For hunger assistance organizations in Connecticut, each day brings new uncertainty. At a time of widespread federal cuts to food assistance, food banks are forced to rely on limited volunteers, temporary warehouse staff, and contracted drivers to operate.
Jason Jakubowski, president and CEO of Connecticut Foodshare, the state’s primary food bank service, tells The Progressive that anti-hunger nonprofits simply cannot keep up as rapid economic changes make providing food assistance ever more demanding.
“I will tell you just from us as a food bank, our biggest issue is we just don’t know what's coming next,” he says. “It’s like this constant rollercoaster—things are just changing on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis.”
Following the passage of President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), nearly four million Americans have been pushed off the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) as of March 2026, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The bill increased eligibility requirements for SNAP recipients, including stricter work requirements for able-bodied adults without dependents, stating that all able-bodied adults must log at least eighty hours of work per month, among other stipulations. As a result, those unable to meet these conditions have lost their benefits, and are now increasingly facing food insecurity as grocery prices soar across the country.
Since July 2025, Connecticut has seen an almost 10 percent decrease in SNAP enrollment, amounting to more than 35,000 residents—comparable to the drop in numbers seen nationwide. Those being pushed off of SNAP are steering toward already-strained free and public resources, such as food banks.
“Every time that the federal government makes a change to SNAP, or makes cuts to SNAP, we see our lines increase,” Jakubowski says. “Our lines right now are about as big as they were during the peak of the pandemic, and that’s a very scary reality, I think, for a lot of people.”
Jakubowski and other anti-hunger organizations say food banks and food pantries are unable to provide for the growing need of those who can no longer rely on SNAP. While the work of food providers is crucial, Jakubowski believes it will never be enough to solve hunger.
“Sometimes it’s like we’re running on a hamster wheel—we’re trying to catch up,” he says. “But every time we do, the federal government makes changes that then make it harder and harder for people to be able to acquire food.”
It’s for this reason that advocates and state representatives have urged Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont to establish a state-funded food assistance program to provide relief for those no longer eligible for SNAP.
Since last fall, the state has taken some emergency measures to combat food insecurity. Jakubowski says that rather than enforcing stricter SNAP restrictions or actively resisting food benefit programs like other states have done, Lamont jumped to respond to the impacts of the OBBBA. The administration allocated more than $24 million in aid for state food banks and pantries, of which Connecticut Foodshare is a main recipient, that face food collection shortages in light of cuts to federal programs.
Yet, Gian-Carl Casa, president and CEO of CT Nonprofit Alliance, tells The Progressive that Connecticut is nevertheless in a financially strategic position to take a more aggressive approach toward combatting food insecurity.
“I understand the concern about taking on long-term obligations,” Casa says. “There will always be a place for organizations like Connecticut Foodshare to fill in gaps to meet emergency needs as time has gone on. But what we need is a long-term flexible ability to identify cuts in federal programs and then propose a state response to them.”
This pressure on the state to be investing in its own long-term food assistance program follows the allocation of approximately $500 million into a Federal Cuts Response Fund, passed by Connecticut lawmakers last November, that would mitigate the impacts of federal cuts to social services in areas like housing, health care, and food assistance.
“What we have said from the beginning is that Connecticut has been running billion-dollar and multibillion-dollar surpluses for the last several years,” Casa says. “We [have] a unique ability to fill in the gaps when the federal government abdicates its responsibility in a given social health or human services area.”
In March, state senators Matt Lesser and Jillian Gilchrest presented their proposal for a food assistance program that would bridge the gaps imposed by the OBBBA, including a Medicaid waiver system that would qualify healthy food under Medicare protection as a medically-necessary intervention that can be paid for by state funds. The proposal suggests drawing $40 million from the Federal Cuts Response Fund to finance a one-year transitional food assistance program, titled the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Transitional Benefit Program (SB 497). The funds would be invested in the state’s Department of Social Services, which would then operate a food assistance program exclusively for those at risk of losing benefits under the OBBBA, including veterans.
These requests have not been met with any real intention from Lamont, a fiscal moderate, who instead has invested in short-term solutions. In June, he announced that the state would tap $8.5 million from the Federal Cuts Response Fund to distribute one-time $300 grocery assistance cards for residents no longer on SNAP.
