Juliette London has plenty to worry about.
The Spotsylvania County resident became disabled in her early 40s. Among her ailments are diabetes, a heart condition and autoimmune issues.
But it was another, related concern that she was talking about this week: food access.
London gets help from the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), known previously — and sometimes still colloquially — as food stamps. But if that benefit gets cut, as observers say it would under President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” she would have to rely even more on food pantries, where much of what is offered she can’t really use.
“I’m one of those people that’s kind of fallen between the cracks because I’m so grateful to have groceries,” she told U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine and Del. Joshua Cole on Monday. “But the bulk of it, what I get, I can’t eat.”
London’s story was one of several Kaine and fellow Democrats Cole and Rep. Eugene Vindman heard in the Fredericksburg area over the past few days as they came focused on the issue of food insecurity.
The legislation pushed by Trump and passed by the House of Representatives, which is controlled by Republicans, would cut SNAP by more than 20 percent, according to Kaine, Virginia’s junior senator.
Nationwide, the bill would take food assistance away from nearly 11 million people, or about one in four SNAP recipients, Kaine said. And in Virginia, at least 204,000 people are in danger of losing some SNAP benefits, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities think tank.
Under the legislation, Virginia would have to come up with as much as $439 million in state funds to make up for the cuts or be forced to make additional reductions to food benefits by 2028, according to the CBPP.
Last year, 827,800 Virginia residents received SNAP assistance, with an average benefit of $5.83 per day, Kaine says, and more than 2/3 of SNAP participants in the Old Dominion are in families with children.
On the other side of the aisle, U.S. House Republicans praised the legislation. Before the vote, the House Agriculture Committee issued a statement saying it was “leading efforts to restore integrity to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.”
“The committee’s reforms ensure SNAP works the way Congress intended it to, by reinforcing work, rooting out waste and instituting long-overdue accountability incentives to control costs and end executive and state overreach,” the statement said.
At a roundtable discussion at the Fredericksburg Regional Food Bank, however, Cole related that Rep. Jennifer McClellan, a Democrat from the Richmond area, told him that many House members didn’t even know what was in the One Big Beautiful Bill they voted for.
“They were just listening to what President Trump told them, or the Republican leadership told them, and then after they found out what they voted for, now they’re panicking to try to figure out what they can do to help their people out, because they didn’t know they were voting to take away certain benefits from the people of their communities,” said Cole, who represents Fredericksburg and parts of Stafford and Spotsylvania counties.
Fredericksburg Regional Food Bank President and CEO Dan Maher (left) U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine (center) and Del. Joshua Cole participate in a discussion at the food bank. (Photo courtesy of Kaine’s office)
Dan Maher, the food bank’s president and CEO, said one in 10 people in the Fredericksburg area are food insecure, as are one in nine children.
If the legislation the House passed becomes law, it would take away about 9.5 billion meals, Maher said. And the entire Feeding America network, of which the local food bank is a part, generates only 5 billion to 6 billion meals a year.
“So, in essence, they’ve wiped out, if this SNAP budget would be accepted, it’d wipe out all the activity of the food bank network and create a deficit that would have to be filled,” Maher said.
In addition, Eddie Oliver, executive director of the Federation of Virginia Food Banks, said that more than half of SNAP recipients use their monthly allotment of benefits within two weeks, and 25 percent of eligible Virginians — including 62 percent of seniors — don’t use the program, either because of paperwork requirements or misunderstandings about the benefit.
“So we need to strengthen the program,” said Oliver, “not weaken it.”
Those who could be affected
For London, the potential of having to rely more on food pantries is dicey not only because some of the food given out — such as pasta, beans, rice and potatoes — won’t work with her illnesses, but also because some of it is inedible.
“Food pantries are not all created equal,” she said.
Some have partnerships with local farmers and get fresh produce that wasn’t sold at farmer’s markets.
Others hand out produce or meat that’s already expired, London said.
“The USDA meat, even though it was frozen, when you looked at the package, you could see the expiration date was expired, and when it thawed, it was rotten and you couldn’t eat it,” she said.
Canned vegetables also frequently are loaded in sodium, London said in an interview after the food bank meeting, and she has to try to rinse out as much of that as possible.
London, who worked for 30 years as a nurse, said she never thought she’d be disabled.
“You put into the system and then when you need the benefits the most, you can’t access them and you’re in a constant state of survival and trauma because every day you’re fighting to get your needs met,” she said.
Barbara Canada, who takes care of her blind sister, also pointed out a geographic inequity.
“I found this out: When you’re not in Fredericksburg — I’m in King George — it’s like you can’t get nobody to help you do nothing,” she said.
Moving to a more urban area, though, isn’t really an option for Canada because she doesn’t want to give up the home she owns in King George County.
Similarly, Scott Fischer, who helps take care of his special needs sister-in-law, Ann Marie Lackey, said Lackey had trouble accessing benefits when she lived in Richmond County on the Northern Neck.
Now that she lives with Fischer and his wife, Kimberly, in south Stafford, though, she has been able to receive services.
If Lackey lost SNAP, she would lose her access to groceries, Scott Fischer said, but the family could absorb that loss.
What Fischer said he fears most is Lackey losing Medicaid, which also is potentially on the chopping block under GOP plans. He’s not sure he or his wife could get his sister-in-law covered under their insurance plans.
“She would be totally without medical coverage,” said Fischer, who worked on the House side of Capitol Hill for 27 years.
‘Skimming’ erases benefits in a snap
Vindman, whose 7th District includes the Fredericksburg area, convened a separate roundtable two days before Kaine’s event.
He noted that an additional concern with SNAP is people “skimming,” or stealing benefits from those who are rightly entitled to them.
Rep. Eugene Vindman (left) visits the Spotsylvania Farmers Market before a roundtable discussion on food insecurity. (Photo courtesy of Vindman’s office)
Melanie Cobb, who works for King George’s Social Services Department, said that one protection against skimming is technology that allows SNAP participants to lock the cards they use for the benefits.
But the speed at which skimmers act is a problem, she noted. She recalled a presentation at a conference about how skimmers work.
“They showed a video of someone getting out of the car, and [in] less than 15 seconds, that skimmer’s on the machine, and people don’t know that it’s on there, taking the benefits,” Cobb said.
Christian Zammas, who serves on the board of the Fredericksburg Regional Continuum of Care, brought up another issue. Some skimmers may be members of the unhoused population who have lost their benefits and are desperate for food.
“They’re compromising their values because of that survival mode that they’re being forced into,” said Zammas, who noted that he and his family had been homeless and lived in hotels.
Dems to ‘focus on the individual stories’
It’s not clear that the One Big Beautiful Bill will pass the Senate, so what do Democrats need to say to sway some Republicans to their side?
Vindman said after his event that he and his colleagues need to be specific. They need to mention how constituents would be affected by the legislation, whether they’re SNAP recipients or even the food producers, the farmers, who would see decreases in opportunities to sell their wares.
“I think we have to focus on the individual stories,” he said.
Kaine said he thinks his GOP colleagues in the Senate will have a hard time accepting the SNAP cuts when they see how small the current benefit is and learn that such a high percentage of recipients are children.
The bill that came to the Senate also includes an extension of deep cuts in the estate tax for the wealthiest, the senator said, which amounts to about $200 billion over 10 years.
“You could, if you just took that away, you could reverse all the SNAP cuts and more,” Kaine said. “So why not? You know, why not take away some of the tax cuts for the folks at the very top end and then not have to get into the SNAP at all?”
