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The Big Beautiful Bill's Ugly Choice: Internet or Food? -- The American Prospect
https://prospect.org/health/2025-07-11-big-beautiful-bills-ugly-choice-internet-or-food/Sean Gonsalves
The Republican budget bill cuts food assistance benefits to households that pay for internet access.
Contrary to common sense, internet access is no longer considered essential, at least not for SNAP beneficiaries.
Sold to voters as a way to cut “waste, fraud, and abuse,” a more honest assessment of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) is that it’s just a Big Brazen Bid to shred the social safety net.
Naturally, the looming cuts to Medicaid and what they will mean for rural hospitals in particular has received the most press. But there are numerous other ways those in need of government assistance will be further pressed into poverty, including through a particularly narrow-minded Sophie’s Choice: internet access or food?
Last year, GOP leaders blocked bipartisan efforts to fund an extension of the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), which offered 23 million eligible households a $30-per-month voucher to help pay for internet service. As if letting the ACP die wasn’t a big enough blow, OBBBA not only increases the paperwork burden required to qualify for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, it completely removes internet service costs as an eligible deduction.
In the context of SNAP, the “deduction” refers to how an eligible household’s net income is calculated, which is then used to determine how much households are entitled to receive in SNAP benefits. A lower net income translates into a higher allocation of benefits. Section 10005 of the law prohibits “household internet costs (e.g., monthly subscriber fees)” from being used in the net income calculation. That means that families with internet access will have higher net incomes, and therefore get lower benefits.
. . .
Naturally, the looming cuts to Medicaid and what they will mean for rural hospitals in particular has received the most press. But there are numerous other ways those in need of government assistance will be further pressed into poverty, including through a particularly narrow-minded Sophie’s Choice: internet access or food?
Last year, GOP leaders blocked bipartisan efforts to fund an extension of the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), which offered 23 million eligible households a $30-per-month voucher to help pay for internet service. As if letting the ACP die wasn’t a big enough blow, OBBBA not only increases the paperwork burden required to qualify for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, it completely removes internet service costs as an eligible deduction.
In the context of SNAP, the “deduction” refers to how an eligible household’s net income is calculated, which is then used to determine how much households are entitled to receive in SNAP benefits. A lower net income translates into a higher allocation of benefits. Section 10005 of the law prohibits “household internet costs (e.g., monthly subscriber fees)” from being used in the net income calculation. That means that families with internet access will have higher net incomes, and therefore get lower benefits.
. . .