House Republicans vote to slash food stamps with disgraceful “let them starve” legislation

Once again, we have occa­sion to say: So much for com­pas­sion­ate con­ser­vatism.

By a vote of two hun­dred and sev­en­teen to two hun­dred and ten, the Repub­li­can-con­trolled U.S. House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives has vot­ed to make sig­nif­i­cant and destruc­tive cuts to SNAP, the Sup­ple­men­tal Nutri­tion Assis­tance Pro­gram, col­lo­qui­al­ly known as food stamps. Their leg­is­la­tion reduces fund­ing for SNAP by $4 bil­lion a year and would per­mit states (espe­cial­ly Repub­li­can-run states) to make drug tests or work require­ments a pre­req­ui­site for nutri­tion­al assistance.

To put their cuts in per­spec­tive, the amount of mon­ey that would be “saved” annu­al­ly under this scheme isn’t enough to even buy a third of a new Ger­ald R. Ford class air­craft car­ri­er (which the Unit­ed States is com­mit­ted to build­ing two of).

Repub­li­cans are per­fect­ly will­ing to spend huge amounts of mon­ey acquir­ing guns, tanks, and big ships, but when it comes to tak­ing care of Amer­i­ca’s most vul­ner­a­ble — for­get about it. They’d rather use Amer­i­ca’s com­mon wealth to buy bombs than help peo­ple who have noth­ing or very lit­tle to eat put some food on their table.

It’s just dis­grace­ful. As Pat­ty Mur­ray likes to say, they’ve got the wrong pri­or­i­ties.

Not a sin­gle Demo­c­rat vot­ed for the bill, and fif­teen Repub­li­cans vot­ed against it, includ­ing Don Young of Alas­ka, who appar­ent­ly lis­tened to his con­science pri­or to cast­ing a vote. The roll call for the Pacif­ic North­west was as fol­lows:

Vot­ing Aye: Repub­li­cans Doc Hast­ings, Cathy McMor­ris Rodgers, Dave Reichert (WA); Greg Walden (OR); Steve Daines (MT); Raúl Labrador and Mike Simp­son (ID)

Vot­ing Nay: Democ­rats Suzan Del­Bene, Rick Larsen, Derek Kilmer, Jim McDer­mott, Den­ny Heck, and Adam Smith (WA); Suzanne Bonam­i­ci, Earl Blu­me­nauer, Peter DeFazio and Kurt Schrad­er (OR); Repub­li­can Don Young (AK)

Not Vot­ing: Repub­li­can Jaime Her­rera-Beut­ler (WA)

Many Democ­rats deliv­ered force­ful speech­es in oppo­si­tion to H.R. 3102. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Lloyd Doggett of Texas appro­pri­ate­ly referred to the leg­is­la­tion as a “let them starve” bill. Demo­c­ra­t­ic Leader Nan­cy Pelosi deliv­ered an elo­quent, thought­ful speech against the bill, in which she not­ed:

The Repub­li­can pro­pos­al on the floor today slash­es at, on the legs on which many of these peo­ple stand. Indeed, cut­ting these invest­ments is a full assault on the health and eco­nom­ic secu­ri­ty of mil­lions of fam­i­lies. Con­sid­er this: one in five chil­dren, and it will soon become one in four, but one in five chil­dren strug­gle with hunger and near­ly half of all SNAP recip­i­ents are chil­dren; near­ly four mil­lion Amer­i­cans over age 60 rely on nutri­tion assis­tance; five thou­sand active-duty mil­i­tary fam­i­lies, active-duty [mil­i­tary] fam­i­lies rely on SNAP, depend on SNAP; near­ly three mil­lion vet­er­ans and their fam­i­lies don’t get enough to eat each month, and this bill will jeop­ar­dize food assis­tance for as many as 170,000 veterans.

Empha­sis is mine.

U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Suzan Del­Bene, who rep­re­sents NPI’s home con­gres­sion­al dis­trict, scold­ed Repub­li­cans for wast­ing every­one’s time with a scheme to slash SNAP when they know it has no chance of pass­ing the U.S. Sen­ate or being signed into law by Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma. (The White House has made it plain­ly clear the bill passed by the Repub­li­cans would be vetoed right away).

Del­Bene’s floor remarks were as follows:

Madam Speak­er, we’re debat­ing an extreme bill with no chance of becom­ing law, when we could be weeks into con­fer­enc­ing a farm bill.

SNAP has pre­vent­ed mil­lions from falling into pover­ty.  In the west­ern part of Wash­ing­ton state, 690,000 peo­ple are still expe­ri­enc­ing hunger—and we should not be arbi­trar­i­ly cut­ting off aid.

This bill would force states to cut off peo­ple strug­gling to find a job, also strip­ping them of trans­porta­tion and child­care assis­tance. If states don’t com­ply, they lose funds for SNAP Employ­ment and Train­ing pro­grams, like the mod­el pro­gram we have in Wash­ing­ton State that has led many to self-sufficiency.

Even at the height of the reces­sion, 60% in Washington’s pro­grams found employ­ment and more than half were off assis­tance two years after the program.

House lead­er­ship says this bill will lead to more peo­ple work­ing. But how does cut­ting pro­grams proven to help peo­ple find jobs accom­plish this?

All this bill does is cut the life­line for 3.8 mil­lion hun­gry Amer­i­can fam­i­lies, chil­dren, vet­er­ans and seniors.

This bill is not a seri­ous pro­pos­al. Vote no.

Thank­ful­ly, H.R. 3102 will be dead on arrival in the Sen­ate. Sen­a­tor Deb­bie Stabenow of Michi­gan has already flat­ly pro­nounced the bill dead, call­ing it a mon­u­men­tal waste of time. We agree. We can’t think of many pieces of leg­is­la­tion that are more deserv­ing of a quick bur­ial than this trav­es­ty of a bill.