This year, Congress gave every millionaire in the United States a $51,000 tax break under the new tax law that Republicans passed in 2017. To pay for the new tax law, Republicans in Congress are proposing a whole new array of cuts to public programs starting with big cuts in the Farm Bill that would make it harder for millions to put food on the table for their families.

The House Republican Farm Bill (H.R. 2) cuts $20 billion from SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) by creating new requirements, red tape, and bureaucratic hoops that will make it much harder to access critical benefits. The bill is currently under consideration by the House Rules Committee and will be up for a vote later this week. 

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. 

Background on SNAP

• SNAP is a public-private partnership program that makes up a critical part of the national social safety net: it helps more than 40 million people get enough food to eat including children, seniors, women, and low wage workers who depend on food stamps to make ends meet.
• About two-thirds of SNAP recipients are children, seniors and people with disabilities.
• The nation’s lowest wage earners depend on SNAP because they either don’t make enough to make ends meet consistently or they are not continuously employed. Research shows that over half of minimum and low-wage workers in occupations like restaurant and food service, hotel, retail, etc. qualify for food stamps because their wages are insufficient to keep up with cost of living.
• Rather than raise the minimum wage that has been stuck at $7.25 for nearly ten years or creating more good paying jobs, Republicans want to make 7 million people prove they work hard enough to deserve food. 
• Women are more likely to depend on SNAP since women are more likely to be in low-wage jobs or be unemployed because the demands of caregiving make it hard to find and keep employment and the high cost of child-care put employment out of reach. Women of color, who are more likely to be raising children alone, to be living in poverty and to be earning less than white women and white men because of the gender and racial pay gap, will be most impacted by cuts to SNAP.

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

For more talking points on the Republican plan to cut SNAP click here.

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

Yours for Action,

Team WV CAG