The federal government has been shut down for 28 days and counting. That’s 28 days too long and already the second-longest federal shutdown ever.
Saturday will be another grim milestone. That is the day about 42 million Americans will lose federal food assistance.
Congress must not let that happen. America is a great and wealthy nation, and our most important wealth is our generosity of spirit.
We help those in need. We provide for the widow and the orphan. Love of neighbor is part of who we are. The Scripture’s injunction to “remember the poor” is a principle Americans have lived by. It’s time Congress does the same.
The government shutdown has already touched countless lives, and not for the better.
Key services have been curtailed and hundreds of thousands of federal employees — from air traffic controllers to Capitol Police officers — are working without pay.
But letting federal food assistance lapse would introduce an entirely new stage of suffering. The best solution would be to pass a clean funding bill to reopen the government in its entirety, but if that can’t be done, Congress at the very least needs to pass my bill to ensure food assistance continues uninterrupted.
Millions of Americans rely on food assistance just to get by. The program often known as food stamps — officially it’s now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP — is a lifeline that permits the needy to purchase basic food items at the grocery store.
Last year, SNAP enrollees hit about 42 million. That’s over 12 percent of the American population.
We’re not talking about high earners who don’t really need the assistance.
SNAP broadly limits assistance to those who make 130 percent of the poverty line and below.
These days, that’s folks who earn about $42,000 or less for a family of four. For these good people, food assistance is not an optional extra. They need it to feed their children.
The millions of Americans who receive food assistance include young parents raising children, men and women with disabilities, families suffering from temporary job loss and workers who have fallen on hard times.
Among SNAP’s many beneficiaries are veterans. Approximately 1.2 million of our warriors receive food assistance.
Surely it is not hard to understand why SNAP is so essential to so many. The American economy has not been kind to working people in recent years. What cost $100 five years ago costs $125 today. So if you’re not earning 25 percent more than you were five years ago, you’re getting poorer. That’s most families in America. And nowhere do they feel it more than at the grocery store.
But nobody in America, this richest of nations, should go to bed hungry, and certainly no child.
