Threats to SNAP Program
Floor Speech
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Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank Congressman Raskin and my other colleagues here this evening as we talk about what is going on in the lives of families in our country today.
I rise to defend the Food Stamp program and to denounce the severe and immoral--I view them as immoral--cuts by the majority's farm bill.
You know, everyone knows that millions of people are struggling in this country. The biggest economic problem we have is that people are in jobs that just don't pay them enough money; they can't pay the high cost of healthcare; they can't afford to put food on the table; they don't take vacations; they don't take retirement; they are barely making it.
And with regard to hunger, it is truly remarkable. Over 15 million children, nearly one in four in our country, live in the heavy shadow of what is going on in working families today. In my district, the Third District of Connecticut--Connecticut is the State that is statistically the richest in the Nation, and that is because of Fairfield County and a whole variety of other issues. But one in seven people in my district don't know where their next meal is coming from. People want to talk about that, they put a nice term around it, ``food insecure.'' That is not food insecurity. It is hunger--hunger in the United States of America.
So, you know, the social safety net programs are vital tools for reducing poverty and hunger, and the food stamp program is one of the most powerful programs we have for ending hunger in the United States. Last year, our Nation's largest nutrition safety net, food stamps, prevented 42.2 million people from going hungry. That includes 20 million children, 4.8 million low-income seniors, and 1.5 million low- income military veterans.
Men and women who go to fight, sacrifice their families, and, in a number of instances, their lives, their families can't make it, and they are on food stamps. And what the farm bill would do was jettison those military families. The country needs to know about this. The food stamp program works. It is for those who need it the most. It has been successful in alleviating hunger and supporting our economy.
In 2014, the program lifted 4.7 million people out of poverty, including 2.1 million children, and it has lifted more than 1.3 million children out of deep poverty. And the benefits go well beyond childhood years, as my colleague knows. We know that there is an 18 percentage point increase in the likelihood of completing high school with disadvantaged households who have had access to the SNAP program, evidence of significant improvements in health and economic self- sufficiency among women.
It is efficient. More than half of the benefits go to households in the deepest poverty. Over 70 percent of all the benefits go to households with children. But, you know, it would appear that our Republican colleagues appear to be more interested in reducing SNAP than in reducing hunger.
We talked--a few minutes ago, you were talking about the tax bill--$2 trillion tax cut--83 percent of those tax cuts to the richest, wealthiest Americans and corporations. My gosh, I will bet those folks are eating well every day. I bet they have three squares or more, when we have families who are barely able to put food on the table.
Let me just give you a couple of notes about who is benefiting from the farm bill and the several loopholes.
The farm bill eliminates means testing. Now, we all know that the food stamp program, they are means tested, asset tested. They can't be over a certain amount of money in income. They can't have more than a certain amount of dollars in assets. This farm bill allows millionaires and billionaires to get subsidies. It eliminates the means test for some of these folks.
You have, under current law, family members, like siblings and adult children, are eligible for subsidies, but--and that is regardless of whether or not they live or work on the farm. What the House bill does, they make cousins, nieces, and nephews eligible for the subsidies as well. It doesn't limit subsidies to one person per farm.
Quite frankly, as the President proposed, it doesn't require work. It doesn't create work requirements for farm subsidy recipients. And, you know, a number of these folks, they don't till the soil, they don't work the land, they live in Manhattan, and they still get a subsidy. They don't have to work the land for that.
And what we are talking about, food stamp recipients do work, for the most part. And what the farm bill has done is it has said, as well, that funding in the bill only works out to be $30 per person per month for job training. What kind of job training is that? So that the bill, which requires working, underfunds job training in order for people to be able to go to work.
One other statistic. The bill increases price guarantees by up to 15 percent. It fails to reduce crop insurance premium subsidies from 62 percent to 48 percent, as, quite frankly, the President proposed. It extends insurance company subsidies. It provides $1.5 billion in annual subsidies to crop insurance agencies, to insurance companies, most of whom are foreign based.
The country needs to know this. And at the same time, they want to deny food to the children in this country. It is unspeakable, the direction that they are going in. It does not reflect the values of this great Nation.
So, you know, if we are serious about reforming in the farm bill, they would have included limits on agricultural subsidies. And, by the way, the crop insurance program, there are no eligibility caps, no payment limits. You know, it is all bets are off.
