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supplemental nutrition assistance program
GOP Farm Bill Decried as Pro-Corporate, Anti-Family 'Waste of Everyone's Time'
The head of MomsRising said that "it would be mean-spirited and shameful for Congress to cut the SNAP benefits moms and families rely on; and it also would be damaging to our economy."
May 17, 2024
Echoing early May criticism of U.S. House Republicans' blueprint for the next Farm Bill, anti-hunger and green groups on Friday fiercely condemned the GOP's discussion draft text of the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2024.
Released by U.S. House Committee on Agriculture Chair Glenn "GT" Thompson (R-Pa.), the draft is competing with a Democratic proposal—Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee Chair Debbie Stabenow's (D-Mich.) Rural Prosperity and Food Security Act.
While Thomspon claimed that his bill "is the product of extensive feedback from stakeholders and all members of the House, and is responsive to the needs of farm country through the incorporation of hundreds of bipartisan policies," Rep. David Scott (D-Ga.), the panel's ranking member, said that the draft "confirms my worst fears."
"House Republicans plan to pay for the farm bill by taking food out of the mouths of America's hungry children, restricting farmers from receiving the climate-smart conservation funding they so desperately need, and barring the USDA from providing financial assistance to farmers in times of crisis," he warned, referring to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The economic impact of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) cuts alone "would be staggering," Scott emphasized. "A $27 billion reduction in food purchasing power would not only increase hunger, but it would also reduce demand for jobs in the agriculture, transportation, manufacturing, and grocery sectors."
Leaders at advocacy groups on Friday similarly slammed the Republican bill. Ty Jones Cox, vice president for food assistance at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities,
reiterated her previous condemnation of GOP attempts to cut the benefits of hungry families, saying that "this is unacceptable; Congress should reject it."
"Every SNAP participant would receive less to buy groceries in future years than they would under current law, putting a healthy diet out of reach for millions of people. This would be the largest cut to SNAP since 1996 if enacted and these cuts would grow even deeper over time," Jones Cox explained, debunking Thompson's description of the changes.
"And the cut to future SNAP benefits isn't the only harmful policy in this bill. For example, it would allow states to outsource SNAP administration to private contractors. But prior privatization efforts delayed benefits for people in need, worsened errors, and increased costs," she continued. "Congress should reject Chair Thompson's harmful proposal and instead work to pass a farm bill that truly protects and strengthens SNAP."
Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, executive director and CEO of MomsRising, argued that "at this time when skyrocketing food prices have increased hunger and food insecurity, forcing tens of millions of U.S. families to make impossible choices between food and other essentials, it would be mean-spirited and shameful for Congress to cut the SNAP benefits moms and families rely on; and it also would be damaging to our economy."
Describing the benefits, formerly called food stamps, as "the nation's first line of defense against hunger," Rowe-Finkbeiner highlighted that "more than 42 million people count on SNAP benefits each month and nearly four in five of them are children, seniors, people with disabilities, or veterans."
"In contrast, the bipartisan Senate Farm Bill—the Rural Prosperity and Food Security Act—aids farmers and treats hunger in America as the emergency it is," she noted. "It is a bold bill that would protect SNAP benefits and increase access to this essential program for groups that have long been excluded, reducing barriers to participation for older adults, military families, some college students, and others. It is an easy choice. Without question, the Senate Farm Bill is the version that should become law."
The GOP's efforts to restrict food assistance aren't limited to the United States, as Gina Cummings, Oxfam vice president for advocacy, alliances, and policy, pointed out Friday, declaring that "at a time when over 281 million people are suffering from acute hunger, any proposal to undercut crucial international food assistance programs is damaging."
As Cummings detailed:
The resilience-building programs housed in Food for Peace are vital to preparing frontline communities for future shocks that could impact their food security—whether it be from climate change, conflict, or economic downturns.
Oxfam has raised concerns about the American Farmers Feed the World Act, which is where many of the cuts to Food for Peace originate from—since its introduction last summer. The bill has proposed gutting funding for resilience-building activities that ensure communities can build up their local markets, withstand the next drought, flood, or conflict, and not go hungry. The House Farm Bill as it is currently written includes some of the most concerning provisions of the bill and would render these vital interventions inoperable, resulting in as many as 3 million fewer people being reached by these programs based on their current scale.
The House must reject the provisions of the American Farmers Feed the World Act included in the House Farm Bill draft as the bill goes for markup. The inclusion of such provisions is a threat to global food security and a shift towards a less-efficient model of international aid by the United States.
The AFL-CIO said on social media that it "strongly opposes" the Republican proposal, adding: "Families rely on Food for Peace—and also SNAP, SNAP's Thrifty Food Plan, and other federal nutrition and food security programs. We cannot support making harmful policy changes or funding cuts to any of them."
