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In this episode, Messellech “Selley” Abebe talks with Chad Bolt about what happens when the food safety net millions of children rely on suddenly fails, why access to nutrition is foundational to kids’ health and learning, and how political decisions can have immediate consequences for families. Bolt is Senior Vice President for Economic Security at First Focus on Children, and an anti-hunger policy expert who has worked extensively on SNAP and child nutrition programs. Together, Abebe and Bolt explore the unprecedented lapse in SNAP benefits during the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, what it revealed about the fragility of food access, and why protecting nutrition programs is essential to giving kids a fair chance to grow, learn, and thrive.

To learn more about Chad Bolt and his work, you can visit the First Focus on Children website. 

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Transcript

Selley Abebe  0:00  

Today we’re talking about hunger. Specifically, what happens when the safety net that feeds millions of kids suddenly disappears? Hey, ambassadors. Welcome back to Speaking of Kids. Selley here. For anyone who hasn’t had to think about it, SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is what keeps 16 million kids from going hungry. It’s how parents fill lunch boxes and how caregivers stretch their grocery runs. And for many, how the difference between we’re okay and we’re not gets decided every month. This past fall, the government shutdown became the longest in our nation’s history, and on November 1 2025 SNAP benefits were allowed to lapse overnight. Families across the country woke up to empty grocery cards and full blown panic. Benefits have since been restored, but states are really still facing potential federal cuts down the line. The fight over snap reminded us all what kind of role those benefits play in raising kids in America. If speaking of kids helps you understand how national decisions land in real homes with kids like ours, share the show, leave a review and help us reach more listeners. Okay, today’s guest is Chad bolt, one of the country’s leading voices on anti hunger policy. He’s here to explain how we got here, what the shutdown exposed, and why snap is about a lot more than food. Because, as you’ll hear, hunger isn’t just about empty bellies. Chad, welcome to Speaking of Kids. I’m so excited you’re here.

Chad Bolt  1:53  

Thank you. First time on. Excited to be here. Yeah.

Selley Abebe  1:56  

So you know, Chad, this past fall, our government shut down, and it turned into the longest shutdown in our nation’s history. At the same time, SNAP benefits were, you know, allowed to lapse on November 1, and overnight, millions of families were left wondering how they’d put food on the table. When you first heard that SNAP benefits would lapse, what was your gut reaction? What did you know was going to happen?

Chad Bolt  2:22  

I mean, we didn’t know what was going to happen, and that’s because this was the first time in the history of the SNAP program that this was ever allowed to happen. The first time that benefits got cut off in this way. And so my first reaction was just to think, Wow, this has never happened before, and what are families and kids going to do? I mean, snap is our country’s largest anti hunger program. 42 million people rely on it, including 16 million kids, and they need it to keep from going hungry. You know, most people out there in the world are not following the ins and outs of the drama of Washington. And you know, maybe people heard that the government was shut down. You know, they probably heard that, but, you know, they weren’t following like what it meant for SNAP, or what the USDA was doing, what Brooke Rollins, the USDA Secretary, was saying, they weren’t following Him that closely. They probably didn’t know that this was going to happen to them. To happen to them. So it came as a huge shock, obviously, for them to discover that their SNAP benefits were cut off. And the food bank community, the anti hunker community, was doing the best that they could to sort of fill in the gap, but they were stretched thin, and so really, I think everyone was reacting with a sense of urgency and a sense of panic to try to do the best they could to fill the gaps that this was creating.

Selley Abebe  3:52  

I remember seeing the lines around blocks outside of food banks when this really started to bubble up into national news. Yeah, you know, yes. Again, SNAP has become more mainstream. People at least are familiar with it, I would hope. But for those listeners that still are like, what is SNAP? Is the program run the same across all 50 states? How does SNAP work? What does it look like for an average family?

Chad Bolt 4:20  

So it is a federal benefit, federal guarantee, obviously, if you qualify, but your access to it really depends, like many things, like many federal programs on your zip code, and that is because states are in charge of the mechanics. So things like paperwork, applications, eligibility, renewals, asset rules, all of that is left up to the states. The federal government gives states leeway to provide flexibility or to make rules more strict for. People to qualify. So while it is a federal program, states have a huge role to play, and so the the actual experience, the practical experience for kids and families who receive SNAP varies widely depending what state you live in, but it’s important for folks to remember that the average SNAP benefit per person per day is $6 so I’m probably going to say this again over the course of this, over the course of this podcast, but it’s $6 and that is not a lot of money. When you think about how much it costs to go to the grocery store, you probably spend more than that on one item, yeah, let alone your entire budget to eat for the day. So this really doesn’t go very far.

Selley Abebe   5:51  

And when you think of SNAP as it relates to children, what are the unique benefits of the program that specifically impact children?

