Congress Wants to Cut Food Stamps After Giving 1% a Big Tax Break

Talking Points on Republican House Proposal to Cut SNAP

• Republicans claim that cutting food stamps will put more people back to work, but the truth is most people who get SNAP who can work already do. Nearly 60% of working age people who get SNAP work in the same month they receive benefits and over 80% work in the same year.
• Although the Republicans’ claim they will provide “guaranteed” job training to help workers get into the workforce, there’s little money in the bill for that training. Instead, the bill passes the buck to states and ignores the reality that whether people are trained or not, there aren’t enough good-paying jobs that support families without public assistance.
• In fact, the bill puts more money into creating new red tape and bureaucracy to track who is working rather than actually making sure people have jobs that don’t require them to depend on SNAP. The bill would require 7.4 million people to prove monthly that they are either working 20 hours a week or in job training and would end states’ ability to waive these requirements even in times of recession or areas of high unemployment like rural communities.
• The bill also extends the work requirements that already exist in SNAP to older people ages 50-59 even though evidence shows that it’s harder for older people to find employment.

The partisan Republican farm bill isn’t fooling anyone: punishing kids, seniors, people with disabilities and low wage workers won’t get people back to work or help the economy just like tax breaks for the rich haven’t created jobs or helped the middle class.

Instead, the current Republican SNAP proposals are designed to shrink the food stamp program so that Republicans can free up more money to pay for their massive tax giveaway.

Call your Representative today at 1-888-398-8702.

Tell them to protect food access and vote NO on the Farm Bill that cuts food stamps for millions of Americans who can’t afford to eat. 

Additional SNAP facts on who depends on SNAP in West Virginia can be found here and here.

Americans Have Had Enough of These Upside-down Priorities

If we can afford to give the richest 1% of households, prescription drug manufacturers, banks, and the nation’s most profitable companies tax breaks, then we can afford Medicaid, food stamps, and other services for seniors, kids, people with disabilities and people working for minimum wage.

• These work requirement proposals in SNAP, like the ones proposed in Medicaid, are designed to cut benefits and stigmatize poor people and low wage workers who are facing rigged odds in today’s economy, while the rich and corporations get more benefits at their expense.
• The richest 1% of households and wealthy Wall Street shareholders who are getting over 80% of the tax breaks in the new tax law are not required to prove that they work or that they have done anything to earn the tremendous benefits they are receiving, even though the new law is costing the rest of us trillions in cuts and deficit increases.

If Republican lawmakers want to improve work and end reliance on public benefits, they should take action to raise the minimum wage which has been stuck at $7.25 for almost a decade, create more good-paying full time jobs, lower the cost of child care so more women can work outside the home, and stop cutting public education funding so that more young people can have access to the college, vocational and job training they need for higher-paying jobs.

Call your Representative today at 1-888-398-8702. Tell them to vote NO on the Farm Bill. 

If we can afford tax cuts for the wealthy and big corporations, we can afford the food that working families need to survive.