Threats to SNAP Program
Floor Speech
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Ms. JAYAPAL. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his continued leadership on these Special Order hours, and also for his leadership in the Progressive Caucus, and on the Judiciary Committee.
I am here to talk about SNAP because I am sort of dumbfounded that we are where we are. I serve as the vice ranking member on the Budget Committee, and I saw firsthand how a Republican tax scam, the tax cut, was pushed through in favor of the top 1 percent and the largest corporations, creating a transfer of wealth from the middle class and working people to the wealthiest; creating what will be a $1 trillion deficit according to the Congressional Budget Office next year; and then coming back and saying somehow we don't have enough money to feed our kids.
That, to me, is really not just ludicrous, but it is outrageous, and I am deeply saddened by it because the program that we are talking about is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program--that is what SNAP stands for--and it feeds 42 million American families across the country. This is a target of our colleagues on the Republican side, using the farm bill to take this crucial program away from Americans who need it the most. The bill would strip critical food assistance from unemployed and employed workers by shortening the time limits to be eligible for SNAP for millions of people.
My home State of Washington in 2016 received $1.1 billion in SNAP funding, and there and across the country, as I said, 42 million families benefit from this critical program. These are workers and families who face low wages, unreliable schedules, underemployment, and unstable incomes. They all rely on SNAP to buy groceries and put food on the table.
So we are talking about stripping food assistance from families and individuals with children under 6 if they can't consistently work 20 hours a week. And it would strip food assistance for a whole year if that requirement isn't met.
Cutting SNAP is not magically going to reduce the deficit, a deficit that was dramatically increased by our Republican colleagues when they passed the tax scam, and so this is just an attempt to take resources from the most vulnerable and to leave these 40 million families stranded on the side of the road.
The American Dream isn't just about individuals lifting themselves up by their own bootstraps. It is the idea that we are all better off when we are all better off; that we need to lift up every person, and make sure every person has bootstraps to be lifted up by.
Today, my office received a call from Dave in my district who works at our University District Food Bank, and he called just imploring Congress not to allow this to happen. Our community food banks in red and blue districts across the country will not be able to keep up with the need if we gut SNAP. Yesterday, I met with Aaron from Food Lifeline, who knows from experience that for every one meal provided by a food bank in our community, SNAP provides 12.
Yesterday, I spoke at a rally and we had a constituent of mine--a woman named Tina--who came out from Washington State. She is a single mom. She has got a 9-year-old kid, and she was just begging and pleading for us to please keep this program.
The reality is that SNAP is one of the most cost-effective public assistance programs. It quickly and directly gets food assistance to those who need it. So why would we wage a war on that program or a war on poor people by cutting these essential benefits?
Mr. Speaker, I know that Mr. Raskin shares my deep commitment to make sure that we provide these essential benefits for families across the country, and I believe that there are colleagues on the other side who will share this commitment once they understand what this is doing to poor folks in their districts who just need a hand up; kids who need food on the table--fruits, vegetables, healthy foods--so that they can grow and nourish their bodies and their souls, and help contribute to our economy. And that is what SNAP does.
So I urge all of my colleagues on the Republican side to join us Democrats in fighting for our kids and fighting for nutrition, and fighting for this critical program.
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