While the state claims to be doing everything it can on the issue of food insecurity, Andrea Barton Reeves, the Department of Social Services commissioner, admits that the department has “serious concerns regarding the time and complexity that will be required to implement a new Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Transitional Benefit Program and eligibility system.” Because of this, hunger advocates are unable to anticipate whether federal cuts will worsen, or even be reinstated, leaving shaky ground for potential state-led initiatives.
“When people express a concern about not being able to make a commitment to a program, say, for hunger, because of the fear about the need for money in the future, it’s making an assumption about what the future government is going to decide,” Casa says. He adds that the state has a responsibility as a support system to promise a long-term solution where it can “continue to pay down long-term debt, but also to provide for people in need.” This is especially true for Connecticut, having just achieved a budget surplus for the eighth consecutive year, totalling more than $400 million for 2025-26. Connecticut remains one of few states with a strong financial safety net. Critics have argued for years that surpluses produced from its fiscal guardrails established in 2017 should go to social services such as education and municipal aid.
But the food benefit battle is now on hold. In May, Lamont passed a fiscal year 2027 budget adjustment bill omitting the necessary funds for the proposed food assistance programs, delaying the only suggested long-term solution for tackling hunger. While SB 497 was making its way through committee, Lamont never publicly broached the proposal. Though both Jakubowski and Casa agree that approaches to food insecurity have been widely bipartisan, getting this food benefit program underway relies on support from Lamont as only the governor can approve expenditures from the fund.
Despite this, Lesser and Gilchrest’s SB 497 indicates that Connecticut still has the potential to establish something other states have yet to try. Successfully implementing a food assistance plan would give lawmakers across the nation a tangible approach to follow.
“We need to create a roadmap, because all of the work that [is being done] is so integral . . . and we really need to have the leadership of this state behind it,” said Christian Duborg, a food and nutrition policy analyst for Connecticut’s Commission on Women, Children, Seniors Equity & Opportunity, during a Food Insecurity Awareness Day panel.
At the center of this food insecurity discussion is the question of affordability, which was the focus of Lamont’s 2022 campaign for governor and has now become a buzzword used to capture the anxieties around cost of living. Federal cuts are only exacerbating the effects of inflation brought into existence by the Trump Administration, with grocery prices at record-level highs and oil and gas costs surging. Food providers feel stuck in the middle as “the federal government is burning the candle at both ends,” according to Jakubowski.
Connecticut anti-hunger organizations have expressed that their missions have always extended beyond food insecurity, to ensure that individuals receive support in all areas of their life, including housing, health care, insurance, utilities, and financial guidance.
“Housing policy is food policy; union and labor policy is food policy; economic policy is food policy; tax policy is food policy,” Nancy Coughlin, CEO of the nonprofit Person to Person, said during the same Food Insecurity Awareness Day panel.
In Connecticut, there remains a local debate on whether emergency initiatives are sufficient in lieu of long-term alternatives, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Transitional Benefit Program, that can fill in when federal aid is cut. With the midterms approaching, CT Nonprofit Alliance and Connecticut Foodshare have also directed their attention towards lobbying on the federal level to get SNAP benefits reinstated, and to passing state legislation to establish universal school meals and a new child tax credit.
Since the passing of OBBBA, federal lawmakers from Connecticut have helped to organize multi-state coalitions in an effort to push anti-hunger legislation through Congress and impose pressure on the Trump Administration to reinstate SNAP funding. Last November, U.S. Representative Jahana Hayes, Democrat of Connecticut, and U.S. Representative Angie Craig, Democrat of Minnesota, introduced legislation to repeal all cuts to SNAP as rolled out in OBBBA. In March, a coalition of twenty-one attorneys general, including from Connecticut, sued the Trump Administration over new requirements that would enable the U.S. Department of Agriculture to withhold billions in federal funding unless states comply with Trump’s policies restricting immigration and curtailing the civil rights of transgender people. The coalition says the requirements compromise the food security of low-income families and farmers.
Jakubowski reflected on how these permanent solutions are being sought out on the national stage: “We are constantly up in Hartford and down in Washington, talking to our federal and our state representatives, lobbying on behalf of the people that we serve.”
After SB 497 died in the Senate chamber at the end of this year’s legislative session, “wanting state representatives to collaborate with other states to reverse the cuts at the federal level has been a main priority,” for Jakubowski.
But, he says, “they simply should not be cutting SNAP. It’s that simple.”