On the recordJune 20, 2019
I thank the chairman for yielding. I want to continue to work with the gentleman and the Appropriations Committee's Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies to fight the administration's reprehensible attempts to increase hunger in our country, including through USDA's proposed and harmful able-bodied adults without dependents rule. As the gentleman well knows, SNAP is a critical antihunger program that helps many families struggling with food insecurity. What I find so counterintuitive about this rule is that the most common reason for seeking SNAP is because someone is losing a job, which is even more critical for those who have barriers to employment or who are already at the margins of the workforce. As many experts have testified to Congress, the labor market experience of SNAP participants, as it is for so many low-paid workers, is highly unstable, and participants tend to cycle in and out of full- time employment. This rule would cut food aid for between 755,000 and 821,000 individuals from red States, blue States, and purple States, and from rural, urban, and suburban communities, without any regard to the barriers they may face or the fact that they may live in areas or ZIP Codes or Census tracts that lack jobs, or that companies are moving, or other unanticipated egresses from the workforce.…