In addition to calling out the GOP for trying to leave more people hungry, advocates denounced Republican efforts to gut climate-friendly requirements from the Inflation Reduction Act and enact the Ending Agricultural Trade Suppression (EATS) Act.
"The Farm Bill is a seminal opportunity to reform our food and agriculture sector away from factory farms and corporate greed," said Food & Water Watch managing director of policy and litigation Mitch Jones. "Instead, House Republicans want to double down."
"Some of leadership's more dangerous proposals would take us backwards on animal welfare, and climate-smart agriculture—both the EATS Act and support for factory farm biogas must be dead on arrival," he asserted. "It's time Congress put the culture wars aside and got back to work on a Farm Bill that puts consumers, farmers, and the environment above politicking and Big Ag handouts."
Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said that "weakening safeguards that protect people from pesticides, slashing protections for endangered species, and recklessly expanding industrial logging should have no place in the Farm Bill."
"It's unfortunate that chairman Thompson has put forward such a destructive farm bill to appease the most fringe members of Congress," Hartl added. "This bill can't pass the House and it's a waste of everyone's time."
In a joint statement released Friday after a meeting with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Democrats on Thompson's panel, Scott and Statenow stressed that members of their party are "committed to passing a strong, bipartisan Farm Bill that strengthens the farm and family safety nets and invests in our rural communities."
"America's farmers, families, workers, and rural communities deserve the certainty of a five-year Farm Bill, and everyone knows it must be bipartisan to pass," the pair said, blasting divisive GOP proposals. "Democrats remain ready and willing to work with Republicans on a truly bipartisan Farm Bill to keep farmers farming, families fed, and rural communities strong."
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GOP Farm Bill Blueprint 'Puts Big Ag's Profits Over Everyone Else'
"America's farmers and consumers need forward-looking policies that build a sustainable, resilient, and fair food system," said one campaigner.
May 01, 2024
As Democratic and Republican leaders on Wednesday unveiled competing visions for the next Farm Bill, green groups sounded the alarm about the GOP proposal that "slashes nutrition programs and climate-focused conservation funding in order to boost commodity crop production."
U.S. House Committee on Agriculture Chair Glenn "GT" Thompson (R-Pa.) put out a "title-by-title overview" of priorities and announced plans for a legislative markup on May 23 while Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee Chair Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) released the Rural Prosperity and Food Security Act, which includes over 100 bipartisan bills.
"The contrast between the House and Senate farm bill proposals could not be clearer," asserted Environmental Working Group senior vice president for government affairs Scott Faber. "The Senate framework would ensure that farmers are rewarded when they take steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and the House framework would not."
"At a time when farmer demand for climate-smart funding is growing, Congress should ensure that support for farmers offering to reduce nitrous oxide emissions from fertilizer, and methane emissions from animals and their waste, is the Department of Agriculture's top priority," Faber said. "Unless farmers are provided the tools to reduce nitrous oxide and methane emissions from agriculture, farming will soon be the nation's largest source of greenhouse gas emissions."
Friends of the Earth senior program manager Chloe Waterman declared that "House Republicans have proposed a dead-on-arrival Farm Bill framework that puts Big Ag's profits over everyone else: communities, family farmers, consumers, states and local rule, farmed animals, and the planet."
"Senate Democrats are off to a much better start than the House, but they have also fallen short by failing to shift subsidies and other support away from factory farming and pesticide-intensive commodities toward diversified, regenerative, and climate-friendly farming systems," she added. "We are particularly concerned that millions of dollars intended for climate mitigation will continue to be funneled to factory farms, including to support greenwashed factory farm gas."
Both Waterman's organization and Food and Water Watch spotlighted the Ending Agricultural Trade Suppression (EATS) Act, which aims to prevent state and local policies designed to protect animal welfare, farm workers, and food safety—like California's Proposition 12, which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld last year. The Republican bill is opposed by more than 200 members of Congress and over 150 advocacy groups.
"Despicable ploys to undermine critical consumer and animal welfare protections must be dead on arrival," Food & Water Watch senior food policy analyst Rebecca Wolf said in a Wednesday statement blasting the House GOP's priorities.
"America's farmers and consumers need forward-looking policies that build a sustainable, resilient, and fair food system," she stressed. "Instead, House leadership seems poised to take us backwards, trading state-level gains for a few more bucks in the pockets of corporate donors. Congress must move beyond partisan bickering, and get to work on a Farm Bill that cuts handouts to Big Ag and factory farms."