Chad Bolt  6:01  

You know, I started off by saying, SNAP is our country’s largest anti hunger program, and it certainly is that and we don’t obviously want kids to be hungry, but it just goes so far beyond making sure that kids aren’t hungry. And I’ll talk about three other huge ways that snap has a huge impact for kids, and the first is on health outcomes. So we know that when kids are not hungry, they’re healthier. And you know, this probably sounds intuitive, and it is when kids are hungry that’s correlated with higher rates of anemia, with asthma, with other chronic conditions and disabilities, but when households have snap, studies show that they are less likely to put off visits to the doctor or less likely to put off buying prescription medications because of cost. So we know that kids are healthier when they have access to snap. The second big category, I would say, is educational outcomes. And this probably makes intuitive sense too, but kids don’t do well when they go to school hungry. You know, it’s there’s actually a good body of research that shows that kids actually perform better on tests at the beginning of the month when SNAP benefits have like freshly hit. And toward the end of the month, when SNAP benefits are running out, kids perform worse on tests, in theory, because their SNAP benefits are have run out. So test scores improve, educational outcomes improve, behavioral outcomes improve as well. When kids are hungry, they might act out in ways that are disruptive to the classroom, but it can have serious implications for them, because those behavioral disruptions can actually get misinterpreted or misdiagnosed as like larger behavioral issues that really is they’re just hungry.

Selley Abebe  8:00  

As a parent, everything you said is a no brainer, right? Like any parent that’s dealing with a hungry kid knows that they’re not going to be in the best mood. I mean, most adults, right? Yes, I think it’s hard for us to concentrate. It’s hard for us to stay chipper when we’re hungry. And so you know what I love about this podcast, and you know what we do at first focus is it’s all interconnected. And so I think for parents and communities, even for teachers, to be aware of all of this connectivity that sometimes people think, well, hunger, it’s an isolated bucket over there. What does that have to do with education outcomes? But you see this at an individual level. But also, as you pointed out, you see that at a macro level with the educational outcomes, with test scores?

Chad Bolt  8:44  

Yeah, absolutely. And when you look down the road, I mean, like SNAP has been tied to, like, higher graduation rates. I mean, so we know that there are, there are huge, huge implications for SNAP access tied to educational outcomes. And the third, I would say, big effect is on stability in the home. Hunger can really drive stress level in the home, and stress in the home is just bad for kids and bad for parents, and studies have shown that access to snap is correlated with fewer calls to Child Protective Services and related to lower instances of child abuse and neglect. So having SNAP is really important for keeping kids safe and just providing a more stable and safe home life for kids.

Selley Abebe  9:34  

So far, Chad’s walked us through how SNAP became our biggest anti hunger program, and then it became collateral damage in a political standoff. Then came the One Big Beautiful Bill with new work requirements that punished exactly the wrong people, veterans, parents and families already on the edge after the break what hunger really does to a child’s future. Here and why it’s about so much more than food.

Selley Abebe 10:05  

Welcome back to Speaking of Kids. Before the break, Chad helped us understand how SNAP got caught in the political crossfire and who paid the biggest price. So my next question for him was about the bigger picture, when the policy itself changes, what happens next? You know, Chad earlier, like in the middle of the summer, before all of this kind of percolated in November, the Big Beautiful Bill was signed, and that made some big changes to SNAP for listeners. Can you help break down what those changes were and what the impacts were to families.

Chad Bolt  10:43  

Sure, I’ll just say bottom line really bad, and that was really in two ways, and one of them took effect relatively immediately, and that was the imposition of new work requirements for SNAP. And I want to say right away that snap already had fairly rigorous work requirements, so most people can only get snap for three months until they are subject to work requirements. That’s like a standard. That’s the standard rule. A whole set of new rules went into effect shortly after the one big, beautiful bill was passed that made it even more strict. So when Republicans talk about, you know, the need to impose, you know, work requirements on SNAP, they lead you to believe that they’re doing it because there are these, like, 30 year old dude bros who are, like, playing video games on the couch, and they just like, won’t get a job, and they’re like, eating on like, the taxpayer dime. Rest assured, these dude bros were subject to work requirements before passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill, and they are subject to work requirements after the passage of the one big beautiful bill. So like, I want people to know who is newly subject to work requirements under the one big, beautiful bill. Because this is not who Republicans are talking about, but it is who they impose the work requirements on. So it’s veterans. It is homeless people, it is parents of kids who are 14, 1516, or 17. It is people living in areas where unemployment is as high as 9% Oh, and it is people aged 55, to 64

Selley Abebe  12:34  

That’s so random.

