Republicans Demand SNAP Cuts In Debt Limit Deal.
Expanded SNAP work requirements would hit the poor and working class hard, especially in rural America.
Democrats are standing strong for now against Republican attempts to expand work requirements for SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as "food stamps") recipients as part of the negotiations over raising the debt ceiling. SNAP cuts via work requirements are a key Republican demand.
Democratic House Agriculture Committee Ranking Member David Scott (D-GA) slammed Republican Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) “red line” on SNAP cuts in a statement.
“It has been reported that Speaker McCarthy has said he will bankrupt our country if we do not take food away from hungry Americans,” Scott said. “That is his ‘red line.’ Withholding food assistance for vulnerable communities, including older Americans, households with children, veterans, and people with disabilities, is beyond cruel—it is grotesque and unchristian.”
"Taking food away from low-income households under the guise of ‘work requirements’ does not create jobs. It does not encourage work. It only serves to make life harder for people raising children, people with disabilities, and low-wage workers who might lose a job or have unpredictable and inconsistent hours,” Scott said.
“Any elected official that supports any cut to those on food assistance is an enemy of working Americans,” Austin Frerick, a Fellow of the Thurman Arnold Project at Yale University currently writing a book on food and agriculture system reforms. “There is no grey area. We are talking people’s ability to eat.”
SNAP recipients already face significant limits on their monthly food benefits.
“My biggest concern is the lack of understanding of the impact of time limits for SNAP,” said Gina Plata-Nino, SNAP deputy director for FRAC, the Food Research and Action Center. “These time limits impact some of our most vulnerable populations. Veterans. Foster youth aging out of the system. People with disabilities. Rural people without transportation.”
Current rules impose a three-month time limit on SNAP benefits per three-year period for certain unemployed and underemployed adults who do not document sufficient hours of work each month.
Rather than cutting SNAP in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic recovery, FRAC and other anti-hunger groups are advocating for passage of the “Improving Access to Nutrition Act” (H.R. 1510), introduced by Representatives Barbara Lee (D-CA) and Alma Adams (D-NC).
“This is a moment for education about the importance of SNAP. It is one of the most important tools we have in addressing poverty and food insecurity,” FRAC’s Plato-Nino said. “In many communities food banks are already over-capacity, and they simply don’t have the local resources to fill the deep need or to break the cycle of poverty.”
As previously reported in The Cocklebur, a larger percentage of rural people actually use SNAP when compared with urban and suburban places. According to the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC), rural people are 25% more likely than their urban counterparts to participate in SNAP. Nationally, participation is highest among households in rural counties (16%) compared with households in metro counties (13%).
More people use SNAP in rural America because rural counties tend to have higher rates of poverty than metropolitan counties. According to Daily Yonder analysis, 301 of 353 (85.3%) persistently-poor counties in the U.S. are rural. Persistent poverty counties (as they are termed by USDA’s Economic Research Service, ERS) are clustered in the South (84%). Of the 301 nonmetro persistent poverty counties, 267(88.7%) had a poverty rate over 20%.
The Cocklebur covers rural policy and politics from a progressive point-of-view. Our work focuses on a tangled rural political reality of dishonest debate, economic and racial disparities, corporate power over our democracy, and disinformation peddled by conservative media outlets. We aim to use facts, data, and science to inform our point-of-view. We wear our complicated love/WTF relationship with rural America on our sleeve.