[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 75 (Wednesday, May 9, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H3869-H3875]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THREATS TO SNAP PROGRAM
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 3, 2017, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Raskin) is recognized
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to be leading this Special
Order hour on the SNAP program and the current threats against it in
the farm bill.
SNAP, of course, is America's most important antihunger program,
serving more than 42 million Americans and delivering improved
economic, health, and nutrition outcomes for millions of our families,
reducing poverty and food insecurity.
To kick us off tonight, I yield to the gentlewoman from the great
State of Washington, Pramila Jayapal, my distinguished colleague.
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
[[Page H3870]]
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.
Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank Congresswoman Jayapal for her
terrific leadership on the SNAP program and for defending the ability
of all of our families to not send their kids to bed at night hungry.
That is really what this is all about.
People on the SNAP program receive an average of only $1.40 per meal,
and in order to get assistance, of course, they have got to complete a
detailed application process with meticulous documentation of their
name, their legal status in the country, their identity, their income,
their address, and so on. Ninety percent of participants are in
households with children under the age of 18, or with elderly people,
or with individuals with disabilities.
Mr. Speaker, I am going to yield next to our distinguished colleague
from Minnesota (Mr. Ellison).
Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, I have just a few observations. The Supplemental
Nutrition Assistance Program is a good program. It is the number one
food assistance program our country has. And it has gotten families
through tough times, for sure. The truth is, most people who use SNAP
aren't on it very long. They find themselves in a rough patch. They use
SNAP. They get off.
Programs that impose artificial timelines and kick people off or deny
them or have work requirements, ignore the fact that people do not get
on SNAP to stay on SNAP unless they are too young, too old, or too sick
to work.
Generally, people are trying to get jobs. The irony of this is that
from a Republican standpoint, it seems like they are happy to give
really, really rich people money without any expectations. And, yet, if
a low-income person needs some help, money from the government, now all
of a sudden we have got to put all kind of restrictions and all kind of
waits on it.
Why does help and assistance from the government not ruin rich
peoples' worth ethic, but it seems in the Republican mind to ruin the
work ethic of working people and low-income people? It is totally
ironic. It must be premised on the myth that somehow species of
humanity are different from one another, and they are just not. People
are the same.
I want to just point out as well, that if you really want to do
something meaningful, why don't we pass legislation that would stop
fast-food companies from conspiring with each other to restrict wages?
There are two bills that got introduced. One is an antipoaching law
that means that the employers can't come together and agree that they
are not going to hire each other's workers if they leave looking for
better pay, and the other one is a provision that would ban this
process of noncompete clauses for people who work in fast-food.
These two bills together conspired to restrict the pay of working
people. They keep wages down. What if we did real antitrust legislation
and stopped huge companies from dominating the entire market, creating
a single buyer, a monopsony, which then has the power to hold people
down?
I just got through talking to some employees at Toys-R-Us. Their
company was bought by some private equity firms. A lot of debt was
piled on to them. The bonuses were given out to the top management.
They took off on their golden parachutes. The company goes through
bankruptcy, and now it is closing 800 stores and laying off 30,000
people.
The bottom line is: SNAP helps people in tough economic times. If
they are able-bodied, I am sure they want to work. They don't need
these punitive kicks to go to work. They just need an opportunity to
get back up on their feet. These programs are insulting, demeaning,
unnecessary, and they shouldn't exist.
If we really want to give working people an opportunity, let's
increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour. Let's support the Employee
Free Choice Act which can give them a voice on the job so they can
negotiate with their employers for better wages.
It seems like Republicans don't want to do anything to meaningfully
change the lives of working people, but, work requirements, drug tests,
all this sort service moralistic stuff, it doesn't work. It is a waste
of money and there are way better ways to do what you say you are
trying to do.
Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr.
Ellison) very much. He makes an excellent point which is, more than
two-thirds of SNAP participants are in families with children, and in
the majority of those, you have at least one working adult in the
house.
