About 1 in 10 Butler County residents, around 20,000 individuals, face food insecurity.

According to 2024 estimates from the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, 8% of senior citizens and 1 in 9 children are included in that figure.

Overall, 8.9% of Butler County residents, and 6.9% of seniors, live in poverty, according to 2023 U.S. Census data, the most recent year for which figures are available. Those numbers align nearly perfectly with the aforementioned figures.

Clearly, the need for help within the community exists.

Organizations such as local food banks; social services; in the case of older residents, programs through Life Butler County and the Area Agency on Aging; and free and reduced lunch programs through schools are vital to the lives of those about 20,000 of our neighbors right here in Butler County facing the threat of hunger every single day.

With inflation continuing to rise, the problem only stands to get worse.

Meanwhile, the recently passed federal budget resolution sets a target of $2 trillion in cuts to federal spending labeled mandatory. Mandatory spending is spending on programs authorized by law which renew every year without the need for Congressional action.

The lion’s share of such spending — about $2.2 trillion in fiscal year 2023, the last year for which audited numbers are available — goes to Medicare and Social Security. All mandatory spending totaled about $3.8 trillion that year, according to Congressional Budget Office figures.

Simple arithmetic shows that taking those two programs off the table for cuts would only leave about $1.6 trillion in which to try to find the target $2 trillion in cuts.

Other mandatory spending includes programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP — also known as food stamps — which accounts for $135 billion; Medicaid funding, which accounts for $616 billion; and federal civilian and veterans’ retirement benefits, which accounts for a combined $197 billion. A host of less costly programs — such as federal unemployment compensation, child nutrition programs and some programs for veterans — also fall under mandatory spending.

Simply put, to meet the cost-cutting goal of $2 trillion set under the recently passed budget resolution — Medicaid, child nutrition programs and SNAP benefits would have to be outright eliminated. Even then, Congress still would have to find an additional $400 billion in cost reductions somewhere.

Cutting any of those programs would sever a lifeline to our most vulnerable citizens, including those relying on SNAP to offset food insecurity.

Let’s hope Congress can find it’s savings somewhere that won’t leave 20,000 of our Butler County residents, and tens of millions of others around the nation, hungry.

— JP