Tensions High Surrounding SNAP
Hill 23 (Meredith Lee Hill, Meredith Lee is a food and agriculture policy reporter for POLITICO. She previously spent six years at NewsHour covering the 2016 and 2020 campaigns, the Trump and Biden administrations, Congress and economic policy. Her work included supply chain and food insecurity issues, the Trump and Biden Covid-19 responses in rural communities and efforts to overhaul immigration for migrant agriculture workers. “The Next SNAP Battle”. Politico. June 5, 2023. https://www.politico.com/newsletters/weekly-agriculture/2023/06/05/the-next-snap-battle-00100057. Accessed 7/13/2023)//EKW
IT BEGINS: On Wednesday, the full House Agriculture committee is holding its first hearing on nutrition programs — following the contentious fight over SNAP in the debt talks. As we’ve reported, Democrats have complained that the committee has yet to hold any hearings on the matter — while they argue some Republicans spread false claims about SNAP and program recipients during the debt talks. The hearing will set up a major fight between Republicans and Democrats in the House during the upcoming farm bill reauthorization later this summer. UPCOMING FIGHT: But the Senate and House are on an even bigger collision course over the topic of SNAP. Senate Agriculture Chair Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) last week told MA that, from her perspective, Congress is “done” with any discussion around SNAP changes. “What’s clear to me is once this is done we are not revisiting it in the farm bill. This is it,” Stabenow said in an interview. But Speaker Kevin McCarthy, in his speech last Wednesday night celebrating the House’s passage of the debt bill, appeared to gear his caucus up for a bruising farm bill battle over SNAP. “Let’s get the rest of the work requirements,” McCarthy said. Remember: Some House Republican hardliners are even more eager to push stricter SNAP work requirements in the farm bill after they felt the debt agreement between Biden and McCarthy “watered down” what was in their original bill. A wide swath of House Republicans were also not pleased that CBO projected all the SNAP work requirement changes in the debt bill will actually increase spending and enrollment for the program — which Republicans have been trying to cut. McCarthy had originally pitched the new work requirements as a way to keep the U.S. from borrowing more money from China to pay able-bodied people not to work, but the CBO projection directly undermines that claim. Senior Republicans dispute that projection. But regardless, three House GOP hardliners told MA the CBO analysis just proved how “embarrassing” the Republican-led negotiations were.