While cuts to most social safety net programs are inevitable, the nation’s senior-most senator said Monday the House’s proposed low-income food assistance funding is a “joke.”
“That goes beyond politics, that becomes a moral issue,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.
Leahy joined Gov. Peter Shumlin Monday for a news conference at the Central Vermont Community Action Council in Barre to announce a bill that creates incentives for donations to food banks.
Funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program – commonly known as SNAP – has suffered from the expiration of the 2009 economic stimulus and subsequent slashes to federal safety net programs.
The Republican-led House voted to cut $40 billion from the program in September. The Senate’s version of the bill proposes about $4 billion in cuts. A Senate-House conference committee is working on a compromise.
Vermont’s congressional delegation – Leahy, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt. – oppose the House’s proposed cuts. SNAP funds the state’s food assistance program, 3SquaresVT.
Previous cuts have left Vermont’s 3Squares program too lean and neither the state nor charities can make up the difference, said John Sayles, chief executive officer of the Vermont Foodbank.
“What the federal government does is paramount when it comes to hunger,” Sayles said. “The charitable system cannot make up the slack.”
He said the Vermont Foodbank receives about 40 percent of its food from federal funding. He said the Nov. 1 reduction in food stamp benefits was a $10 million loss for Vermonters in need.
Shumlin said the House’s proposed cuts will force 100,000 Vermonters to go hungry. After Nov. 1, a Vermont family of four saw a $36 per month reduction in 3Squares benefits.
“Are we willing to sit back while the Tea Party folks in Congress say to over 100,000 Vermonters who rely on them to put food on the table, ‘Go ahead, let them go hungry. Instead charge the wars to the credit card and make hungry Vermonters pay the bill’?” Shumlin said.
In an effort to combat anemic funding for the nation’s food assistance program, a bipartisan congressional group, joined by Leahy, will introduce legislation expanding tax incentives for food bank donations.
The Good Samaritan Hunger Relief Tax Incentive Act would provide tax incentives for small businesses, restaurants and farms to donate to food banks – the same benefit enjoyed by corporations such as Kellogg’s. The incentive would make it practical for small businesses to write off donations to food banks.
Sayles praised Leahy’s push for the bill, but said it will not offset the federal cuts.
“It can’t possibly make a big enough dent,” he said. “We’re really talking about the margins here. … It’s going to take a lot more than some added food donations to really make up the difference for 3Squares funds.”
