For the past few months, Maria Garcia has experienced anxiety each time she goes grocery shopping. She’s a mother of three children — ages 13, 11, and five years old — and her husband is disabled, so Maria is the sole provider for the family. Before the higher food prices that have swept the country recently, she could manage the grocery bill by carefully following a strict budget. Now she feels like she is barely making ends meet. 

The Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer (P-EBT) — initiated in late 2020 as part of the country’s pandemic economic relief – provides funds that can only be used for food items. It was designed to fill in the gaps for families who no longer had access to free or reduced-price school meals or childcare meals because of school and childcare center closures.  

Thanks to a spending bill passed during the lame duck session of Congress, before the new Republican House majority started their term, a new permanent nationwide Summer EBT program is set to begin in 2024. This would be the first new federal food assistance program of this magnitude in nearly 50 years, feeding 30 million children. Pandemic EBT will continue to be available to states for the 2023 summer while the new program is being set up.

SNAP recipients have also seen a boost in their monthly benefits as a result of a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) increase that went into effect in October 2022. 

But programs like these could be at risk as the COVID-19 emergency declarations are set to end this summer and some politicians in Congress are threatening to prevent spending on programs that would help millions of families by refusing to raise the debt limit.

The P-EBT program is handled on a state-by-state basis, and some states, including Florida where I live, are continuing the program on a partial or modified basis. In late 2022, Florida provided a one-time payment for the Summer 2022 program for each eligible child. Some families — mainly those with younger kids in childcare programs or school-aged who are learning at least partially at home — still qualify for P-EBT during the school year.

Still, many families feel like they have taken a big step backwards because the staggering cost of groceries seems to more than cancel out any minor increase in benefits. 

Maria makes a grocery list with only the essential foods that are absolutely needed. Even with the P-EBT and SNAP adjustments, she can’t afford to buy anything beyond the absolute essentials at the grocery store.

“Before the food inflation, I was able to buy little snack treats for my kids, but I can no longer afford to do that, it makes me feel so bad,” she said. Maria prepares only homemade food for her family, and she started freezing portions of the meals in order to be able to stretch the food and ensure nothing goes to waste. She is still thankful for the P-EBT increase, though, because it helped her to purchase an extra week of groceries that included meats and dairy products. 

“Now I find myself putting many items back on the shelf, because I don’t want to be embarrassed at the counter by coming up short. This is what really gets me stressed out about grocery shopping now.” Maria says.

In our family, my husband now is the one who goes grocery shopping so I can care for our baby. He is generally not one to talk about food prices. But last week when he came home from shopping, he told me he was shocked at how expensive everything was, noting that some foods had almost doubled in price. When he started listing the items that had increased, I was stunned. We used to shop at a particular supermarket that — compared to the others — always had competitive food prices, but even they were affected and have increased their prices significantly.

Nationwide, the food prices are up nearly 12 percent compared to last year, and many low-income families are going hungry, even while receiving food assistance. Despite some families possibly receiving P-EBT benefits, along with the COLA increase for SNAP recipients, they are still experiencing hunger. And with Republicans seeking to rollback spending for programs that was passed during the Democratic-led Congress in December — even these benefits could be at risk.

Many people find themselves in a similar situation to Maria, struggling to afford groceries for her family. This is why long term safety net programs like the new Summer EBT program and initiatives like the Child Tax Credit (CTC) and Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) are so important and should be expanded. These programs enable millions of low-income families to finally have access to the resources they need to survive and hopefully thrive.

 As President Biden mentioned in his State of the Union, we could all have what we need to live a life with dignity if billionaires paid their fair share and some politicians put families over corporations. That’s why workers and families across the country are coming together to tell their members of Congress that we all deserve an opportunity to thrive and must fund the programs that help us do that.