U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson: Life will get significantly harder for lower income Mississippians due to federal budget cuts

In the nation's poorest state, cuts to Medicaid, SNAP and other programs will exacerbate existing problems of low wages, inflation, and food and healthcare deserts

Mississippi, long known as the poorest state in the United States, will soon face even greater shortfalls as a result of drastic cuts included in the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill,” in proposed congressional and Trump administration budgets, and in related executive orders.

“There isn’t a hospital in a bunch of the counties I represent, and many could close in the near future,” U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) told The Mississippi Independent in assessing the impact of the cuts on healthcare in his district. “In one county, there isn’t even a doctor. That’s only going to get worse.”

Strapped rural hospitals could be forced to close as a result of massive cuts to Medicaid, Thompson said.

In addition, Thompson said, 100 percent of children in some parts of his district get daytime meals free as a result of federal safety net programs — a nutritional allotment that they will now likely lose.

Generations of disinvestment, a history of racial conflict and chronic underfunding of public schools have entrenched economic hardship from the farm communities of the Delta to languishing mill towns in the hills. The state’s median household income, $54,204 in 2023, ranked last in the nation, and nearly one in five residents lives below the federal poverty line. More than a quarter of the state’s children live in poverty.

Now comes a new wave of economic headwinds that threatens to push the state even further behind: Persistent and likely worsening inflation, rising tariffs on imported goods, and sweeping federal cuts to Medicaid, SNAP and other safety-net programs.

Around 370,000 Mississippians rely on food assistance and more than 667,000 depend on Medicaid, both of which are slated for significant reductions under the Trump administration’s 2026 fiscal budget and related executive actions.

Sonya Williams-Barnes, a former Mississippi state lawmaker and the state’s Southern Poverty Law Center policy director, told The Mississippi Independent the cuts will be keenly felt once they take effect.

“Programs like Medicaid and SNAP and even housing assistance, they aren’t luxuries,” Williams-Barnes said. “They are lifelines for a lot of people. If and when these programs are cut, we’ll see it immediately. Parents will skip meals so their kids can eat. Rural hospitals are already closing, and some people are literally dying on the way to the hospital. Even a $100 rent increase can become impossible for families. This isn’t about budget lines, this is about survival.”

In April, U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith assured Mississippians that Medicaid would remain untouched. “Nothing is going to happen to Medicaid. Why is everyone’s head exploding?” she asked. Yet under the bill that Hyde-Smith’s voted for two months later, the program serving 78.3 million Americans is slated to lose $1.1 trillion in funding during the next decade.

More than half of Mississippi’s Medicaid recipients are children and nearly 60 percent live in rural areas, according to a May 2025 report by KFF, a San Francisco-based health policy research organization.

In addition to Medicaid, reductions are included for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, rental assistance, Affordable Care Act subsidies, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

While the Big Beautiful Bill Act was promoted as a measure to rein in the national debt, it pairs draconian reductions with sweeping tax cuts for the wealthy, a combination that the Congressional Budget Office estimates will actually add $3.4 trillion to the federal deficit during the next decade.

Food assistance on the chopping block

SNAP benefits reach about one in eight Mississippians, with more than 60 percent going to families with children. Reductions could mean skipped meals, poorer nutrition and higher rates of childhood malnutrition, with long-term effects on educational attainment and workforce readiness, according to the Children’s Defense Fund’s policy director, Lauren Reliford.

“Policymakers already have the data,” Reliford said. “They know that losing access to these services means exposing children to an increased risk of negative impacts to their brain. They have also heard the stories from their constituents, children, parents and advocates that hunger and chronic illness create constant stressors that deprive them of their dignity, hope and joy. These safety net programs are often the only means they have to meet their most basic needs. They help put food on the table, ensure that ear infections and bad falls are healed properly, and keep children healthy and focused on doing what matters most — thriving so they can grow into the adults they are meant to be.”

Economically, the SNAP program is a local multiplier: Every federal dollar spent on it generates up to $1.80 in economic activity, often propping up small-town grocery stores. Removing that flow of money could hurt local businesses and overwhelm already stretched food banks, according to an NPR report.

Does cutting welfare save money?

The political debate around welfare comes down to two competing philosophies. Fiscal conservatives contend that cutting back safety nets will help trim the government’s $37 trillion debt and force people into self-sufficiency, an argument used to justify controversial welfare reforms of the 1990s, which conservative lawmakers claimed were meant to reinforce core American values of individual responsibility, hard work, independence and free enterprise.

The other side of the argument is that welfare and other safety nets help pull people out of poverty, reducing the depth of economic hardship and promoting public health. They also argue that claims of debt reduction are disingenuous because the budget bill’s tax cuts for the wealthy and other massive expenditures will significantly increase the deficit.

The core element of the 1996 reforms, known as the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, was work requirements, similar to what is contained in the 2026 budget. Whether those 30-year-old reforms worked depends on which studies you read. If the measure of success is how many people the reforms got off welfare, they were a success. From a welfare participation high of 14.2 million in 1993, the number dropped to 5.3 million in March 2002, according to the Center for the Study of Federalism. With the help of a strong economy in the 1990s, poverty was reduced to 11.3 percent by 2000.

One 2010 study noted that while 50 percent to 60 percent of former welfare recipients found jobs, the average wage was between $5.50 and $7 per hour. Low wages meant that working full-time in low-paying jobs temporarily relieved poverty, but did not provide a permanent solution to generational poverty, the study noted. By 2010, the poverty rate had climbed back to 15.1 percent, the same as it was in 1993, which in real numbers is an additional seven million Americans in poverty.