I want to end with thanking my colleague for doing this. I am going to continue, as I know he is. I am going to continue, and I know he is going to continue to stand up against what are unconscionable attacks on America's poor working families.
You know, I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle: Stand up. Stand with us. Let's ensure that Congress does not endanger families and children by decimating our hunger programs. We need to strengthen the SNAP program. We need not be sabotaging it.
I thank the gentleman for organizing this Special Order tonight. We need to be speaking here morning, noon, and night about what this administration, what this Republican majority Congress is doing to low- income families. The food stamp program is seniors, the disabled, and children.
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Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, I will.
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Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, there is no morality. That is it. It is immoral, and we have an obligation and a responsibility. And it is not just a social responsibility. This is a moral responsibility to make sure that in the land of abundance and an abundance of food, that we are going to look at jettisoning millions of low-income families and creating for them a situation where they cannot access food for themselves or their families, I ask the question: Who are we? It is immoral the direction that they are going in.
And with the farm bill--if you wanted to just look at the farm bill-- you talked about the tax bill, and we know what direction that went in and who are the beneficiaries there. But again, this farm safety net is filled with loopholes. The top 3 percent of farms, or about 60,000 farms in the United States receive roughly 40 percent of all farm subsidies. Many farms receive more than $1 million in subsidies annually. They don't pass any income test. They pass no asset test. The largesse is overwhelming.
And the share of subsidies, the largest farms claimed, has increased from 11 percent in 1991 to 34 percent in 2015. You know, they are consistent. Watch what they do in the tax bill. Watch what they do in the farm bill and who benefits. Who has benefited from the tax--the tax scam, which is rigged for the rich? And now we have a farm bill, which is rigged for the rich.
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Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, he got that right.
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Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, Congressman Raskin makes such a good point. Let me just tell you. I looked very, very hard at this issue over the number of years that I have served here. I served on the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee. I chaired that committee for awhile, so I have spent more than 25 years focused in. And the issue of hunger in the United States has become a passion for me, and I tell you why.
I published a book not that long ago called, ``The Least Among Us: Waging the Battle for the Vulnerable.'' And when I did the research for this book, this is what I found: that the social safety net program and the food stamp program was crafted by Democrats and Republicans. George McGovern, Bob Dole, they took a commission across the country.
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Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, that is right. And they said there is a serious problem of hunger in the United States. They came back to Washington, and Democratic Members and Republican Members came together to say that this challenge--we have to address this crisis of hunger in the United States, and therein lies the genesis of nutrition programs crafted by men and women who came here who understood what their job was and they understood what the power of this institution is.
Unfortunately, we do not have those giants in this body on both sides of the aisle--the people who have left--and I am so proud of our Democrats who have stood together on this farm bill and said: No. This is wrong. We are not going to be complicit in leaving millions of people hungry in the United States.
Robert Kennedy took a commission across this country and went and found children and babies who were hungry and came back, and, again, on a bipartisan basis, helped to craft the programs that we have today. These were men and women who understand and understood why they were elected to the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate.
Unfortunately, so many of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle have either forgotten their purpose here or never understood their purpose here.
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Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, I tracked in my research the Food Stamp program and child tax credits, bipartisan; equal pay for equal work, bipartisan; Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, when the votes came, they were done in a bipartisan way, the votes were bipartisan.
Now we seem to have lost that sense that the challenges are there for us to take on, on both sides of the aisle, to put aside differences for that common good. That is what we need to get back to. That what we are not about is humiliating people and demeaning people so that we think that that will make them go out and try to work to do a better thing, to tell them that there is no hope for them when they look to Washington and to government.
Mr. Speaker, that is a slap in the face to the years and the work that so many on both sides of the aisle did in Congress, and that is what we have to get back to. That is what should be entrusted to us, as we look at each of these areas that people face in our country.
People want jobs. We define ourselves by our jobs. We get our self- confidence from our jobs. People want to work. Your family looks up to you when you have a job. And, when you don't, you are embarrassed to tell your kids: I don't have a job.
These great people who served said: We need to come together to work on these issues.
For me, that is what I want us to get back to. That is what I try to work at, as you do, every single day. To have people understand that, in times of difficulty, we are accountable to one another, and we have a responsibility. We are not a society that said it is every man or woman for himself or herself, particularly in challenging times.
That is what our social safety net is all about. It reflects the great values of this country. I believe we can get back there. I believe that we can. We were there before, and we are going to get back there again.
Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Raskin for what he is doing here tonight.
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