By GARRY RAYNO, Distant Dome

The oncoming food crisis caused by the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) pausing benefits, spotlights what many fail to perceive: tens of thousands of the state’s residents are not just poor, they live in poverty.

That does not fit into the “New Hampshire advantage” scenario: everything is better in the Granite State, one of the wealthiest per-capita states in the richest country in the world.

While politicians and propagandists like to tout the state’s advantage over surrounding states, that does a disservice to those struggling to put food on the table for their children and themselves and whose wages increased less than in neighboring states over the last decade, according to a recent report by the NH Fiscal Policy Institute.

In some cities and towns, close to one in five residents receive food stamps to help combat food insecurity.

To qualify for SNAP  benefits a person’s income has to be below 200 percent of the federal poverty guideline, or $31,300 for an individual and $64,300 for a household of four.

The average teacher’s salary in Farmington is $42,000 a year for its 96 teachers, while some smaller communities with few teachers have lower averages such as Stoddard at $41,234 and Marlow $41,827.

The statewide average teacher’s salary is just under $70,000 for the 2024-2025 school year, according to information published by the Department of Education. That figure is very close to the four member family eligibility for food stamps.

Exeter Region Cooperative on the other hand had an average salary of $90,103 for 210 teachers.

Exeter also has 527 residents receiving SNAP benefits which amounts to 3.2 percent of its population.

Manchester has almost 14,000 of its residents receiving SNAP benefits or about 12 percent of its population and more affluent Concord has 3,467 of its residents on food stamps or 7.8 percent.

But if you go above the notches the outlook is even bleaker with Stratford with 18.8 percent of its population receiving SNAP benefits, while Stewartstown has 16.4 percent, Berlin 15.6 percent, Northumberland or Groveton 13 percent and Colebrook 12 percent.

On the western side of the state, Claremont has 15.6 percent of its residents receiving food stamps, Newport 12.2 percent and Charlestown 8.5 percent.

Cities like Laconia, Franklin and Rochester are all over 10 percent.

The towns around the largest lakes in the state have people on food stamps, although those areas are in the low single digits as are Seacoast communities. New Castle is the only city or town without any resident receiving SNAP benefits.

There are approximately 76,000 New Hampshire residents receiving SNAP benefits with 26,000 of that number children.

The political battle over the federal government shutdown has become hyper-partisan. The one thing to remember is Republicans control the federal government from Congress to the Presidency to the Supreme Court, and if they need a few Democratic Senators to go along to avoid a filibuster, there ought to be a way to accomplish that if you negotiate.

But President Trump is not going to negotiate with the Democrats and has told Republican Senators not to negotiate as well.

So 76,000 New Hampshire residents are wondering what awaits them in the days and weeks ahead while partisan battles rage in Washington, D.C.

State lawmakers have approved using $2 million to enhance the work of the New Hampshire Food Bank and its affiliated food pantry network to try to address the immediate food crisis, but $12 million in SNAP benefits come into the state every month, so the $2 million is a temporary fix at best.

Across the country about 42 million Americans are facing the same food crisis as Granite Staters.

The main reason for the federal shutdown is Democrats want to restore subsidies for the Affordable Care Act health insurance marketplace so premiums do not double or triple for those on the program.

The “One Big Beautiful Bill” that contained Trump’s policy and spending priorities for his second term did not include the subsidies or also referred to as tax credits.

Without the subsidies millions of Americans are expected to lose their insurance because they are unable to afford the higher premiums, the majority in Red states.

Without health insurance, people will use emergency rooms which will drive up uncompensated care costs for hospitals, which will downshift those costs through higher charges to insured patients and that will increase premiums for everyone.

The money for the subsidies was needed to cover some of the cost of continuing the Trump tax cuts approved during his first term.

The benefits of those cuts largely go to the wealthy and large corporations, and continues the trend of shifting the tax burden from the wealthy and businesses to the lower and middle class beginning with the Reagan tax cuts which reduced taxes for the wealthy and corporations by more than half but increased the taxes for all the others.

That trend has been front and center in New Hampshire for the last decade when Republican controlled legislatures began cutting the rates of business taxes.

The vast majority of the beneficiaries of those rate reductions have been large conglomerates that pay the bulk of the business profits tax.

There is an old adage that businesses don’t pay taxes, their consumers do. Or in other words, taxes are a cost of doing business so they are “a pass through” to the consumer.

Those tax cuts have cost the state between $1 billion and $1.2 billion over the last 10 years according to the NHFPI, and which could have helped fix the education funding system found unconstitutional and inadequate in recent court decisions, and inequitable for both students and taxpayers by the last education funding commission.

And today that lost money could help enhance food security for those facing the loss of SNAP benefits.

If the business tax cuts were not enough, the Republican oligarchs who have been pouring millions of dollars into state House and Senate races over the last decade also expected their pound of flesh and now the one New Hampshire levy that taxed wealth, the interest and dividends tax, was repealed last year.

The last full fiscal year it was in place, it produced $185 million dollars in revenues.

Now organizations affiliated with the oligarchs — Americans for Prosperity and the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy — are crediting the repeal for New Hampshire jumping three places to the third most tax friendly state in the country.

The rating comes from the Tax Foundation, which was established by the heads of General Motors, Standard Oil and  Johns-Manville, a company associated with asbestos products.

It is seen as a business friendly, conservative, center-right, think tank that helped craft the first Trump Tax Cut package.

Without taxes, people go hungry, and the less those with the most pay in taxes, the more vulnerable everyone else is to economic instability.

Too many people are one accident, or one medical emergency, or one job loss away from needing food stamps to feed themselves and their children.

The fewer taxes the wealthy and corporations pay, the less likely help will be available when it’s needed, like now.

Garry Rayno may be reached at garry.rayno@yahoo.com.

Distant Dome by veteran journalist Garry Rayno explores a broader perspective on the State House and state happenings for InDepthNH.org. Over his three-decade career, Rayno covered the NH State House for the New Hampshire Union Leader and Foster’s Daily Democrat. During his career, his coverage spanned the news spectrum, from local planning, school and select boards, to national issues such as electric industry deregulation and Presidential primaries. Rayno lives with his wife Carolyn in New London.