{time} 1700
So despite efforts to portray this as some kind of welfare, we are
talking about millions of Americans who are working but still can't
afford to feed their families. That is what the SNAP program is about.
It is about helping working families meet the basic nutritional
standards of our people.
We are the richest society in the history of the world, and we can
certainly support working families, through the SNAP program, to
benefit from the great bounty that is the agricultural output of the
United States of America, which is the breadbasket of the world.
Mr. Speaker, I yield now to our colleague from California, Nanette
Barragan. I thank Ms. Barragan very much for joining us.
Ms. BARRAGAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Maryland for
yielding.
When we talk about SNAP, I often think about my own childhood. When I
was a kid, I remember my parents needing some assistance. We would get
a bag of groceries that had block yellow cheese in it; it had things we
could use to make some food. It was temporary. It was to get us through
a tough time.
SNAP is our Nation's cornerstone antihunger program, providing
millions of American households with access to food assistance.
Children living in these households are also eligible to receive free
school meals, ensuring that they are not worried about going hungry
when they should be free to focus on their academics.
In California alone, 4.1 million people rely upon SNAP, with 74
percent of participants being part of families with children and half
of participants already being part of working families. In my district,
California's 44th Congressional District that covers areas like
Compton, Watts, and San Pedro, 17 percent of households depend upon
SNAP to assist them in feeding their families. SNAP not only provides
families in need with vital nutritional assistance; it also helps to
stimulate local economies. For every dollar invested in SNAP, nearly $2
are generated in economic activity.
[[Page H3871]]
That is why the current efforts to ``reform'' SNAP are so misguided.
These include the recent Harvest Box proposal, which would reduce or
eliminate a SNAP recipient's access to nutritious products like fresh
produce and meats, taking away their right to choose how best to
fulfill their family's specific nutritional needs. Additionally, the
recently unveiled farm bill expands work requirements for SNAP. This
would make it harder for our most vulnerable to access food assistance,
knocking them back down when we should be offering them a hand up.
I am proud to support SNAP, and I will continue fighting with my
colleagues to ensure that no American has to struggle to put food on
their table.
Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank Ms. Barragan very much for her
leadership in defending the SNAP program. She talked about California.
I just want to add to her point, a point about my home State in
Maryland, where the SNAP program reaches 684,000 residents of my State,
which is more than 1 in 10 people who live in the State.
Nationally, of course, it is 42 million people who participate in the
SNAP program, which is 13 percent of the total population. And that is
not a stagnant, permanent pool of Americans; that is a transient group
because people move in and move out according to their economic
circumstances.
The SNAP program is a reflection of our investment in ourselves as a
people and our determination that here, in the wealthiest country on
Earth, nobody should be sending their kids to bed at night hungry.
Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to yield to our distinguished colleague
from New Jersey, Bonnie Watson Coleman.
Mrs. WATSON COLEMAN. I want to thank my colleague from Maryland for
yielding to me so I might speak on an issue that is very important to
all of us.
I want to speak on behalf of the 43 million people who are SNAP
recipients, many of whom are working each and every day. I want to talk
about the fact that those are individuals whom we consider working
poor. Mr. Raskin mentioned that SNAP was a reflection of something.
SNAP is a reflection of the fact that we have so many jobs that don't
pay adequate wages. SNAP is a reflection of the raw deal that our
citizens are getting under an administration that would choose to give
trillions of dollars worth of money to those people who are already
rich, asking nothing in return for that horrible tax scam, and, at the
same time, asking those at the lowest income spectrum in the entire
United States of America to work so that they can be supplemented with
meals that are $1.40 a meal.
That is hypocrisy. That is disgusting. We should not even be having a
discussion about whether or not we should be eliminating, reducing, or
changing a SNAP benefit. We should make sure that there is adequacy for
every child and every family to not go hungry in this country; and, at
the same time, we should be looking at giving our citizens who have had
a really raw deal over these last couple of years a better deal, a
better deal with better wages that we would like to proffer so that
individuals wouldn't have to work and get supplemental food assistance
as well.
