APRIL 19, 2023:
House Agriculture Committee Ranking Member David Scott (D-GA) released a statement responding to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s debt limit framework. If that framework gets passed as proposed, it will include what Scott calls additional “punitive” work requirements for SNAP participation.
“Let me be perfectly clear,” Scott says. “Holding food assistance hostage for those who depend on it, including 15.3 million children, 5.8 million seniors, and 1.2 million veterans, in exchange for increasing the debt limit is a non-starter.” He also points out that the “ransom note” McCarthy unveiled in front of a crowd of Wall Street bankers is dead on arrival.
“Republican attempts to punish low-income families to pay for tax cuts they pushed through under President Trump will not result in self-sufficiency,” Scott says. “It will only drastically increase hunger for our American people.”
He says the additional work requirements on top of already-existing work rules won’t spur economic growth.
MARCH 29, 2023:
The topic of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program funding got tense during a US House Ag farm bill hearing this week, which some political observers say it’s a demonstration of the deep partisan chasm facing the writers of the next federal farm bill.
Ranking Democrat David Scott.
“Agri-Pulse recently reported an estimate that Dusty Johnson’s bill would kick 1.5 million seniors and families with school age children, off of SNAP.”
Combined with losses in other studies, putting the total, not including veterans, at over ten million. But, South Dakota Republican Congressman Dusty Johnson pushed back.
“Yes, American families need our help, and I would tell you sir, that their plight is not well-served by the kind of fearmongering that we have heard. Were these work requirements extreme when they were put into place by Democrats and Republicans working together in 1996? Were those work requirements extreme when a bipartisan group of Democrats and Republicans stood together to renew them in farm bill after farm bill? Were they extreme when then-Senator Joe Biden said from the floor of the Senate, the culture of welfare must be replaced with the culture of work?”
US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack was almost a bystander in the partisan exchanges, but when prompted by pro-SNAP Democrat Jim McGovern, Vilsack argued research showed those most impacted by work requirements would benefit little.
“Adults without dependents, well, who are these people? Well, they’re mostly male and they’re mostly homeless. The second point of this study was, it didn’t impact positively, when you try to constrain the work requirements. It didn’t impact the earnings or the employment opportunities for those individuals. So, in other words, you can talk about constraining that, but it’s not going to do what you think it’s going to do.”
Vilsack also warns broader GOP cuts could mean up to 84,000 fewer farmers getting conservation payments.
Listen to Johnson’s remarks here or click the video below.
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