we're giving them food now monthly to help him with his grocery bill, at least.
MARTIN: Do you see waste, fraud and abuse in the system from where you are?
JONES: From my standpoint, no. Mostly what we see are poor, poor people. And we try to make every dollar we can count to be able to buy that food. We have an audit every year. And this year, they came in and they said that we are - 97% is what we use for all our food and stuff. Only 3% is used for other things.
MARTIN: Which is a very narrow margin. So I guess you're operating mostly on volunteers, right?
JONES: Yes. Yeah. We have over 900 volunteers to come in through our distribution center once a year.
MARTIN: That's Linda Jones. She's the co-founder, along with her husband, of Alabama Childhood Food Solutions, which, as you've just heard, feeds kids and everybody else who needs food in Central Alabama. Linda Jones, thank you so much for talking to us once again.
JONES: Thank you so much for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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