“That whole work rhetoric is absolute nonsense,” Rep. Thompson said. “Mississippi has been here before. If there are no jobs in a community, you can’t just wish them there. For every dollar Mississippi sends to Washington, we get about $2.80 back. We are a dependent state and if that’s going to change, people need real opportunities to escape poverty, not low-paying jobs.”

The SPLC’s Williams-Barnes echoed the congressman’s comments. “Right now, programs in Mississippi are structured to keep you poor,” she said. “You can only make so much money before you’re cut off. You never get an opportunity to really get ahead. We need to layer education, workforce development and direct cash assistance to help people get back on their feet, and without barriers.”

Conservative analysts continue to argue that work requirements for Medicaid and SNAP are the best way to get people off welfare and bolster the economy. “Medicaid costs have exploded, and taxpayers are now on the hook for more than $900 billion per year,” noted a June 2025 research paper by the Foundation for Government Accountability, a Florida-based conservative public policy think tank. “The primary driver of the growth in spending has been enrollment, as able-bodied adults have swelled the program. With no work requirements in place, the program encourages dependency and siphons resources away from the truly needy.”

SNAP research conducted by the Florida think tank in May 2025 reached a similar conclusion, noting that “most able-bodied adults on the program are exempt from work requirements and bureaucratic loopholes have allowed states to skirt them even further, waiving them for as many able-adults as possible.”

Yet supporters point out that the programs are lifelines, particularly in poor states like Mississippi, and that jobs are often unavailable, and that health insurance will be beyond their reach under the 2026 budget. According to state data, about one in four Mississippi residents are on Medicaid, and overall, the state’s healthcare system is ranked last in the nation. Even better situated Mississippians are losing access to healthcare subsidies and to nearby healthcare facilities that are dependent on Medicare for their financial survival.

Nearly half of the state’s rural hospitals are at risk of closure, and Medicaid cuts could trigger hundreds of thousands to lose health insurance coverage and push more facilities into insolvency. According to the American Hospital Association, every $1 million reduction in Medicaid spending translates to roughly 15 lost healthcare jobs -- positions that will not be easily replaced in rural towns already facing physician shortages.

What else is at risk?

The budget cuts would reach far beyond headline programs, slicing into less-visible federal supports that quietly sustain Mississippi’s fragile economy. While aid is being reduced, many residents will also face higher taxes and the inroads of inflation, which is expected to worsen due to tariffs. Inflation, which peaked nationally at 9.1 percent in 2022, continues to erode wages. Tariffs on imported goods are compounding the pressure, raising the cost of everyday staples. The bill’s tax provisions were pitched as a path to long-term growth and deficit reduction, but according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, households earning under $40,000 will see higher federal tax bills over the next decade.

Mississippi is sometimes labeled one of the nation’s most affordable states, but low wages dilute any cost-of-living advantage, and in rural food deserts, where grocery stores may be many miles away and more expensive, each paycheck is stretched even more.

That reality is stark in places like Jefferson County, which is often named the most food-insecure county in the U.S. County residents there face both some of the lowest incomes and steep barriers to affordable, healthy food. Across Mississippi, 63 of 82 counties are classified as food deserts, according to a study in the Engaged Scholarship for Resilient Communities journal.

“Tariffs under any circumstances for populations that are already vulnerable, it just takes them underwater,” Thompson noted. “For that population, a tariff is, for lack of a better term, an attack — an increased cost for which they don’t have the disposable income other families have. Between taxes and increased costs because of tariffs, people are being hit twice, and it will make life in Mississippi much harder.”

Though nonprofits work to fill the gaps, many have relied on government support that is now drying up. Since Trump began his second term, billions of dollars in support funds have been cut. “Nonprofits will begin to cry out to the state, because they work directly with impacted persons,” Williams-Barnes said. “Even food banks, after-school programs and daycare programs are all being cut. Women are unable to go to work because daycare assistance has been eliminated. Without that help, they simply can’t make it.”

Williams-Barnes warned that cuts to nonprofit grants will add to the hardship. “Without them, our state’s most vulnerable residents are just going to face deeper poverty and fewer opportunities to escape it.”

Adding another economic burden is the proposed dismantling of the federal Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which reaches millions of U.S. households annually, helps more than 45,000 Mississippians with bill payments during triple-digit summer heat and occasional winter freezes. Trump has proposed to cut the entire program.

All state residents face potential challenges as a result of cuts to climate resilience funding, though natural disasters are particularly burdensome for the poor. Mississippi, with its frequent floods, hurricanes and tornadoes, is a national leader in FEMA disaster declarations per capita. Federal dollars also pay for levee repairs, coastal restoration and water projects essential to places like the Delta, the Gulf Coast and Jackson, where water systems have repeatedly failed. Reductions could accelerate infrastructure collapse and deepen public health crises.

While these cuts strike broadly, their greatest impacts will be on children, the population with the least ability to absorb the shock. For many Mississippi families, programs such as Medicaid and SNAP are not just stopgaps — they are the foundation that enables children to stay healthy, fed and in school.

“Decades of research has shown that healthy children become healthy adults who then create healthy communities -- economies that persist for generations after,” Reliford said. “We must stop asking, ‘Can these cuts build a stronger economy?’ and start asking, ‘Why are you making these cuts in the face of overwhelming evidence that they hurt us all?’”

---

Image: Inspirational messages on the wall of a building in Clarksdale, Mississippi (Alan Huffman)