Better jobs. Better skills. Better opportunities.
I am going to close very shortly on this. I was at a hearing today on
the issue of SNAP and what we were planning to do with SNAP and what
were the recommendations for the SNAP program. And I heard from my
colleagues on the other side of the aisle some very disgusting
insinuations or accusations about people who were on SNAP who were
perhaps sitting on their porch drinking a cup of coffee or whatever.
And the assumption was that that person was sitting on his duff as
opposed to out there working, and he was a recipient of SNAP. You know
nothing about that person's situation. But that person probably was a
member of the minority class.
And we talk about getting a job. Well, I said to those people who
came and testified today at our hearing: You have come here with some
Pollyanna idea that this country is a country of equality. Well, it may
have been working towards equality, but we are experiencing a period
right now where we have the greatest sense of inequality we have had in
decades, in hundreds of years.
We are underemployed. We are unemployed. The people who are working
every day for wages to bring home are the ones who are paying for every
tax break that is given to the 1 percent in this country. You can give
millions and millions of dollars in the State of New Jersey even to the
wealthiest 1 percent and ask nothing in return. If you are an
individual, you are asked nothing in return. If you are a corporation,
you are not even asked to create a job, a training opportunity, or to
increase wages.
Do not talk to me about those people who are on SNAP and what they
should be doing. Talk to me about what America should be doing for all
of its people, because we are all members of the human race. Some of us
just weren't born rich. Some of us just don't have the opportunity to
go around with a silver spoon in our mouth.
This Congress should be ashamed of itself for not taking care of the
needs of those who simply need government to recognize that it
represents everybody, not just the very wealthy. I thank Mr. Raskin for
the opportunity.
Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mrs. Coleman for her comments. She
has made some very important points, and I wonder if I would pursue a
couple with her before she goes, perhaps have a moment for colloquy.
The first is the point she was making about the growing economic
inequality in the country. That is something that has been on the minds
of Americans, at the very least, since the Occupy movement took place
after the 2008 mortgage meltdown crisis, which cost 11 million
Americans their jobs, 12 million Americans their homes, and created an
economic dislocation panic across the country, which thankfully
President Obama and his administration moved to address, unleashing 60
straight months of economic growth and expansion in the country.
Today we have an administration which vowed to drain the swamp when
it came to Washington. It seems like they have moved into the swamp and
they are just draining the treasury instead: $1.5 trillion added to our
budget deficit from the tax scam giveaway, which you referenced.
I wonder if she would reflect for a moment on the relationship
between a vision of government, which is that it is a money-making
operation for a handful of people, and growing inequality and poverty
among other parts of the population.
Mrs. WATSON COLEMAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Raskin for raising that
issue. I think that that is one of the most prominent issues that
people of this country need to understand.
Government has a significant role. That role is to protect the
opportunities, rights, and privileges of all people, to create the
level playing field. What we have experienced in this administration,
in this Republican-controlled Congress, is that we care not. We
prioritize the value of human beings based upon how much money they are
worth or how much money they can get.
So we are taking resources that should not be taken out of our
treasury; we are then giving them in heaps and piles to the very, very
wealthy; and then we are talking about deficits that are being created
and how we need to make up those deficits. And how do we look to do
that? Well, we look to do things like reduce the benefits of Medicaid,
mess with Social Security, take away SNAP from people who need
supplemental nutritional assistance.
We talk about this America not being one America anymore. This is an
America of the haves and the have-nots. Never have we seen this
tremendous diversity or disparity between the very, very, very wealthy
and those who are struggling.
And those who are struggling get this. My colleagues think of poor
people as lazy people who are not doing what they can do. We are poor
people in this country--hungry, homeless people--because of our
policies, because of our budget, which is the greatest reflection of
our priorities and our values. Our values are askew right now, and we
need to make sure that we are looking after that responsibility for
which we were elected.
Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, let me ask Mrs. Coleman one final question
before she goes. She made a point before which I thought was profound,
[[Page H3872]]
which is that millions and millions of people on the SNAP program are
working, but they are not making enough money to support their family
in a dignified way, in a way that lives up to even the most minimal
expectations for health and nutrition. That is what the SNAP program is
all about. In a way, you could view the SNAP program as a subsidy to
the employers of these people because we are taking care of them
because their salaries don't.
Now, I could understand someone saying: Let's get rid of the SNAP
program and make those employers pay a real living wage to these
people, or let's make them pay a full living wage and give them all
healthcare. But that is not the proposal that we are getting from our
friends from across the aisle. They want to reduce the SNAP program at
the same time that they don't want to increase the minimum wage and
give people benefits.
I wonder if she could just explain what the theory is about how these
people are going to survive.
Mrs. WATSON COLEMAN. Mr. Speaker, I think that it isn't so much a
theory of survival as it is the possibility of not surviving at all. I
think that we are finding ourselves in a situation right now where
those who have less have the rawest deal they have had in a very long
time. And I am proud to associate myself with my Democratic colleagues
in this caucus who want a better deal for those people.
We want wages that you can live off of, that you don't have to rely
upon assistance from anyone in order to be able to put food on your
table, put a roof over your head or heat in your home. We want to make
sure that everybody has an opportunity to learn and to have a good job.
So we want to see investment in jobs, in training, in apprenticeships,
in opportunities to do better.
We could do better with an infrastructure program that not only makes
sense because we have a crumbling infrastructure on so many levels, but
it also generates jobs. Generates jobs, which generates good incomes.
Good incomes generate a desire to purchase. Desire to purchase helps to
build our small businesses. We are looking in the wrong places, and we
need to look at where we can grow our economy.
Our economy doesn't grow when we just simply continue to enrich the
rich to be richer and richer and richest and to put that money overseas
somewhere or anyplace that they want to put it but not to invest it in
this country, in this economy. We need a better chance for everyone. We
need a better deal for all of our citizens.
Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mrs. Coleman for her strong voice
and for participating in tonight's Special Order hour.
Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to yield to our distinguished colleague
from Connecticut, Rosa DeLauro, who has been one of Congress' leading
champions for the security of America's working people and for building
an American middle class that includes everybody.
I am thrilled that Ms. DeLauro could join us, and I yield to her now.
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.
{time} 1715
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
[[Page H3873]]
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.
Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank Ms. DeLauro, and I would ask if she
would be willing to stick around just for a little colloquy.
Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, I will.
Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, Ms. DeLauro made some really striking
points, and I wanted to explore them a little bit more.
The tax bill, as we know, created a windfall bonanza of hundreds of
billions of dollars for the wealthiest corporations and the wealthiest
people in the country. Eighty-six percent of the benefit from the tax
cut went to 1 percent of the people.
The interesting thing to me was that because it went overwhelmingly
to investors, and one-third of the investment in our companies is held
by foreigners, a third of the benefit of this tax cut just left the
country. It went to foreign investors in Saudi Arabia or China or
Mexico or wherever it might be.
Now, does it make sense for us to confer this extraordinary bonanza
on the wealthiest people in the country and wealthy people abroad, and
then turn around and start cutting the major antihunger assistance
program we have got, the SNAP program? I mean, what is the morality of
that? What is the logic of that?
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Connecticut.
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.
Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I would say to Ms. DeLauro that that came
out of the Agriculture Committee, as I understand it, on a party line
vote.
Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, he got that right.
Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, this used to be bipartisan. It used to be a
bipartisan commitment, and now, suddenly, it fell apart with no
participation from Democrats. It comes flying out with the idea of
targeting the SNAP program. What is going on here?
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Connecticut.
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.
Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, they are both from farm States.
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.
{time} 1730
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.
Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I want to follow up on something Ms. DeLauro
said, which I think is very important.
She pointed out that it was Senator Robert Dole, a Republican from
Kansas; and Senator George McGovern, a Democrat from South Dakota, who
came together and said: We have this extraordinary agricultural bounty
and surplus in America.
