Ask Jared #1: SNAP and the Farm Bill

Congressman Jared Huffman responds to a constituent's email regarding SNAP benefit cuts in the House Farm Bill. Transcript: Hi, I'm Congressman Jared Huffman, and I'm starting this video series, called Ask Jared, where I'm trying to start a conversation about issues that I'm hearing from my Northern Californian constituents. This will just be me in my own words responding to messages that I've heard from you, my constituents. Our country has a huge number of problems. We're dealing on the global level with things like climate change. We have a fragile economic recovery here at home. Millions of people are suffering because of the sequester. We have a broken immigration system. And of course, Congress continues to be ruled by gridlock and partisan dysfunction. I want you to know that I'm here in Washington fighting for you, but I'm also listening to you. So, I'll be recording these videos as often as I can. I hope that you will click here and visit my website so that we can keep in touch and I also hope you'll join me on Facebook and Twitter over here—another way to keep in touch and let you know the work I'm doing for you in Washington. Thanks a lot. [Cut to video response] I'm responding today to an email that I received from Carla, from Corte Madera. Carla wrote to me expressing her opposition to the deep $20 billion in cuts that the House Republicans were proposing to the food stamps program, or the SNAP program, in the Farm Bill. She urged me to oppose those cuts. I want to assure you, Carla, and everyone else, who supports the food stamp program, that I do indeed oppose those cuts. In fact, to highlight the draconian nature of those cuts and to express my opposition to them, last week I did something called the SNAP Challenge. This is where Members of Congress try to live on $4.50 a day for their food budget. This is the average benefit for a food stamp recipient. My colleague Barbara Lee signed up a number of us to do it. It was a very important experience for me. It really helped personalize for me what a challenge it is for families who have to live not just for a few days, like I did, but for months and even years at a time, on a very, very limited food budget. It's tough. It's tough to get a balanced diet. It's very hard to get fresh food and have the kind of nutrition that you need. And it's important to remember that 75% of food stamp recipients are households with children—they're families. So, there are all sorts of reasons to appreciate just how modest this benefit is. 25% of the households, by the way, have seniors or disabled members of their household, so there are often going to be special dietary needs that have to be met, while providing all the nutritional needs on $4.50 a day. It's not easy to do, and it's certainly not an extravagant benefit, by any measure. To propose a $20 billion cut to this benefit was certainly a bridge too far in my opinion, and it was one of several reasons why I did vote no on the House Farm Bill last week. There were other bad parts of this Farm Bill as well, lots of benefits that tilted too heavily in the favor of large, corporate agribusiness in the Midwest and in the South. There was a provision that would have actually put California egg farmers out of business by preempting all state health and food safety standards. So, it was a bad bill, and it failed pretty miserably: a bipartisan group of members voted against it. The problem is that the Farm Bill really is an important piece of policy. It has critical programs that we need, and so we can't just allow it die. We've got to get back to work on a good, responsible Farm Bill, like the bipartisan one that passed the United States Senate a month ago. So that's what I'll be pushing for, and you can bet that in that process, I'll be pushing against any further cuts in the SNAP supplemental nutrition program. Thanks, Carla.