Jim McGovern

Thank you. That is a very powerful argument against block granting.

But I also have concerns with proposals that would limit the ability of smaller format retailers to participate in the SNAP Program, which would prevent SNAP recipients from access to food.

I sympathize with the goal of making healthier foods more available to people, and helping people make better choices in terms of what they buy.

There is an obligation on the Social Security Administration to help low-income seniors apply for SNAP at Social Security

The benefit itself is woefully inadequate, $1.40 per person, per meal, per day.

What the hell else do we want them to do?

Maybe we ought to be talking about raising the minimum wage to a livable wage, because the majority of people on SNAP who are able to work, work.

I think that would be a disaster. I think it would be catastrophic.

The notion that we are going to impose more requirements, more hoops for people to jump through... is cruel.

SNAP is one of the most efficiently and effectively run programs in our Federal Government, with one of the lowest error rates of any program.

It is not a boon, it is, in fact, a very limited existence.

These people are not lazy.

There would be 60,000 veterans, is the best estimates that we have been able to gather, that would lose their benefits.

Many of these poor individuals who will be cut off are veterans, they have honorably served our country, and some of them are now deeply struggling.

These so-called reforms have been put into place. But, no one in Congress is on food stamps, no one is on SNAP.

Charities can't do this alone.

This reflects a failure of government to respond adequately.

We live in the richest country in the history of the world, and we have a big chunk of our population that doesn't know whether they can put food on the table.

We have known for a long time that Speaker Ryan supports block-granting SNAP. We have seen it year after year in his budgets.

If we have any function in this Congress, it ought to be to making sure that the least among us are not forgotten.

But if that is where all of this is going, that is bad news for poor people, and it is bad news for the vulnerable populations that our witnesses here today represent.

Well, Speaker Ryan and Republican presidential candidates gave us the answer last Saturday at their so-called forum on poverty in South Carolina, and I have to say that I am deeply troubled.

Block-granting SNAP is a bad idea, period.

Simply put, SNAP is working.

We can talk about all the different ways to improve SNAP-Ed, and we should, and we ought to.