As green groups slammed the GOP's agricultural proposals for the Farm Bill, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) called out the Republican scheme to attack food stamps.
Stabenow's bill "would protect and strengthen the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), our nation's most important and effective anti-hunger program," noted Ty Jones Cox, CBPP's vice president for food assistance.
Meanwhile, Thompson's plan "would put a healthy diet out of reach in the future for millions of families with low incomes by cutting future benefits for all SNAP participants and eroding the adequacy of SNAP benefits over time," she warned.
As Jones Cox detailed:
Thompson's proposal would prevent SNAP benefits from keeping pace with the cost of a healthy, realistic diet over time, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates would result in a roughly $30 billion cut to SNAP over the next decade. The proposal would do this by freezing the cost of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Thrifty Food Plan (the basis for SNAP benefit levels) outside of inflation adjustments, even if nutrition guidelines or other factors change the cost of an adequate diet. The Thompson proposal's modest benefit improvements do not outweigh the harm to the tens of millions of SNAP participants—including children, older adults, and people with disabilities—who would receive less food assistance in the future because of this policy.
"Stabenow's proposal rejects the false premise that improvements in SNAP must come at the expense of food assistance for low-income families who count on SNAP to put food on the table," she concluded. "The Senate framework, which rejects harmful benefit cuts, should be the basis for farm bill negotiations moving forward."
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It's on McCarthy to Find Votes for Ransom Package, Say Progressives
"Kevin McCarthy took the American economy, and working people's economic security, hostage," said one campaigner. "Now if he wants to get his ransom, he ought to put up the votes from his own caucus."
May 30, 2023
As the U.S. House of Representatives prepares for a debt ceiling vote as soon as Wednesday, progressives in Congress and beyond are arguing that it is the responsibility of Speaker Kevin McCarthy to deliver the GOP votes needed to pass the package he negotiated with President Joe Biden with the nation hurtling toward economic catastrophe.
The window to prevent the first-ever U.S. default is rapidly closing, with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warning McCarthy (R-Calif.) that absent action on the debt ceiling, the federal government will run out of money to pay its bills on June 5. The so-called Fiscal Responsibility Act announced over the weekend would suspend the country's arbitrary borrowing limit until January 2025.
However, the legislation would also cap nonmilitary spending, impose work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and other safety net initiatives, resume student loan payments, cut Internal Revenue Service (IRS) funding to target rich tax dodgers, roll back parts of the National Environmental Policy Act, and greenlight the "climate-killing" Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP).
\u201cAs a progressive, here's my concern with the #DebtCeilingAgreement:\n\nIt takes food stamps away from older, vulnerable Americans;\n\nFast-tracks dirty-fossil fuel projects;\n\nTriggers student debt payments for 40M+ people;\n\nWe're facing the greatest climate and affordability crisis\u2026\u201d— Ro Khanna (@Ro Khanna) 1685480391
As reporters on Capitol Hill tried to track how many far-right House Republicans oppose the package—with some even suggesting it could lead to McCarthy being ousted as speaker—Working Families Party director of federal affairs Natalia Salgado released a statement Tuesday.
"The extremist Republican Party successfully took the world economy hostage to win cuts to food safety, clean air, and water, and to make it harder for our nation's most vulnerable to get by," Salgado said. "Over the weekend, President Biden agreed to pay Speaker McCarthy's ransom, albeit a much lower amount than MAGA Republicans demanded. Now, some of those MAGA Republicans are threatening to blow up the deal, and people are wondering how House progressives will vote."
"Progressives were not part of negotiating this deal, which contains measures—like spending caps and work requirements for food stamps—that progressives have always rightly opposed," she continued. "Kevin McCarthy promised the president he could deliver the votes necessary to pass his deal. If he can't, and progressives' votes are needed to avert a catastrophic default, then progressives must have the opportunity to meaningfully improve the legislation."
\u201cNew: @RepCori Bush just told is she is \u201cleaning no\u201d on the debt deal.\n\nNotes she is a former food stamp recipient and that she does not want to do anything to take food from people\u2019s mouths.\u201d— Lisa Desjardins (@Lisa Desjardins) 1685487480
Mary Small, chief strategy officer at the group Indivisible, similarly took aim at McCarthy and fellow Republican lawmakers in a Tuesday statement, declaring that "progressive votes weren't courted for the current deal, and it shows."
"All Democrats have stood ready all year to avoid default without drama through a clean bill; this last-minute scramble is the Republicans' fault," Small said. "If Kevin McCarthy wants this bill to pass, it's on him to prove that he has the promised Republican votes. If progressive votes are needed to pass this bill, then progressives will be ready to quickly land legislative improvements to earn them. That's how governing works."