We could be feeding the entire world. Certainly we could be feeding
the people of America. Most people are able to afford it, but not
everybody, and not at every point in their life. We should make sure
that, in the wealthiest society that has ever existed, everybody has
the opportunity to eat three meals a day for $1.40.
Ms. DeLauro said that we don't have the giants that we had then. I
don't know if that is true. I consider the gentlewoman from Connecticut
(Ms. DeLauro) a giant.
But I think what has changed is the public philosophy that is
governing in Washington. I think there is a public philosophy that
survives in town, which says that government is a moneymaking
opportunity for the President and a handful of people: the President's
friends and the people who surround the President. People are actually
making money coming into government.
Whereas, the traditional ideal--the one I think Ms. DeLauro invoked
with Senators Dole and McGovern and the new deal and Franklin
Roosevelt--was government is an instrument of the common good to
benefit everybody to advance the general will.
What has happened to our concept of government in America?
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.
[[Page H3874]]
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.
Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Connecticut
(Ms. DeLauro) for her leadership, for her vision, and for her writing.
It is incisive and useful for us all.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms.
Adams).
Ms. ADAMS. Mr. Speaker, I thank Congressman Raskin for putting this
Special Order hour together. I thank him for his commitment and for his
concern.
I join all of my colleagues in opposing what is being proposed in
terms of this farm bill.
Three weeks ago, my Republican colleagues on the House Agriculture
Committee sat silently while Chairman Conaway introduced a partisan
farm bill. Then they allowed him to preach about the many reasons why
he feels that SNAP should be transformed from a feeding program to a
work program, uninterrupted.
Then they voted for this flawed bill that takes food off of the
tables of veterans, seniors, and children. Now they want to pass it
through the House and push it forward with their agenda to starve our
Nation's most vulnerable.
My Republican colleagues ought to be ashamed of this because Proverbs
22:9 says: ``The generous will themselves be blessed, for they share
their food with the poor.''
I have said it once, and I will say it again: I don't believe that
the Lord is pleased with what we are considering in this bill.
In my home county of Mecklenburg, North Carolina, more than 162,000
people are considered food insecure. Worse, 50,000 of those are
children.
In my community, more than 55,000 families depend on SNAP to help put
food on their tables. No one should wonder where their next meal will
come from. But, sadly, this is a reality for many, many people.
Last year, North Carolina Republicans introduced a bill on the State
level that would have a similar impact to this partisan farm bill.
Analysis of that bill shows that roughly 130,000 North Carolinians will
lose their SNAP benefits if this bill passes, including 50,000
children.
Nationwide, the impact of this bill would even be worse: kicking 2
million people out of the program and causing an estimated 265,000
children to lose free or reduced lunch at school. So, no work, no eat?
If we are lawmakers and we aren't protecting our Nation's children,
then I don't think we deserve to be here.
Republicans continue to push the idea that we need entitlement reform
just to appease the Speaker. Well, I understand the Speaker has
announced his retirement, and I would like for us to just retire the
idea that this so-called reform is just numbers on a page because it is
not. Real people depend on SNAP programs and, without it, they will go
hungry. No one can expect to work if they are hungry. No child can
expect to learn if the child is hungry.
More than $8 in $10 in nutrition assistance go to households that
include a child, a senior, or a person with a disability. Additionally,
many working Americans depend on SNAP to make ends meet in expensive
cities where earning the minimum wage doesn't pay all of the bills.
People work two and three jobs a day at minimum wage, leave work, and
go to a food bank to eat.
Additionally, many American families depend on SNAP. Working hard is
not enough if you don't make enough.
Instead of punishing working Americans, let's address the cause of
the issue, and let's raise the minimum wage to a living wage.
Mr. Speaker, I join my Democratic colleagues in urging Chairman
Conaway to scrap this flawed bill and return it to the drawing board.
We can, and we should, craft a bipartisan farm bill that benefits all
communities.
Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank Ms. Adams so much for her insightful
remarks. Before Ms. Adams leaves, I would like to ask her a question.
Working in Washington and coming here several days a week, as Members
of Congress do, we are often treated to the spectacle of lifestyles of
the rich and famous and political corruption. We see Scott Pruitt, the
EPA chief, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on first-class air
travel with a security detail of a dozen people, something nobody has
ever seen before for an EPA chief. He built, I think it was, a $40,000
soundproof booth in his office in order to make secret phone calls.
Last night, we saw on TV, or pick up the paper this morning to read
about, millions of dollars flowing into an up-till-now secret bank
account that Michael Cohen had. Part of it was used as a slush fund to
pay off a porn star, who had a relationship, allegedly, with President
Trump. But then hundreds of thousands of dollars flowing in from one of
the oligarchs in Russia with U.S. corporations involved.
There is a lot of money in this town. The power elite seems to have a
lot of money, and gave hundreds of billions of dollars back to the
wealthiest corporations and people in the country in the most recent
tax legislation. Yet they get through with that, and then they turn and
they want to pound the SNAP program, which is used to give a modicum of
dignity and security to the poorest people in the country so that they
can feed their families.
What is going on here?
How is it possible that we can see one kind of America operating in
the Halls of power with the wealthiest people in the country, and
another for the working people of the country who are trying to get by?
Ms. ADAMS. Mr. Speaker, Mr. Raskin is so absolutely right. I think
that is why people have generally lost faith in their government.
I mentioned a Scripture from the Bible, but there are 3,000
references--more than 3,000--that speak to how we should treat the
poor. We are, I think, being derelict in terms of our duties. Yes,
there seems to be a lot of corruption going on. We are not placing our
priorities on the people. We are putting profits over people. That is
so unfortunate because we were elected to serve everyone, including the
poor.
The poor will be with us always. We have a responsibility to reach
out and to give a helping hand, a help up. We are not talking about
people who some folks think are lazy and they are not working. They are
working, and they are the caregivers of the children.
Children live in poverty because their parents do. We must ensure
that we can help those adults who help our children. We want our
children to go to school and we want them to do well. Children will not
do well if their stomach growls because they are hungry.
Mr. Speaker, I think Mr. Raskin is right. We have two worlds here:
the haves and the have-nots. It is time to give something to those who
have not.
Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, three-quarters of SNAP benefits go to
families: households with children in them. That should be what people
think of when they think of the SNAP program.
[[Page H3875]]
We heard a lot today in the Oversight and Government Reform Committee
hearing that was referenced earlier, basically about lazy people
sitting around. I tried to alter the image a little bit. I said: You
can have lazy people who get a paycheck in public housing and
they spend all day watching TV, tweeting, and filing for bankruptcy.
You have lazy people in the middle class. You have rich lazy people and
you have poor lazy people.
Ms. ADAMS. Mr. Speaker, there are probably some lazy folks in here,
too.
Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, we are not going to be able to eliminate
laziness, but maybe we can take care of hunger in America so that kids
don't go to sleep without food.
Mr. Speaker, I want to thank Ms. Adams for her leadership and her
strong voice on these issues. It is very impressive to see how hard she
has been fighting.
Ms. ADAMS. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Raskin for those comments.
One of the reasons that I wanted to serve on the Agriculture
Committee was because of the issues that are impacted not only in my
district but throughout this Nation. Having so many people who are food
insecure gave us an opportunity, I think, to do good in this farm bill.
It is my understanding that we have never had a bill that was not
bipartisan, and I think we need to think about that. The citizens of
this country are looking to us to do what is right because it is the
right thing to do.
Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, in my district, I have urban, suburban, and
rural. I have urban places like Rockville, Maryland; I have suburban
places like Bethesda and Silver Spring; I have rural places in
Frederick County like Middletown and Carroll County. I have sort of the
full gamut of America in my district, and there is poverty in all of
them. There are people struggling in all of them, just like there are
people who have become very prosperous in all of them.
