[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 185 (Wednesday, November 5, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7914-S7915]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



               Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program

  Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, this is exactly what it looks like. The 
President of the United States is going out of his way to make sure 
that people don't have enough to eat. And it is hard to believe because 
it does sound crazy; it does sound partisan. But he really is using 
hunger as a political weapon.
  Let's back up for a second. On September 30, this administration, the 
Trump administration, released a plan saying that they were going to 
use a contingency fund to pay SNAP benefits during the shutdown. This 
is the way it has been done every time there is a shutdown.
  There is a pocket of money that is literally there to pay SNAP 
benefits in case there is an emergency of any kind, including a lapse 
in appropriations. Then 3 weeks later, they said: Never mind. We are 
not permitted to pay these benefits during a shutdown.
  That was clearly not the case, and they had already issued guidance 
saying: We are going to use this funding.
  They pulled it because they wanted to create leverage.
  Then, they went to court to argue against paying these SNAP benefits. 
Then, two separate judges said: Not only are you permitted to use this 
contingency fund to pay nutritional assistance benefits to the working 
poor, children, the elderly, the disabled--not only are you permitted 
to do that--you are required under the statute to do that.
  Now you have two Federal judges saying the law is clear. It is not a 
question of whether you are permitted to do it or not. It is actually 
whether you are permitted to not do it. The judges both said you have 
to do this; it is what the law says.
  This week, they announced that they are only going to pay half of the 
benefits. They are going to pay half of the SNAP benefits that 40 
million Americans need. It is kind of even worse than that because SNAP 
goes through State Agencies, and State Agencies, in a lot of cases--the 
unemployment system is

[[Page S7915]]

like this--they have these antiquated computer systems. So any change 
in the benefit structure has to be reprogrammed into their computer 
systems and then loaded up onto the EBT cards.
  Some States are going to be able to implement this half benefit 
within a few days. But there are several States with antiquated 
computer systems that are saying it could be weeks or even months.
  I just want to make this point extremely clear: None of that is 
necessary. They are clearly feeling some amount of heat and urgency to 
end the shutdown. Usually, what you do if you are the President of the 
United States and you feel an urgent need to cut a deal is you try to 
get the people with whom you would need to make a deal into a room and 
begin a negotiation. But Trump really doesn't want to do that. He 
thinks we are evil. His senior adviser has called the Democratic Party 
a domestic terrorist organization or some such thing. So he is just 
like--I don't know if he is incapable or, at least so far, unwilling to 
do the basic blocking and tackling required by being a political leader 
at any level--county council, mayor, State legislature, Lieutenant 
Governor, House, Senate, whatever. You have to interact with people 
that you have disagreements with.
  But he doesn't want to do that. His theory of change--Stephen Miller, 
Russ Vought, some of these folks--is we are just going to squeeze 
Democrats.
  That would be like normal hardball politics, except for this. What 
they mean by ``squeezing Democrats'' is they mean threatening to shut 
down or throttle air traffic. What they mean by squeezing Democrats is 
canceling long-planned, long-approved projects that benefit everybody 
across the country. What they mean by squeezing Democrats, in this 
particular instance, is that 40 million people are going to not have 
enough to eat.
  Look, I don't always want to be the partisan warrior. I like 
interacting with my Republican colleagues. I come from the State of 
Hawaii, where there is a decisive majority of Democrats. So one of the 
muscles I had to develop over the last 13 years was sort of how to 
interact with the other party and make arrangements, cut deals, 
compartmentalize the problems that I have with some of these folks on 
other issues and find common ground.
  My appeal to my Republican colleagues is very simple: Can we just 
leave the kids harmless? Can we leave the hungry harmless? We are 
clearly in a disagreement about how the appropriations process and this 
Affordable Care Act subsidy question should be wrestled to the ground. 
My own view is like, let's just be adults and convene; and then wrangle 
and argue and shout at each other a little bit; and reconvene and then 
cut the deal. That is how the country is supposed to work. But separate 
and apart from that, can we please say that using hunger as a weapon is 
out of bounds in the United States?
  There is a long and pretty dark history, an evil history, of 
politicians--some popularly elected, some not elected--using food as a 
means of political control. I think that is not a road that we want to 
go down. I think we want to say that whatever else we are fighting 
about, if there are Americans who are hungry, then we should hold them 
harmless.
  Just to be clear, there is no shortage of money in the United States 
of America. The stock market is booming. You have these AI data centers 
racking up $100 and $200 billion capital expenditure plans. There is 
enough money sloshing around in the public and the private sectors to 
pay for food. There really is.
  If you are a regular person trying to put food on the table for your 
family, if you are trying to keep your health insurance premiums from 
more than doubling, if you are struggling to pay your bills to make 
ends meet because everything is getting more expensive, there is no 
money for you. But there is enough money for a golden toilet, and there 
is enough money for a $173 million new aircraft for the Secretary of 
Homeland Security. And there is $40 billion for the country of 
Argentina, to bail them out, which, coincidentally, is about the amount 
of money that it would cost to extend these Affordable Care Act tax 
credits.
  So it is not a question that the economy is contracting and our debt 
is out of control and all the rest of it. This body just passed a $1.5 
trillion deficit increase in the form of a tax cut, where the benefits 
go, not exclusively but disproportionately, to wealthy individuals. It 
is not a question of there not being enough money. The problem is that 
they have decided that there is not enough money for you.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.