More Than Two Dozen House Democrats Doing SNAP Challenge to Protest Republican Cuts
As the Republican-led House prepares to vote for deep cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps, more than two dozen House Democrats are doing a SNAP challenge, feeding themselves for a week on the average benefit level of about $4.50 a day.
Rep. Barbara Lee, one of the House members doing the challenge, wrote a blog post describing her shopping trip, trying to find fruits and vegetables within her budget (a yam at 49 cents a pound, the smallest apple in the store) and reading the tuna noodle casserole boxes to find one that doesn't require adding butter or milk, just water.
"When I was a young, single mother, I was on public assistance. It was a bridge over troubled water, and without it, I wouldn't be where I am today. I spent hours debating what to buy and what to skip, all the while keeping my sons in my mind. I could go without breakfast; my sons couldn't. I went through the grocery store today thinking about what I wanted, not what my sons would eat, but that wasn't always the case. I would have bought ground beef and white bread for them, not yams, and certainly not tuna."
The majority of people doing a food stamp challenge, though, don't bring that knowledge to the project, don't know what it's like to live on $4.50 of food a day as something other than an experiment, or what it's like to not have a grocery store conveniently close by. (I didn't.) But it's at least an attempt to understand—an attempt House Republicans apparently aren't interested in making, because who wants to muck around with empathy when you could just be making cuts?
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