This November, affordability will be on the ballot in Alabama. Too many families here are running the numbers at the grocery store, the pharmacy and the childcare center, and realizing they can’t afford what they could a few years ago. Nowhere is that squeeze sharper than at the kitchen table.
A new analysis finds that nearly 82,000 Alabamians have lost access to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, SNAP, in the past year, more than 23,000 of them children, in what advocates are calling an oncoming childhood hunger crisis. The decline comes as families face expanded work and reporting requirements, while a looming funding shift could leave Alabama on the hook for more than $200 million a year. In Alabama, where 740,000 residents relied on SNAP in 2025, cutting SNAP for families and children is a crisis in the making, not fiscal discipline. That’s not where a government looking to cut spending should start.
As a person of faith, I cannot read those numbers apart from what I believe. Scripture is not subtle about the hungry child: when we feed the least among us, we are told, we feed Christ himself. But you need not share my faith to see the plain economics. A family that cannot keep food in the pantry cannot grow financially stronger, however hard it works, and an economy is only as healthy as a family’s ability to make ends meet and raise its children.
Here is what gives me hope. Senator Katie Britt has already shown she understands what it means to fight for families. Last year, she helped secure the first significant updates to key federal child care tax provisions in nearly 25 years, building on the bipartisan Child Care Availability and Affordability Act she introduced with Senator Tim Kaine. For eligible families and employers, those changes offer real relief from the crushing cost of childcare. They help parents remain in the workforce, help businesses retain employees and allow families to keep more of what they earn.
Now Alabama’s children need her to bring that same instinct to the crisis at the kitchen table. From her seat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, Senator Britt helps shape the funding that determines how SNAP is administered. I am hopeful that Senator Britt will work to protect SNAP and ensure eligible Alabama families are not pushed off the program because of paperwork backlogs, documentation demands or administrative delays.
When Alabamians talk about affordability, they are talking about the everyday cost of raising a family. Affordable childcare and food on a child’s plate are not rival causes. They are one promise to the same families. Senator Britt has kept that promise once already, and I’m confident that she will keep it again.
I pray she does, before this crisis hardens into something we cannot undo.
