In this episode of Policy for the People, we examine how the Trump administration’s decision to end the federal food security report threatens to hide the reality of hunger in America. Oregon Center for Public Policy analyst Tyler Mac Innis explains what losing this data means for families and policymakers, while Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality executive director Lelaine Bigelow discusses why poverty endures in one of the richest nations in history—and what it would take to end it.

From data suppression to policy failure, this conversation reveals how political choices keep millions struggling to feed their families—and how we can fight back.

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Transcript

We make this transcript available for your convenience and to increase the accessibility of our content. The transcript was generated by software and was slightly edited for clarity. If you are able to, we encourage you to listen to the recording.

Juan Carlos Ordóñez (host) Every October for the past few decades, the federal government has issued a report that reveals a lot about the well-being of our nation. The Household Food Security report tells us how many families in the U.S. and in Oregon are having a hard time putting food on the table. The report gives us a sense of whether families are able to meet the most basic human need. But this past October, the Household Food Security report did not come out as scheduled due to the federal government shutdown. As of this recording, we do not yet know the latest figures on hunger in the U.S. 

If and when it comes out, this year’s Household Food Security report may be the last one for the foreseeable future. That’s because the Trump administration has announced that it will no longer publish this report. This announcement by the Trump administration comes on the heels of the Republican majority in Congress passing a budget bill that ushers in the biggest cuts to nutrition assistance in our country’s history.

In the first half of this show, I speak with my colleague from the Oregon Center for Public Policy, Tyler Mac Innis. Tyler discusses why the Food Security report is so important, what its loss means for policymakers and the public, and how Oregon might respond to this situation. 

Even with the food security report going away, it’s clear that many people in our country are having a hard time putting food on the table in what is perhaps the richest nation in the history of the world. Hunger and poverty persist. 

In the second half of the show, I speak with Lelaine Bigelow, executive director of the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality, about why poverty persists and what it would take for our country to seriously confront the problem. Stay tuned.

Juan Carlos: So, Tyler, the Trump administration recently announced that it will stop counting the number of people who are having a hard time putting food on the table. Tell us what’s going on and why this issue matters. 

Tyler Mac Innis: Yeah, well, what’s going on is exactly what you just said, Juan Carlos, that the administration has announced that they are planning to stop the collection of data on the state of hunger in the United States, and they will no longer be publishing a regular report that comes out of the Department of Agriculture looking at the extent of food insecurity in communities across the country.

This comes right on the tail of the Republican majority in Congress enacting the largest cuts to food assistance programs in our nation’s history. Any reasonable observer could look at that and conclude that this administration is looking to suppress the truth and hidin, the results of their actions from the public. 

Juan Carlos: I wonder if you can give us a sense of what’s contained in this U.S. Department of Agriculture report on food insecurity. What kind of data does it give us? 

Tyler: So the the report in question is data that’s collected as part of the current population survey. This is one of the largest surveys that the U.S. Census Bureau conducts on a regular basis. And essentially what they do is, when they’re surveying families across the country as part of their surveying process, they ask a series of questions at the end about their ability to put food on the table. They ask things like, in the past 12 months, have you or others in your household ever had to cut the size of your meal because you were worried that you wouldn’t have enough money for food? So they ask a series of questions along those lines, and it provides us with really essential information. So we know, for instance, from this report that nearly 1 in 7 Oregonians today struggles to put food on the table, what the report calls food insecure. And we know from that report as well that the share of Oregonians who are experiencing very low food security, who are having to skip meals. These sorts of data points allow us to get a picture as to what’s happening in communities across Oregon and across the country, and to think about how we can better enable Oregonians to put food on the table. So it allows us to craft policy responses to the fact that people are having a hard time putting food on the table. 

But without that information, again, we will be in the dark. And all of this is happening, when, as we’ve mentioned, the largest cuts to food assistance in our nation’s history just occurred this past summer. 

Juan Carlos: I definitely want to come back and talk about the cuts to nutrition assistance that Congress has enacted. But before we get to that, I wonder how this information in this food insecurity survey has been useful in the past. How have advocates and policymakers put it to use?

Tyler: I think maybe we should take a step back and talk about the history of the report in and of itself. There was a moment in time where we didn’t have a report of this kind. In the 1980s, there was a task force on food assistance convened under President Reagan that was tasked with looking at the extent of food insecurity and hunger in the United States. And one of the things that that task force brought up in its final report was that the lack of data made it really difficult for them as an entity to come up with policy solutions. Many years later, the USDA published the first of the food insecurity reports that it’s been publishing for the last quarter century or so.

