The long lines and anxious faces seen at Orange County food pantries this month, as federal food assistance went dark during the federal shutdown and demand for free food surged, could be the new normal in the near, non-shutdown future.
Likewise, rules changes coming to federal health programs over the next three years will push many locals out of CalOptima, meaning tens of thousands of people might be pushed away from traditional health care and into expensive, emergency-room-based care – if they seek any care at all.
And as basics like food and health care become harder to get for the county’s lowest earners, many of those working families, fixed-income seniors and disabled adults who use those programs will be pushed to make choices that could touch the broader economy. Rent payments will be missed. Utility bills won’t be paid. Grocery stores will do less business.
Two leaders of Orange County social agencies and a school food administrator offered those and other forecasts to dozens of nonprofit leaders and city officials Wednesday, Nov. 12, during a special meeting of the Orange County Hunger Alliance held to talk about how the county will be affected by the new federal spending law HR1, also known as the One Big Beautiful Bill.
“It’s a significant piece of legislation,” said An Tran, director of the county’s Social Services Agency, which implements CalFresh, the state version of the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, or SNAP.
For many, the experts suggested the new federal rules could turn lives that currently are financially difficult into something closer to impossible.
For example, Le noted that the income requirements for CalFresh and CalOptima recipients are low enough (a working family of four must earn $32,000 a year or less to get on CalFresh, or $44,000 or less to get on CalOptima), that there isn’t financial fat to trim. And qualifying to stay on those programs and, eventually, to finance $35 co-pays for health services that HR1 will require starting in 2027, could be life-altering.
“Imagine being able to make ends meet in Orange County with gross adjusted income of $44,000,” Le said.
“You can see what a huge impact this is going to have on the population.”
Different elements of HR1 will kick in at different times over the next three years. But Le and Michael Hunn, chief executive of CalOptima Health, and Kristin Hilleman, director of food and nutrition services at Capistrano Unified School District, noted that all of the changes will curtail or cut off locals’ access to federal assistance.
And even in high-income Orange County, the community that will be affected by HR1 isn’t small. More than 310,000 people, locally, currently get CalFresh benefits, and Hunn said CalOptima currently has about 881,000 members.
All of those people, in both programs, will see key changes starting early next year.
New asset limits will force some people to lose federal help with food or health care. Application requirements will double, from once to twice a year, something that could prove difficult for homeless people and mentally ill people who use those services.
New work rules will kick in that will force people ages 18 to 64 without kids at home to present paperwork proving that they’re working or volunteering at least 20 hours a week. (And the definition of “kid” in that scenario will fall from 18 to 14 years old, meaning some parents of older teenagers will have to work or volunteer outside of their home to qualify for CalFresh.)
Others who could be affected include adults who care for aging parents, young adults leaving foster care, homeless people and some veterans.
Without offering numbers, both Hunn and Le believe many locals will lose contact with federal assistance.
“Over time, it is anticipated that enrollment will change,” Hunn said of CalOptima Health.
“We anticipate this will be a barrier that will cause many individuals to lose eligibility,” Le said of CalFresh.
Actually, that’s exactly what HR 1 is designed to do.
The Congressional Budget Office – a nonpartisan agency that tracks the fiscal and economic impacts of federal laws – projects that HR1 will cut spending on national food and health programs by more than $1 trillion over the next decade. The cuts are in the bill to finance lower taxes many middle-class families and, primarily, upper-income households, according to the CBO, but they aren’t enough to pay for lower taxes. The CBO projects that over the next decade, HR1 will add about $3.4 trillion to the federal budget deficit.
But that deficit is based on what will happen if other forecasts from the CBO come true.
The office projects that over the next decade, the new work rules under HR1 could push 11.8 million people off Medicare and 3 million off of SNAP.
The CBO doesn’t offer county-level projections, but the sizes of the CalFresh and CalOptima programs suggest tens of thousands of people in Orange County will lose federal aid over time.
Indirectly, HR1 also could affect one of the most successful safety net operations in the state – the Universal Meals Program – which guarantees breakfast and lunch to any public school student in the state who asks.
Though the state program uses some federal money, the state has written Universal Meals into law. That means it cannot go unfunded. Hilleman, of Capistrano Unified, the county’s biggest school district, suggested the state law and HR1 could clash in ways that might force school districts to use education money to pay for food.
“By law, cafeterias have to run in the black,” Hilleman said. “So, when cuts start to come to our programs, we have the potential to run into the need to pull money out of the general (education) fund, which we don’t want to do.
“We’re trying very hard to push forward, to ensure there are no gaps in eligibility,” she added.
A leader of the Hunger Alliance, a group of nonprofits, food banks, and community partners that work to eliminate food insecurity in Orange County, suggested America’s already-thin social safety net is entering a new, even harsher, era.
The Trump administration’s decision to withhold SNAP funding (and file a lawsuit to keep money away from states that might try to provide food during the shutdown), coming federal housing changes that could push 170,000 formerly homeless people back into the streets next year (including an estimated 1,400 in Orange County), and the new rules of HR1 could mean a new level of desperation for the “have-nots” of America’s economy.
“I think we have to prepare for the worst,” said Mike Learakos, chief executive of Abound Food Care.
“The bottom line is the fundamentals are getting worse,” he added. “The cost of living is too high, and people can’t afford their costs. And since food insecurity is the No. 1 symptom of that bigger issue, which is poverty, we’re in trouble, food-wise.”
Though food insecurity – not starvation – has been the key food problem in the United States since at least the Depression, Learakos, among others, suggested that could change.
“Could we see actual hunger again in America? We might.”