Democrats are deeply conflicted about the food aid requirements that Biden negotiated as part of the debt ceiling deal, fearing damage has been done to safety net programs that will be difficult to unravel in years ahead as Republicans demand more cuts.
“In order for this country to not default on its bills, we then turned and made our most vulnerable communities default," said Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo. Years before she came to Congress, Bush lived in a car with her then-husband and two young children after the family had been evicted from their rental home.provides monthly funds — sometimes as little as $6 a day — to allow low-income individuals and families to buy groceries.
The White House countered that Republican proposition by getting GOP lawmakers to waive the work requirements for new groups — veterans, individuals who are homeless or facing housing instability and youth aging out of foster care — to balance out the number of people who would now be facing these new restrictions.An estimate from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office
“What we should not be playing is oppression Olympics,” Bush said. “Like which one gets to hurt today? Which one gets to get to that finish line to hurt today? That’s not where we should be as a society.” They weren't alone. Several dozen Democrats in the House and a handful in the Senate voted against the compromise, arguing that the bill allowed for Republican hostage-taking and could open the door for future cuts to these government programs in the next several months.
"The most important thing to me is the fact that this closes the door on that debate," said Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, who leads the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee and has been a longtime champion and defender of the SNAP program. “We are not going to bring it up again in the farm bill. This is not something that’s going to be renegotiated. It’s done.
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