WASHINGTON—Today, U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, emphasized the importance of SNAP and the risks it faces due to the House Republican Reconciliation bill at the Agriculture Spotlight Forum titled “Hunger by Design – The GOP’s Assault on SNAP.”
A rough transcript of Klobuchar’s questions is available below and a video can be downloaded here.
Senator Klobuchar: Very good. Well, follow up on Senator Fetterman's really excellent questions about that cost shift. And he noted, Pennsylvania, $1 billion shifted over to their state.
Look at the other numbers. West Virginia, $141 million shifted over. Kentucky, $172 million shifted over. Texas, over a billion dollars they would have to absorb under this big, beautiful betrayal. North Carolina, I mentioned early, $584 million. Missouri, $376 million shifted over. Arkansas, a small state, $109 million shifted over. And as I mentioned, 41 of these states have balanced budget amendments, they're not going to be able to absorb it.
Could you, Ms. Guinn, talk about how there is absolutely no way, despite the sleight of hand and the claims that are truly lies, when they say this doesn't involve cuts. Why this sleight of hand, in these enormous amounts while grocery prices are up and going up? Why that, in fact, involves cost shifts that involve cuts? There is no way this doesn't involve cuts.
Barbara Guinn: Thank you, absolutely would be happy to do that.
As I mentioned earlier, the cost shifts currently would result in over $2.1 billion every year for New York State and potentially our local governments.
These are costs that we cannot absorb without taking negative action. As I mentioned earlier, hunger will continue. It's not going to go away simply because certain members of Congress have decided to shift the responsibility for the SNAP program to the states. Hunger will continue.
Our hope is that we would be able to find a way to continue SNAP. But honestly, that can only happen if other factors take place. It's not magic, so it's either we increase taxes, which we don't want to do. We've worked hard to keep taxes down, and recently to reduce taxes for the lowest-income and working families. Or we would have to make cuts in other priority areas, including education, environmental impact, other really important things for our state and for our governor.
Klobuchar: Very good. And Ms. Anderson, my last question here. There's many people who suggest that we shouldn't worry about SNAP, because the charitable and nonprofit community are going to step in and pick up the slack. Can they do that? And what is your capacity to do that right now?
Katy Anderson: Thank you, Senator, for that great question.
There is a desire, I would say, by the charitable food network, to do whatever we possibly can to meet the need of the moment. But the reality is that we're talking about the need to double, or even triple, current outputs. In New Mexico this past year, we were able to get 39.1 million meals out into the state, and the cost shift would look somewhere in the neighborhood of 95 million meals in a deficit.
So we would be looking at, in order to just keep things steady, 95 million meals, plus 39.1 million meals, and needing to be able to get to that point. And quite honestly, the food just isn't there. Food costs money. We do get donations in, which make a wonderful difference, but we're not going to suddenly get 95 million meals worth of food. And we have to truck that food. We have to have partners that can take that food on and store it safely. It would be an impossible thing.
Klobuchar: Thank you. And I want to thank all the witnesses, and certainly thank Senator Luján and his staff, for their work on this, as well as my Ag staff that helped out a little bit. You did a great job. We had huge attendance of senators. And it just shows you can see the different, you know, different parts of the country, from Georgia to Pennsylvania to Minnesota to New Mexico represented here, and you can see the arguments that I think are really clear cut. About, why are you going to reduce taxes for multi millionaires and billionaires, and even more than what they already have, which we could actually change that we could say we're not going to reduce, we're not going to add any taxes for people making under, whatever you want to say, $400 [thousand] a year, but we are going to make some changes at the top, because that could help pay for things like housing and childcare and the deficit. Instead, they went the opposite. They doubled down on more tax cuts for billionaires, paid for on the backs of people, seniors, kids, veterans, who are simply trying to get food. So that's very clear.
And then you've got this crazy cost shift sleight of hand, which we have to get the governors in these red states, some of whom are Democrats, some of whom are Republicans, some of whom have stepped up and talked about this, and we need them to come out and say what this really is about. And then I think the grocery argument that was made, and what this means to grocery stores who've also been standing up. Little grocery stores in small towns that barely exist on the margins anyway, and we need them there.
So it's an entire ecosystem that has distinguished our country, because we're able to grow our food and the farmers are affected by this big time. We are able to sell our food at grocery stores and have a distribution network across our country, including food banks for those who need help here and there, and we're able to support our people in this country. And this big, beautiful betrayal goes the opposite way.
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