And in that first USDA report, which was published in late 1999, Oregon came out worst in terms of food insecurity. We’re actually ranked number one in terms of most food insecure in the country. And this, I think, was quite alarming to Oregonians, to policymakers here in the state, to advocates. And it really catalyzed policymakers to take action. And then in the years since, Oregon has made really significant strides in terms of making food assistance more accessible, making it so that families who are trying to access food pantries, for instance, are able to do so more easily. And we may not have done that if we didn’t see that information in that first food insecurity report that came out of the USDA.

And so, I think it’s really important to underscore that it really highlights the importance that good nonpartisan data can have, in terms of catalyzing us as a state to take action and helping families meet their basic needs. 

Juan Carlos: So let’s go back to the question of the cuts that Congress enacted in July to nutrition assistance, in addition to other critical programs like Medicaid. Certainly nutrition assistance took a beating in the tax and budget bill passed by Congress a few months ago. I wonder if you can describe to us the severity of those cuts, how deep they are. 

Tyler: Yeah, they’re incredibly deep. As we mentioned earlier, they’re the largest cuts to SNAP,  food assistance, in our country’s history. And it’s important to situate those cuts in that broader package you mentioned. This is the so-called one big beautiful bill or H.R. 1. It’s a giant package of things, but primarily it’s trillions in tax cuts, primarily for the wealthy and corporations. And Republicans in Congress attempt to pay for these things by making really drastic cuts to essential social service programs that Oregonians rely on to meet their basic needs. And those are primarily Medicaid, in terms of accessing health care, and SNAP, in terms of being able to have a little bit of extra help but food on the table. The cuts to snap are incredibly severe. It’s hundreds of billions of dollars over the next several years. 

In terms of cuts to the SNAP program, in Oregon, we know that there are hundreds of thousands of Oregonians who are going to see their food assistance either reduced or eliminated entirely as a result of the cuts that are coming to the SNAP program.

The way a large portion of these cuts that are taking place is through the re-institution and expansion of work requirements within the SNAP program. And essentially these say that you, as a recipient of food assistance, need to be working a certain number of hours every month or performing a certain number of work related activities in a certain month in order to be deserving of food assistance. For some individuals labeled as able bodied adults without dependents, even if they are making meeting those work requirements, they’re still limited to only three months of food assistance in a given three year window. So we’re talking about real limitations in terms of people’s ability to access just a little bit of help so that they can feed themselves. So these are really severe cuts. And in six counties across the state, those work requirements for able bodied adults without dependents are already in effect.

So we’re seeing some of these cuts already rolling out today. And we’ll see more and more of these work requirements and other cuts to the program coming online in 2026. So these are, really severe cuts to the program. As I mentioned, they will impact hundreds of thousands of Oregonians and their ability to put food on the table.

And again, all of this is so that we can afford massive tax cuts, primarily for the wealthy and corporations who don’t need that assistance. 

Juan Carlos: On the heels of these very drastic cuts, the administration is declaring that it will no longer publish the main way we track food insecurity in the country and at the state level. So what are the implications of that decision? What does it mean going forward? 

Tyler: It means we will have to find an alternative, right? I think we will have to figure out a path forward as a state to collect this kind of data and analyze the numbers ourselves. Like the cost of living today is incredibly expensive, especially for families who are working for low wages. And so to take away food assistance in this moment in particular, is a recipe for disaster. 

Juan Carlos: You already touched on this a little bit, but in a piece that you wrote recently, you suggested that Oregon should begin to collect its own data on food insecurity. I wonder if you can say more about what that might look like.

Tyler: Yeah, I should say this is very much like a high level recommendation. I think this is something that we would love to see partnership on with a variety of stakeholders who have a vested interest in this kind of information. But the core of the idea is kind of what we’ve been discussing here is that the elimination of this report at the federal level is incredibly harmful for Oregon and for states across the country when it comes to our ability to address hunger in our communities. And so if the federal government isn’t going to be collecting that data, publishing this information, then we as a state need to figure out a way to fill that void. We can’t just allow for this data to go away. So the piece that we published recently calls on the governor and policymakers at the state level to find a path forward on collecting this information at the state level and Oregon publishing its own version of this food insecurity report.