"Kevin McCarthy took the American economy, and working people's economic security, hostage," she stressed. "That's not a secret and it's not spin—he paraded around the Capitol relishing that he was the villain in a hostage negotiation. Now if he wants to get his ransom, he ought to put up the votes from his own caucus."
The Indivisible leader added:
We oppose budget caps for programs that support our families and communities—while shoveling more money into a bloated defense budget. We oppose so-called 'work requirements' for programs like SNAP that are nothing more than hurdles intentionally designed to strip benefits from the most vulnerable. We oppose giving special treatment to the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a fossil fuel project that has proven incapable of clearing foundational environmental tests. We oppose stripping funding from the IRS to make it easier for big corporations and the ultrawealthy to cheat on their taxes.
This is Kevin McCarthy's wish list. McCarthy and his caucus will be judged based on these priorities. This is their big power play, and they chose to wield it to try and take our economy backwards and score political points. The GOP shares a vision for a scarcity economy that pits working people against each other and asks them to continuously foot the bill for endless tax cuts for the ultrawealthy. Progressives are right to opt out of carrying water for this deal, and instead putting it at McCarthy's feet where it belongs.
Salgado noted that Democrats could have avoided the current crisis if they took action last year, when they still controlled both chambers of Congress—and the president could have pursued unilateral action rather than negotiating with GOP hostage-takers.
"This deal is not as awful as it could have been, but Republicans still accomplished their biggest goal. Again and again, we've seen extremist congressional Republicans set precedents to increase their power and leverage in future fights," she said. "The next time Republicans control just one chamber of Congress, we can be assured that they will rerun this exact same play."
By electing "the right kinds of Democrats" to Congress in 2024, "we can disarm these reckless extremists and make sure this sad day is never repeated," Salgado contended. "In the meantime, no one should expect progressives to vote for a deal they didn't negotiate, that violates a number of fundamental commitments."
Some leftist lawmakers critical of the Fiscal Responsibility Act have already unveiled amendments targeting controversial provisions—one from Virginia Democrats would strip out the MVP language, while another from Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) would preserve the pause on federal student loan payments.
\u201cCongressional Progressive Caucus Chair @RepJayapal opens press call \n\n\u201cRepublicans never cared about reducing the deficit and was just using the debt ceiling to push forward their ideological priorities.\u201d\u201d— Raquel Martin (@Raquel Martin) 1685471187
In a call with reporters Tuesday, Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said CPC members' top concerns about the package are the changes to environmental reviews for energy project permits, work requirements for safety net programs, and potentially "harmful" spending caps.
Like the progressive campaigners, Jayapal pointed out that CPC members pushed for a debt limit vote during the lame-duck session and unilateral action by Biden more recently but she still ultimately put the blame for the current crisis squarely on McCarthy.
"We are in this place because of Speaker Kevin McCarthy threatening default. If not for Kevin McCarthy and the extreme MAGA Republicans threatening default, we could have had a clean debt ceiling hike—and if not for Kevin McCarthy threatening default, we would not be talking about new bureaucratic red tape on food or cash assistance," she said.
"He got us here, and it's on him to deliver the votes for the deal," Jayapal asserted, noting that the CPC has not yet taken a public position on the legislation but is in the process of formally checking in on where all caucus members stand.
The congresswoman also said the negotiation process "sets an extremely dangerous precedent—Republicans can hold the economy hostage," and concluded that "we need to get rid of the debt ceiling when we next take the majorities back."
\u201cSen. Warren indicates she\u2019s a no on the \u201cbad, bad, bad\u201d debt-limit bill, telling us it\u2019s \u201cdesigned to take away food from hungry ppl, to make students who are struggling w/ debt lock in to pay more, to slow down our efforts in the climate fight, & to help out wealthy tax cheats.\u201d\u201d— Andrew Desiderio (@Andrew Desiderio) 1685480839
Meanwhile, on the floor of the Senate, which is narrowly controlled by Democrats, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) struck a different tone, saying Tuesday that "I support the bipartisan agreement that President Biden has produced with Speaker McCarthy."
"When this bill arrives in the Senate, it is my plan to bring it to the floor as quickly as possible for consideration. Senators must be prepared to act with urgency to send a final product to the president's desk before the June 5 deadline," he said. "From the start, I've said that the best way forward to avoiding default is bipartisan cooperation, and that's what this agreement represents. Again: nobody got everything they wanted, but this bill is the responsible and prudent and necessary way forward."
Groups opposed to the MVP rallied outside of Schumer's Brooklyn home Tuesday, with Indivisible tweeting that "it's time to stop building fossil fuel infrastructure and that means no more pipelines."
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