Gregorio Sablan: “My amendment is intended to ensure that the Northern Mariana Islands Nutritional Assistance Program has enough funding…”

“My amendment is intended to ensure that the Northern Mariana Islands Nutritional Assistance Program has enough funding, so that household income eligibility standards and benefit levels currently in place for FY19 are kept in place throughout FY20. We do not want anyone removed from eligibility or barred from the program because there is not enough money next year. We do not want anyone to have their benefits cut. We have worked hard and long to raise benefits in the Marianas to match neighboring Guam and to meet the true costs of food in our islands. We do not want that progress lost. I do not expect cuts to happen. We provided generously for the Marianas in the disaster supplemental appropriation enacted earlier this month, Public Law 116-20. We appropriated $25.2 million for disaster nutrition assistance in response to the Presidentially declared major disasters--we had two last year: Typhoon Mangkut and Super Typhoon Yutu--and for emergencies. And we made the funds available for all fiscal year 2020. The Marianas had already used $10.6 million of our annual block grant and other monies to pay for disaster nutrition assistance in response to these two typhoons. It is the intent of Congress that the new disaster funding in Public Law 116-20 be applied retroactively to make whole those other funding sources. Going forward, we are concerned about the economic emergency that has developed in the aftermath of the typhoons.…”