But our job, I think, as Representatives in Congress, is to keep the
country unified and see what that beautiful, magical phrase in the
beginning of the Constitution ``We the people'' means. For us to stand
together in all of our magnificent diversity of ways of life and
different kinds of communities that we have across the country, what is
it that binds us together?
I think the goodness of the American people is that we are invested
in the success of everybody, not just this or that group, not just our
business buddies, not just our partners, not just people in our
political party, but we are invested in the success of everyone, and
that is our job.
Ms. ADAMS. Mr. Speaker, Mr. Raskin is exactly right. Hunger is not a
partisan issue.
{time} 1745
Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank Ms. Adams for participating.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee),
my distinguished colleague.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Speaker, I am delighted, if I might say, to be
with Professor Raskin today, and I would like to use that terminology,
or Congressman Raskin, but it means that he gets into both the theory,
the practice, and the passion of an idea. That is what teachers do.
They try to instruct their students to look at the holistic concept of
a theory.
Mr. Speaker, the loss of food stamps is not a theory, but it has
passion in the loss of such. It has a broad landscape of impact. It
certainly has a theory of which I don't adhere to, and that is that
Americans who have asked for a hand up are the ones deserving of the
brunt of an enormous tax cut that has created an enormous deficit that
was not asked for by the top 1 percent, who are getting the major
aspect, or major benefit, of this tax cut.
As a member of the Budget Committee, we took pains, the Democrats, to
parse through the ultimate negative impact of the $1.4 trillion-plus
tax cut.
During the Obama administration, we discussed a corporate rate
reduction. Many of us would have considered that on the idea of job
creation, coming from the early thirties, if you will, down to about
the mid-twenties. We did more than--when I say ``we,'' this bill did
21, unasked for by any corporate entity, which added, again, insult to
injury as it relates to those families, disabled, and seniors, children
who are dependent upon these programs.
We have many Americans who are dependent upon means-tested programs,
70 percent. The supplemental nutrition program, unlike the 21 percent
corporate rate reduction for taxes, is $1.40 per person.
One of our colleagues in the other body, Senator Booker, as we all
know who are familiar with him, and I think maybe we should join in
that effort, spend that much per meal, all of the Members of the House
of Representatives, because what we are dealing with today is the farm
bill.
The farm bill takes to shutting down the SNAP program and to cutting
it drastically, and to ignore and underfund important programs because
we find ourselves in a predicament of the deficit, the tax cut, and
what choices do we make.
The decision to limit SNAP is not limited to red States or blue
States. Eighty-five of the top 100 counties of individuals receiving
SNAP benefits are rural communities, and many of them are, in fact,
Republican represented.
The disastrous changes to SNAP would jeopardize the food security of
42 million people, including 30 million children, 4.8 million low-
income seniors, and 1.5 million low-income military veterans.
So in conclusion, I came to the floor today to ask the question: Why
in the farm bill?
There is something about having a little seniority in this House. I
can remember that of all the bills in this Nation that came out of this
House and Senate--and I might say, joyfully, because I have been
supported by the Farm Bureau. I come from a State of ranchers and
farmers. We used to take pride in having that nexus between farmers and
the SNAP program and the continuity of such.
So here we are. We have breached it. We have blown it up for no
reason other than to pocket the money for the tax cut.
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for bringing us together. I ask my
colleagues to vote against the farm bill, because that would be
standing up for maybe a better pathway of that bipartisan farm bill
that we have had over the decades to make a difference in the lives of
all Americans.
Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank Ms. Jackson Lee for her really
profound and important remarks tonight.
Mr. Speaker, I would close out our session here by just making an
observation about the importance of this SNAP question.
It is important legislatively because our friends across the aisle
have broken from a bipartisan tradition going back a very long time now
in the passage of the farm bill just to make it a partisan power grab
and a push over everybody else in the body, but it also goes to the
question: What kind of government are we going to have? Will this be
government for the few or will it be a government for everyone?
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
____________________