Chad Bolt  12:37  

Those are the people who are newly subject to work requirements under the One Big Beautiful Bill. And again, that is like, not who Republicans would lead you to believe they were, like, doing this for. They would have us believe, again, that there was just a whole bunch of, like, lazy people who they were compelling to, like, get up off the couch, you know, and get a job. That’s not who we’re actually talking about here. Yeah.

Selley Abebe  13:04  

I mean, I was going to ask about how the narrative, historically and even more recently, around SNAP, has shifted, and I don’t think people still understand the points that you just made in terms of who it’s really impacting, because that’s still not what the broader narrative reflects.

Chad Bolt  13:22  

Yeah, for sure. I mean, again, people are not getting rich from their SNAP benefit. They are not dining in Michelin star restaurants. They are not preparing themselves three course meals. They are eating on $6 a day. I don’t think anybody who is relying on SNAP to eat is choosing to stay that way because it is an easy or convenient or desirable way to eat, and yet that is kind of the narrative that Republicans perpetuate when they target this program, because it makes it, I think, politically, more easier for them to target it.

Selley Abebe  14:12  

You know, the one thing that came out in terms of, you know, these stories being elevated and with social media is people just were sharing their stories and really helping the broader community, the public just be more aware of what this means, you know. And so I do think that hopefully things will start to shift, and people will understand, even thinking through SNAP, but other benefits that really benefit the public, that these things are good things, these things that are also helping more people than you know. I think a lot of people realize, I mean, even as it relates to SNAP, when you look at working full time, or even folks juggling multiple jobs, how many of them still need SNAP to get by? Absolutely, you know. If corporations benefit when workers can rely on SNAP to fill in the gaps, what happens to the broader economy when those benefits lapse are cut like we just saw?

Chad Bolt 15:11  

Yeah, so SNAP actually has a really strong economic impact. It’s actually one of the fastest economic tools the federal government has every $1 in SNAP generates about $1.50 to $1.80 in economic activity during downturns. And those SNAP dollars, they go into local businesses immediately. Usually SNAP dollars are turned around to the local economy in about two weeks. It supports hundreds of 1000s of grocery sector jobs. I mean, I think this probably makes intuitive sense to people. That’s where snap dollars are spent. SNAP helps reduce poverty, especially child poverty. It actually lifts about two to 3 million people out of poverty each year, about 1 million children. So there are some really powerful economic effects that I think go under appreciated because we, again, we think of SNAP as an anti hunger program, which, of course, it is. We don’t necessarily think of it as economic stimulus, but it is that as well. And of course, if you take snap away, that goes away right the other huge looming disaster under the one big, beautiful bill I mentioned, there were really two, two huge cuts. The first was the set of work requirements that we talked about earlier. The second one is the federal government is set to shift costs of running the SNAP program down to states. They’ll start requiring states to pick up the tab, first with the administrative costs of running the program, and then in the next year, the actual cost of benefits and part of what will determine how much of states have to pick up, how much of the tab states have to pick up will be a function of their error rate. What that means in practical terms is that states will just have a new incentive to boot people off of the SNAP program. It’s like you want to lower your error rate. Well, the fewer people you have in the program, the less likely you are to incur errors, meaning the less of the tab you have to pick up. So states will be faced with really serious choices here. If they want to make up the difference, they’ll have to cut other important state programs from their budget. Because remember, state budgets, it’s not like the federal government, they don’t print money, so like they got to sum to zero at the end of the year, so they have to cut other state programs, or they have to make SNAP benefits less generous. And maybe that’s not the best word to use, because remember, $6 per person per day, not exactly generous to begin with. They need to make they would need to make benefits less supportive, or they again, they need to just make fewer people eligible. So really, no good outcomes. There no states have ever done this, but there is an option under federal law for states to drop out of the SNAP program altogether, which would be a pretty drastic move, but it is foreseeable, just based on how much money it will cost states to have to run this program. So it’s a pretty serious, looming fiscal disaster for states, starting in two years, there will be a pretty big push I think, in Congress to try and avoid either through outright repeal or at least a delay of this state cost shift, because the shutdown really gave us a preview of what it would be like for kids and families relying on SNAP if this state cost shift is allowed to go into effect, basically, states would be left way more on their own to administer the SNAP program, just like they were in the shutdown. I mean, like USDA, like turned off benefits, and so states were moving, you know, funding over from other programs. Food Banks were trying to scramble together as much support as they could. Everybody was, you know, stretched thin, trying to do as much as they could, the best they can. You know, families were trying to get by. It was a preview of what it would be like for kids and families, and it didn’t go well. I mean, there was a lot of strain, and it was very hard and difficult for state governments, for food banks, and especially for kids and families to weather. So we really, really need Congress to at least delay that cost shift, if not outright, reverse it altogether.

Selley Abebe  19:36  

I mean, I really appreciate the way that you broke everything down, because I think most people understand by nature, there’s a ripple effect when things happen, but you just kind of laid it all out.

