Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, wrote an op-ed in The New York Times on Tuesday urging his colleagues to help a invoice he’s sponsoring that might fund the SNAP program by way of the shutdown.
The Division of Agriculture mentioned federal meals help won’t exit on Nov. 1.
“Saturday will probably be one other grim milestone,” Hawley wrote. “That’s the day about 42 million Individuals will lose federal meals help.”
Hawley’s laws is named the Keep SNAP Funded Act and would supply “such sums as are mandatory to offer uninterrupted advantages” beneath SNAP.
Hawley mentioned the shutdown “has already touched numerous lives, and never for the higher,” highlighting the toll of the funding lapse on key providers and the way it has pressured hundreds of federal workers to work with out pay.
“However letting federal meals help lapse would introduce a wholly new stage of struggling,” he mentioned.
Hawley referred to as passing a “clear” funding measure to reopen the federal government the “greatest answer.” But when the stalemate continues, he mentioned “Congress on the very least must go my invoice to make sure meals help continues uninterrupted.”
The Missouri Republican pointed to what he is heard from his constituents, together with a retired trainer who wrote to him about her grandchildren who depend on the meals help to purchase groceries, and a girl who mentioned she and her disabled husband likewise want the help.
“There isn’t any purpose any of those residents of my state — or every other American who qualifies for meals help — ought to go hungry,” Hawley mentioned. “We will afford to offer the assistance.”
Hawley bemoaned the politics of the shutdown, saying “Republicans blame Democrats, and Democrats blame Republicans, however all these individuals have meals to spare.”
“However this is not about politics in any respect in the long run. It is about who we’re,” he mentioned. “The character of a nation is revealed not in quarterly income or C.E.O. pay, however in the way it treats the small and forgotten — the final, the least, the misplaced.”
