[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 129 (Wednesday, July 26, 2023)]
[House]
[Page H3960]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    FOOD ASSISTANCE WILL BE SLASHED

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
Massachusetts (Mrs. Trahan) for 5 minutes.
  Mrs. TRAHAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today because working families in my 
district and across the country deserve better than the legislation the 
Republican majority is forcing through this week.
  Under the leadership of Speaker McCarthy, House Republicans have 
drafted a partisan bill that will slash funding for critical food 
assistance programs that parents depend on to feed their children.
  In fact, under this extreme proposal, the GOP is defunding hundreds 
of millions of dollars from the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program 
for Women, Infants, and Children, or WIC for short.
  That means that 5 million women and children nationwide, including 
74,000 children and 24,000 women in my home State of Massachusetts, are 
going to see their benefits drastically cut.
  Mr. Speaker, if you think that sounds bad, just wait until you hear 
how Republicans are going to do it.
  For children, House Republicans are trying to reduce the WIC fruit 
and vegetable benefit from $25 to just $11 to cover a whole month. For 
pregnant and postpartum women, the GOP is slashing the fruit and 
vegetable benefit from $44 to $13 a month.
  For breastfeeding moms, this extreme proposal imposes a devastating 
60 percent cut from $49 to just $15 each month.
  Mr. Speaker, these cuts are unnecessary, they are dangerous, and they 
are cruel. Above all else, this bill is a demonstration of the 
Republican Party's values. It is a demonstration of what they think 
life is like for working families, that you can simply tell a mom and 
her children or an expecting mother to stop being poor, and magically 
they won't be poor anymore.
  As someone who grew up in a working family that lived paycheck to 
paycheck, I can tell my colleagues across the aisle firsthand: That is 
not how it works.
  In fact, telling families to ``pull themselves up by their 
bootstraps'' while cutting the very program that they depend on to feed 
their children is going to have the opposite effect. It is going to 
force millions of Americans--millions of children--into hunger or 
worse.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, I know many of my Republican colleagues may not 
know what it is like to worry about making ends meet. They may not know 
what it is like worrying if they will be able to put food on the table 
the next day or have to swipe that EBT card at the grocery store in 
front of a long line praying it will cover everything in your cart.
  However, there are thousands--if not tens or hundreds of thousands--
of people in their home State who know exactly what that feels like and 
who experience that feeling every single day, and they are depending on 
them to stop what they are doing.
  Mr. Speaker, stop trying to cut the last safety net that they have to 
make sure their kids don't go hungry.
  Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to oppose this dangerous 
legislation.

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