Chad Bolt  19:48  

And what makes this truly unforgivable is that everything they’re doing on SNAP is so that they could pay to give another round of enormous tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires.

Selley Abebe  20:01  

Oh, I know, like, I mean, I wish somebody could get a visual of, like, someone like, squeezing a towel. You know, it’s like, I don’t know how much they want to squeeze what’s left. You know, yes, because it’s like, upper middle class people splurge on Starbucks, like these people. Can you imagine what it costs to get coffee on, like, a yacht, like the amount of money that they’re paying for, like, house help? You know, it’s like crazy.

Chad Bolt  20:32  

Yeah, because it’s not just SNAP, of course, it’s on one hand of the ledger, you’ve got huge tax cuts for billionaires, and on the other hand, you’ve got over 10 years, 200 billion cut from snap. You’ve got nearly a trillion dollars cut from Medicaid and CHIP. And when you think about it, kids are not like sliced and diced into categories of policy. They’re just one kid, and so they might go to school hungry because their family SNAP benefits have been slashed, and when they get to school, they might no longer have a program that they were relying on there for their disability, let’s say, because The Medicaid funding that supported it was slashed and their funding that the school used to because it’s a title one school to run an education program that they were a part of that has been slashed because the Department of Education no longer exists. That’s all happening across different areas of the government, but it’s all coming down on the exact same kid. That’s what’s happening, right?

Selley Abebe  21:45  

It’s so true, because it doesn’t have to be this difficult. There are solutions. We have them exactly right, exactly right. So for people that are concerned and heard what you just said and it really resonates with them, what actions can they do?

Chad Bolt  21:59  

Yeah, I would say, go to firstfocus.org and sign up to be ambassador for children. From there, you’ll learn how to be an effective advocate. To your members of Congress, it’s basically like being a lobbyist, but for kids.

Selley Abebe 22:14  

That was the perfect plug, and that’s what everybody should do. Pause right now and go sign up to become an ambassador for children. First focus.org and also, while they’re there, they could check out your blog piece, which talks about a lot of these reverse cost shifts from the federal level back down to states. Thank you, Chad, thank you so much for being here today. We like to ask all of our guests what is a song, an album that they turn to to kind of lift their spirits? I want to say, I can’t wait to hear what you have to say, but I feel like not. I feel like you did kind of blow it earlier this week, but I did.

Chad Bolt  22:52  

I was so thrilled to be asked this question that I’ve already told you the answer, I’ll act surprised, is keep it together by Guster, an album that came out when I was a senior in high school. It’s just always been very special to me. There’s one song on the album in particular, come downstairs and say hello, huge for the Guster fandom, but I heard it in high school as an invitation to come out. I love it. There is a mantra early in the song that has stuck with me all of my life, be calm, be brave. It’ll be okay. And later they’re in the chorus, the song is about, you know, to tell you the truth. I’ve said it before, tomorrow start in a new direction, and that just always it felt like such an invitation to me to just literally come downstairs and say hello and just introduce myself for a second time to the world as my authentic self. And it actually, I think of it as the anthem of my coming out. So it’s an album and a song that I revisit often.

Selley Abebe  24:00  

Oh my god, best story ever connected to a song, and I love that you hold the title for that. I will welcome and reference this often and challenge other guests to have such a story, but that, I mean, when you sent it to me, I immediately went and listened to it, and I was like, I have never heard this band before. I’ve never heard of this song before, but I listened to the whole thing, and I really like it. I added it to my playlist.

Chad Bolt  24:22  

I appreciate that. Seeing a Guster concert live with me, I mean, they play it, it’s one of their big songs. So when they play it live, they always do, I get really emotional. And so standing next to me at a Guster concert is kind of like a weird experience, because everyone else is just kind of bopping around, and I am crying.

Selley Abebe 24:44  

Like this holds so much meaning it does all right. Chad, thank you so much for being here. Pleasure, thank you for having me. It’s wild to think about how something as basic as a grocery cart can carry the weight of a whole childhood because. Hunger isn’t just about food. It’s about stability and safety and whether a kid can show up at school ready to learn, instead of wondering if there’ll be dinner later that night. If this episode hit home, here’s your next step. Go to first focus.org and sign up to become an ambassador for children. That’s where you’ll learn how to turn frustration into action and help make sure kids are at the center of every policy conversation, because kids shouldn’t have to depend on luck or politics for food.

Selley Abebe  25:34  

Speaking of Kids, is a podcast by First Focus on Children. It’s produced by Windhaven productions and Bluejay Atlantic. Elizabeth Windom is the supervising producer. Julia Windom is the editor and Jay Woodward is the Senior Producer. For more about the episode, visit first focus.org.