But this idea, you know, could also help us look at a variety of things, not just hunger. A variety of things that Oregonians are facing when it comes to their challenges making ends meet. And so we’re really hoping that we can find a path forward on, maintaining good data for policymaking purposes here in the state of Oregon. And that really is the crux of the argument. 

We don’t need a food insecurity report to know that what’s coming will be bad, but we will need good data in order to figure out how we respond as a state to what’s headed our way. 

Juan Carlos: That was Tyler Mac Innis, policy analyst with the Oregon Center for Public Policy, discussing the implications of the Trump administration’s announcement that it will no longer issue the yearly report on household food security, the report that tells us the extent of hunger in our nation. 

In the remainder of this episode, we continue our focus on hunger and economic insecurity. Rather than reflect individual failings, conditions like hunger and poverty reflect policy failures, according to Lelaine Bigelow. Lelaine is the executive director of the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality. I spoke with Lelaine about why poverty persists and what it would take for our country to seriously confront the problem. Here’s my conversation with Lelaine Bigelow. 

Juan Carlos: Lelaine, why don’t we start by you sharing a little bit about the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality (GCPI). What does the center do? What’s your mission? 

Lelaine: Thanks for that question. So the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality was started by Peter Edelman, who is an icon in the poverty space, both for his work and his teaching on poverty. He famously resigned from the Clinton administration in protest after the passage of the so-called welfare reform bill in 1996.

But his legacy started long before that, when he worked for Robert F. Kennedy, Sr. So maybe more people are familiar with junior right now. So I think it’s important to take a minute to talk about Robert F. Kennedy. And for me, one of the most important things that I remember about Robert F. Kennedy is that he ran for president, and a central part of his campaign was to eliminate poverty.

And I think that is shocking when you think about presidential campaigns nowadays, because the word poverty is just not on the top ten list of words that people use. And shortly after he announced he gave a speech in Kansas where he told students that they could heal this country by ending the disgrace of poverty and hunger among their fellow citizens. 

So RFK was unfortunately assassinated in California not long after that. And the healing he spoke about never had a chance to be realized. And so, over 50 years later, I believe that the sentiment he talked about is still true. And it’s why I’m honored to be leading the organization today. 

Juan Carlos: Where would you say we are now and where have we been when it comes to poverty and economic security in our nation? How have we seen progress? Have we gone backward? Where would you say we are?

Lelaine: When I think about where we’ve been, I think for decades we’ve told this familiar American story that success comes down to hard work and personal responsibility, and that you have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. But that story ignores the structures that determine who even has boots. Things like access to good schools, affordable housing, childcare and health care. And that story has fed our policy decisions. And when you think about the 1970s and the policies, around helping people and tax cuts, they started to change- where we saw a lot of our legislation rewarding wealth over work, tax cuts for the top, deregulation, weakened labor protections and declining public investment and the services that people rely on.

And so, you know, for lack of a better word, the safety net became harder to access, more stigmatized. And while costs in every part of life, basics like housing and food kept rising. So to me, we are currently in the mess of those decisions and that story line. Even with low unemployment and rising wages, families across income levels feel squeezed.

I mean, we have heard politicians and the news and the media talk about an affordability crisis because people feel like they’re working very hard, but it’s not getting them anywhere. And policymakers can’t control global supply shocks, but they can control housing, childcare and health care costs. And that shows to me that these aren’t personal failures. They’re structural policy failures. We can’t keep telling ourselves that false story because that isn’t going to solve the problem. So again, I think what all of this means is that when we think about how many people are in poverty now, which are probably over 36 million people, the numbers reflect policy decisions that make life harder for working families and easier for those already at the top.

Juan Carlos: Speaking of policy decisions, in July, the Republican majority in Congress passed a massive tax and budget bill, HR1. Some call it the One Big Beautiful Bill, and this legislation has set in motion massive changes to the main ways our nation addresses poverty. Can you talk about what this legislation means for the economic security and well being of the people of this country, and especially, women and children?

Lelaine: Yeah, I think one of the most important things to know about this bill is that it is a huge transfer of resources upward, away from families who rely on public benefit programs and towards a group of people who make over $500,000 or more. So we are seeing cuts to nearly one trillion from Medicaid and 187 billion from SNAP and wealthy people are going to get $3.4 trillion in tax cuts.

