[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 5]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 6323]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      OPPOSE THE PAUL RYAN BUDGET

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. YVETTE D. CLARKE

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                         Monday, April 28, 2014

  Ms. CLARKE of New York. Mr. Speaker, today, I rise in opposition to 
the severely regressive Paul Ryan Budget Proposal a ``slash and 
burden'' bill written on the backs of programs and tax cuts that 
grievously affect low-income and middle-class Americans.
  The Ryan plan proposes a pathway to American prosperity by attempting 
to balance our nation's budget through vicious cuts to programs that 
working people rely on, paired with cuts to taxes for the wealthy. 
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, sixty-nine 
percent of Ryan's cuts would come from low-income programs while the 
richest one percent of Americans would enjoy nearly a fifty percent tax 
cut.
  One of the many low-income programs that would feel the sharp effects 
of the Ryan Budget proposal is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance 
Program, also referred to as SNAP. SNAP funding would be cut by $137 
billion over 10 years effectively starving millions of families and 
children and furthering the economic instability of Americans.
  These cuts would force states to decide whose benefits to reduce or 
terminate. They would have no good choices; the program already 
provides an average of $1.40 per person per meal primarily to poor 
children, working-poor parents, seniors, people with disabilities, and 
others struggling to make ends meet.
  These proposed cuts rest on inaccurate claims about how the SNAP 
program discourages work and encourages waste, fraud, and abuse. 
Chairman Ryan claims that SNAP doesn't encourage recipients to work. 
Yet, among SNAP households with at least one working-age, non-disabled 
adult, more than half work while receiving SNAP and more than eighty 
percent worked in the year prior to or the year after receiving SNAP. 
The rates are even higher for families with children; more than sixty 
percent work while receiving SNAP, and almost ninety percent worked in 
the prior or subsequent year.
  Chairman Ryan and House Republicans continue to push for devastating 
cuts that virtually eliminate assistance for millions of low-income 
Americans, instead of working to help lift them out of poverty and away 
from government assistance by refusing something as fair and practical 
as raising the minimum wage.
  The Ryan budget threatens the most basic needs of millions of 
Americans already struggling to make ends meet. It significantly 
increases hunger, poverty and hardship. It is for these reasons that I 
will vote NO on this budget and I ask my colleagues to oppose this 
budget with me.

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