Steven Holt: “I thank my friend from Connecticut. I thank Mr. Becerra for his heartfelt and very moving remarks, and I thank Ms.…”

“I thank my friend from Connecticut. I thank Mr. Becerra for his heartfelt and very moving remarks, and I thank Ms. Speier from California. Look at this. Look at this map: 46 million Americans rely on SNAP. More than 9 million others rely on WIC, which is the Women, Infants, and Children food assistance. In New Jersey, my home State, more than 1 million residents rely on SNAP benefits to keep food on the tables. Then the budget, the Republican-Ryan budget, endorsed by Mitt Romney, would shred our social safety net while cutting taxes for the wealthy. It would cut food stamps, as these are generally known, by $133 billion over 10 years. The authors of this or anyone who voted for it should walk a little bit in those shoes. I've walked in the shoes. More specifically, I've walked down the supermarket aisle with beneficiaries, with people who work in the food assistance programs, with food bank representatives. How does it go? Well, you can't buy that. No, you can't afford that. Oh, Mommy, can I have this? No. We're going to have to put that back on the shelf. $31.50 a week. Nobody is doing this to have a little taste of luxury. Yet we have people come to the floor here in the House and say, before any of these millions of people get this assistance, they should have drug tests or means tests. I call them suspicion tests. Somehow they're trying to rip us off. No, these are not welfare queens. Look, the average recipient is on these benefits for less than a year.…”