Only four democrats voted against the debt ceiling and budget cuts package that passed the Senate in early June and was then ultimately approved by President Joe Biden. One of them was Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman, and for him it came down to a single issue: the idea of more Americans going hungry.
"Cut SNAP for families and kids while pushing tax cuts for billionaires? Not on my watch," said Fetterman in a statement.
For months leading up to the vote to raise the debt ceiling — which the country needed to do later this year to avoid a default crisis — there were murmurs that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy wanted to expand the age bracket for people who must meet work requirements in order to participate in the Supplemental Nutrition Food Assistance Program or SNAP.
This isn't a surprise. As Politico's Meredith Leigh Hill put it in April, "cutting spending on federal food assistance programs is a perennial Republican target." However, the broader hunger landscape in the United States is particularly dire right now. As Salon Food reported in March, food insecurity experts predicted that the country was "racing toward a looming 'hunger cliff,'" as pandemic-era emergency SNAP benefits were set to expire this year.
Prior to the pandemic, people younger than 50 who met certain requirements had to volunteer, work or receive job training for 80 hours a month in order to receive regular assistance. Yet after weeks of debate, the new budget cuts package now raises the age of recipients required to work to 55 and, according to The Center for Public Integrity, makes it harder for states to waive work rules in areas with high unemployment. Notable exceptions include if someone is experiencing homelessness, is a military veteran or if they are a youth aged 18 to 24 who has aged out of the foster care system.
These are some of the most consequential revisions to SNAP in decades and, according to the Alliance to End Hunger, they come as 25.4 million Americans reported experiencing food insecurity in May, an increase of over 800,000 from April and nearly 1.3 million from March.
"The stakes could not have been higher," Biden said after approving the debt ceiling package, also called the Fiscal Responsibility Act. "If we had failed to reach an agreement on the budget, there were extreme voices threatening to take America — for the first time in our 247-year history — into default on our national debt. Nothing would have been more irresponsible. Nothing would have been more catastrophic."
"I won't give Republicans an opening to try and take food from more food insecure Americans"
However, Fetterman discussed his reasons for voting against the package.
"I did not agree to these SNAP restrictions, and I won't give Republicans an opening to try and take food from more food insecure Americans in Farm Bill negotiations later this year," Fetterman wrote in a statement following the vote. "That is why I voted no tonight."
While, as NPR reports, lawmakers are still are still parsing through what all the budgetary changes — which Biden approved on June 3 and which go into effect on July 1— will ultimately mean, the negotiations laid bare a larger concern for hunger advocates, namely that Republican leadership will use this win to continue pushing for policies that will only make more Americans food insecure.
In an emailed statement, Eric Mitchell, the executive director of the Alliance to End Hunger, said that the work requirements for which Republicans pushed are "punitive and ineffective."
"They perpetuate the myth that people on economic assistance programs choose not to work when the evidence clearly shows otherwise, and by taking vital support away from SNAP participants, they actually make it harder to secure and maintain employment," he said.
According to The Center for Public Integrity, several key studies have been conducted — including a major study published in February from researchers at the University of Rochester, the University of California, Berkeley, Harvard and the University of Maryland — found that SNAP work requirements have no real impact on a person's earning or employment status.
The majority of the studies, including the one from February, found that work requirements often simply lead to many hungry people losing food assistance.
"The fact that [work requirements] don't achieve the rationale behind the policy — to increase work — is pretty important," said Adam Leive, an assistant professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, told the Center. "And we found that it's the people who are most economically vulnerable who end up leaving SNAP."
McCarthy has already started alluding to the fact that he would like to continue making cuts to the assistantship program.
Following the vote, he said, "This is great. I think it is wonderful that they [Democrats] voted for it. They are now on record. They can't sit there and yell, 'This isn't good.'... Let's get the rest of the IRS agents, the rest of the work requirements."
In a statement shared on Twitter, Fetterman echoed the concern of food security advocates.
"As chair of the Nutrition subcommittee on Agriculture, SNAP benefits fall within my jurisdiction in the upcoming Farm Bill," he wrote. "Speaker McCarthy gloated at Democrats that Republicans will push for additional work requirements beyond what is in this bill, saying, 'Let's get the rest of the work requirements. Let's cut more…'"
He continued: "Given that Republicans are more obsessed with hurting poor people than holding banks accountable, you'd think that someone who didn't have a job could crash our economy."
