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

Sold to voters as a way to cut “waste, fraud, and abuse,” a more honest assessment of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act 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 have 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? OBBBA not only increases the paperwork burden required to qualify for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, it completely removes internet service costs as an eligible deduction. “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’ Food Assistance team. But under OBBBA, and contrary to common sense, internet access is no longer considered essential, at least not for SNAP beneficiaries, despite repeated campaign promises to “make America affordable again” and to bring prices down “starting on Day 1.”

[Sean Gonsalves is the associate director for communications and senior writer with the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s Community Broadband Networks Initiative.]