Johnson, House Cruelty Caucus Set To Cut Food Stamps

Ok so the official name is SNAP but forget the acronym or the fact that instead of the old coupon books people now use a card that’s like a debit card. If you’re of a certain age you call it food stamps. So do most people regardless of age in rurul/small-town America. I lived my first 26 (of 66) years in small town America and over ten (closer to eleven) in it starting again when I was in my forties. Where I grew up was more mixed at the time but now it’s Trump/MAGA country and WV where I spent that ten years later on is definitely Trump/MAGA country and I can assure you WHITE people use the hell out of government nutrition assistance programs. They also complain and with justification that not enough assistance is provided!

This is POPULAR. In places the GOP counts on. Yet according to Newsweek Speaker Johnson and fellow fanatics in the House are looking to cut this program in the farm bill reauthorization! The article leads off with stating Speaker Johnson is likely to join hardliners in the GOP who want cuts to SNAP which is our country’s largest anti-hunger program, AND that doing so would likely hurt them with rural voters. But hey, for an increasing number of Republicans these days cruelty is the point! The Farm Bill is typically renewed on a bi-partisan basis every five years but expired on Sept. 30. A new version is expected to be approved before the end of the year but it’s being rewritten and GOP hardliners in the House are demanding major cuts. If they continue pushing so hard the whole thing could go into meltdown mode. How big an issue is this? From the linked article:

This year’s bill is expected to cost more than $1.5 trillion over 10 years. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP—one of the country’s largest welfare programs serving 41 million low-income Americans—makes up more than 80 percent of spending in the bill.

According to data from the Pew Research Center, 41.2 million people in 21.6 million households received monthly SNAP benefits in the 2022 fiscal year, which ran from October 2021 through September 2022.

In the past Johnson has supported efforts to curtail the growth of SNAP and in 2018 called it  “our nation’s most broken and bloated welfare program.” If he’s changed his attitude he’s not saying so. It’s not like he doesn’t, now that he’s Speaker have a platform to comment again when he’s got hardliners in his Cruelty Caucus pushing for cuts. People who like him have been harsh about helping working poor and poor people eat. Some for instance like fellow “Freedom” Caucus member Andrew Clyde of Georgia who has said SNAP is “one of the largest government handout programs” needing “to be curtailed.”

Failing to expand SNAP would be bad, but cutting it is a risky move for the GOP. Even making a major if unsuccessful move to do so hands Democrats a potent, “kitchen table” campaign issue next year:

Republican Representative Dusty Johnson of South Dakota has urged fellow lawmakers to pass an extension on the 2018 Farm Bill in the coming weeks, saying that “failure to do that would hurt farm country and reflect poorly on Congress.”

How popular is SNAP? 85% of Americans support increasing benefits vs. only 4% who want to cut them according to a poll from the Children’s Action Network. While support was stronger among Democrats over 50 percent of Republicans said benefits were too low! Of course, as is often the case conservatives might well convince white small-town/rural voters that it’s “those people” (minorities in cities) that are the largest recipients of these benefits when the truth is that it’s white voters who get the bulk of them. That’s why Democrat’s need to message the hell out of this. Just because we haven’t broken though as well as we should in the past is no excuse not to try like hell this time.

It’s also worth mentioning something the linked article doesn’t emphasize. This is all part of the FARM Bill. The family farm environment that still existed when I was young is gone. Sure, lots of family farms are still out there but farming has turned into Agribusiness. A corporate thing and corporations have plenty of money and lobbyists. Yes, it’s distasteful to work with such people but this is one of those times when Democrats in DC need to get off their freaking high-horses and form an alliance. Not just renewing but expanding SNAP is good for the family farms that are still out there, as well as Agribusiness.

And people need to eat. Preferably good, nutritious food and if you’ve never been poor or working poor and had to utilize SNAP (for the record I have) you know how tough it is to do so on the meager benefits most states provide. Those fresh veggies and fruits and non-processed meats cost more. It’s damned tough to stretch out what states provide, and I can’t imagine what goes through so many parent’s minds when they have to feed their kids junk sometimes because that’s all they can afford.

Keep an eye on this. And let legislators know that SNAP needs to be expanded in the new farm bill. If you’ve got (or contact) an asshat (a Republican who wears, or because they’re afraid might as well wear the MAGA hat) make sure they know you and others are watching to see what they will do on this. If you happen to live in a rural/small-town area start pushing your local Democratic Party to start hyping this. Like I said, just because we haven’t convinced white voters in these places yet doesn’t mean we should stop trying!

Without air we will die in minutes. Without water we will die in days. Without food we will die in weeks. Living on non-nutritious food means we aren’t living the way human beings should live. Everyone deserves to eat decent food. However, GOP legislators don’t believe that last part. Make sure they know it will cost them come election day if they don’t abandon their cruelty.