Thread by @rebeccavallas

🚨 🚨 Just months after giving $1.5 trillion in tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans, House Republicans just unveiled a radical Farm Bill that would dismantle the nation’s main source of nutrition assistance for struggling workers and families.

Here’s how.

(THREAD)

The bill is a thinly disguised ploy to take food away from struggling workers and families in the name of “helping people work.” NEWS FLASH: Making someone hungrier won’t help them find work any faster. 2/x

Jobless workers are already subject to a harsh 3-month time limit on SNAP in most parts of the country unless they are working 20 hours a week. The bill would make these time limits even harsher in a whole slew of ways. 3/x

For starters, the bill would extend SNAP’s time limits to older Americans age 50 to 60—a group that faces some of the greatest barriers to work. This is a recipe for massively increasing hunger and malnutrition among seniors. 4/x

It would also extend SNAP’s harsh time limits to parents with children over age 6—as though caregiving obligations disappear once a kid hits school age. Parents & kids both will go hungry since whole families lose SNAP when a parent gets sanctioned for not meeting work rules. 5/x

House Republicans claim no one will lose SNAP if they’re willing to work or participate in job training. But the so-called job training “guarantee” in the bill is actually a woefully underfunded mandate for states—paid for by taking food off the tables of struggling families. 6/x

Particularly nasty: A worker can face a full YEAR-LONG LOCKOUT the first time she fails to meet the newly harshened time limits—and a staggering THREE-YEAR LOCKOUT for the second “violation” (since House Republicans felt the need to use criminalizing language). 7/x

House Republicans say they're raising SNAP’s outdated asset limits—and they are, to $7K for an individual/$12K for a family. But a closer read reveals they’re simultaneously ending states’ flexibility to set asset limits above the federal floor—which now becomes a ceiling. 8/x

This would set back years of progress in 40+ states that have raised or eliminated asset limits in SNAP to enable families to save for the future and get ahead. 9/x

The bill is chock full of new red tape & paperwork requirements, including taking away a wonky-sounding provision called “categorical eligibility” which has enabled states to reduce costly bureaucracy, paperwork, and churn. This from the party who claims to <3 "streamlining."10/x

There’s also lots of just plain mean-spirited stuff. Like a new policy limiting families to 2 replacement EBT cards per year. Families will literally be unable to access their food assistance for the rest of the year if they lose or damage their card more than twice. 11/x

There’s lots more in there, and it gets pretty wonky, so stay tuned for more in the hours and days ahead. But in the meantime, I’ll end on the following note.... 12/x

THIS BILL IS NOT ABOUT HELPING PEOPLE WORK. If House Republicans were serious about investing in job training, they wouldn’t be taking food out of the mouths of struggling workers to pay for it—after giving $1.5 trillion in tax cuts to the wealthiest people in this country. 13/x

What this bill is really about is erecting as many barriers as possible to people accessing food assistance when they need it. As my friend @IndivarD put it earlier this week, it should probably be called the Increasing Paperwork, Bureaucracy, and Red Tape Act. 14/x

Scores of workers and families will end up losing needed food assistance because they'll get caught up in red tape -- including eligible workers who can't navigate all the new paperwork requirements. 15/x

If the House GOP were serious about helping people work, they would address barriers to work like unpredictable, fluctuating schedules and lack of affordable, high-quality childcare. And they would make sure all workers have adequate nutrition so they can thrive on the job. 16/x

So what next?

As soon as next week, the House will mark up this ugly bill. From there, Republican sources suggest its author @ConawayTX11 wants to bring it to the floor for a vote as soon as early May. 17/x

That means for the next few weeks, we need to light up the phones in the House and tell them #HandsOff SNAP.

This number takes you to a switchboard that will connect you with your member of Congress 👇
202-224-3121

18/x

Remember it's an election year -- and don't be afraid to remind your member of Congress of that when you call. Tell them you'll remember in November. (And yes Dems need to hear from you too, not just Republicans!) 19/x

And if you or a loved one has been helped by SNAP, consider sharing your story at handsoff.org -- we at @amprog want to work with you to help policymakers understand how devastating cutting SNAP would be. /end for now