So I don’t really think you have seen that scale of wealth transfer ever in the U.S. And when we look more closely at who is affected, GCPI, did an analysis and it showed that about 2 million women would face new SNAP work requirements and 6 million women on Medicaid could lose coverage. And the way that they’re getting all of this cost savings is by imposing what’s called work requirements. And work requirements might sound super common sense, but in actuality, they are just, a compliance test, a paperwork burden to just cut people off the rolls. And it’s really important to know that a lot of these people who are affected are already working, but they are in really low quality jobs. They aren’t getting enough hours and  they don’t have a lot of stability.

So this legislation shifts the burden from trying to address the real barriers of what people are facing, which is unpredictable hours, lack of childcare and jobs with no stability into a compliance test. And maybe you might think, well, let’s just see what happens. We’ll see if this works. I can tell you that states have already tried it. And in Arkansas we saw 8,000 people lost Medicaid coverage with no increase in employment. So from a policy objective standpoint, it’s a really bad policy if you’re looking to actually get people to get more work.

Juan Carlos: Another thing that the Republican tax and budget bill does is it shifts costs to states like Oregon, costs for Medicaid in particular. So at the same time that we’re seeing this cost shift, so greater costs for states and we’re seeing people lose Medicaid because of things like work requirements, they’re going to be losing access to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program SNAP. So there’s both greater need and greater cost to the state at the same time. So it’s in essence, we’re faced here in Oregon and in many other states with like a double whammy of increased costs and greater need. So what would your advice be to state lawmakers given this situation and keeping in mind that states cannot run a deficit, we have to keep a balanced budget. So what would your advice be to state lawmakers?

Lelaine: It’s hard because the legislation has put forth sort of these exceptional considerations in order for states to be able to get the same amount of funding, essentially. And we actually did a really great map. If you go to our website, it has a really neat feature where you can go over each state and see how much the cost shift will be to each state. And in Oregon, the SNAP share for the state would jump from 158 million to over 476 million.

That’s a 202 percent increase for SNAP just alone. And the things that they will need to focus on are something that’s called error rates. And Republicans use this as a talking point, really to make it seem like states and or people are committing a lot of fraud in the system. But error rates, I think it’s important to note, aren’t just about fraud or  overpayments. They also include when a state under pays or doesn’t deliver benefits that people are eligible for. So a high error rate can also mean that the system is just stretched too thin and that families are not doing anything wrong. So some of the things that states are probably looking at doing is bringing those error rates down, trying to improve their accuracy rates.

They’re probably looking at technology to develop so that determinations for eligibility and approvals can run through a more efficient system. But all of that takes time and money. And I don’t know if there’s a lot of extra time and money going around these days. So to me, this is really an exercise in futility at some level, because this really should be a program that is funded at the federal level, the way it has been and should be expanded rather than have the state jump through a bunch of hoops and people lose benefits.

Juan Carlos: So why don’t we switch gears here and talk about looking forward and what can be done given this scenario? And I’m wondering what you think it would take for the nation to seriously confront poverty and economic insecurity. What would that look like if we really decided to tackle the struggles that families face and try to really improve the lives of people?

Lelaine: We have to reject the myth that poverty reflects personal failure. We talked a little bit about this earlier, and, you know, the situation that we are in reflects government priorities. When we invest in families and communities, poverty fails every single time. You might have heard of, you know, a very common example most recently, is the expansion of the Child Tax Credit.

When we expanded the Child Tax Credit, child poverty was cut nearly in half. And when the Child Tax Credit expansion expired, poverty rose again. So that is a direct correlation, a cause and effect, that you often don’t get a chance to see. But you can really see in the Child Tax Credit policy. 

But it’s more than just that when you think about housing. Housing is one of the most powerful drivers of economic wealth and stability. Yet we don’t have a national housing policy to make more people homeowners in this country. You know, that’s decades of evidence that we already have at our disposal. We already know what works. We just need to be able to make the choices and our policies that value work, care and stability and security for all families.

So poverty will shrink when we build an inclusive economy and we make opportunity the floor, not the exception. And, you know, it sort of takes me back to where we started out. Our conversation on Robert F Kennedy Senior, in his campaign to eliminate poverty and, as a presidential campaign, we have not seen that in a very long time.

And we do need, at the national level, someone to be changing the public conversation. What will it take to make the right policy choices? We have certainly a long way to go, but I think poverty is only going to end when our policy choices reflect the belief that everyone deserves stability, dignity, and opportunity.