The Big Beautiful Bill's Ugly Choice: Internet or Food?

[justaprogressive]

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.

“Fundamentally, the SNAP benefit calculation is about calculating what the household has available for food. That’s why rent and utilities are factored in,” explained Katie Bergh, senior policy analyst with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ (CBPP) Food Assistance team.

https://prospect.org/health/2025-07-11-big-beautiful-bills-ugly-choice-internet-or-food/]

[Bayard]

1. An uninformed and hungry populace would be easy to control....

[cayugafalls]

2. Personally I think the internet has ruined culture and the ability of humans to properly interrelate.

Wrote about what was coming in the 90's at college...at a certain point, my studies and research led me to conclude that personal flesh interactions were necessary to create a chemical bond between two people when interacting in person. Without that physical connection, the connection becomes based on what the listener 'feels' is being said or done. That leads to personal bias...personally meeting someone and then talking gives you much more 'data' to use when trying to discern meaning or motive.

Admittedly, I am weird as I believe all living things are connected on a physical level, we just can't see it yet.

[Xoan]

3. GOOD POINTS. /NT