Political Quotes

“I would like to underscore a couple of points that the gentleman is making here. The first is the fact that this does disproportionately affect the poor and those who are striving to become a part of the middle class. At the same time, there are corporate subsidies, billions of dollars of corporate subsidies for the agriculture industry in the farm bill and in other legislation that has come before this House that they will move expeditiously and then leave the food behind in the farm bill, for the first time that I am aware of that we have approved a farm bill without also including the food assistance component to it. They later came back and included it, but with a $40 billion cut. And the positive economic impacts of this cannot be underscored either. I hear from representatives from the retail industry who tell me that SNAP creates some $340 million in farm production for each $1 billion of retail that is generated. There is some 3,300 farm jobs that are created for each $1 billion of funding that is provided for; that for every $1 billion of SNAP benefits, it also creates between 9,000 to 18,000 full-time jobs. So not only is this the right thing to do, not only is it the morally conscionable thing to do, it is also good for the economy.…”