US Representative Derrick Van Orden campaigned for his Wisconsin 3rd Congressional District seat stressing his intention to cut government costs by targeting waste, fraud and abuse in government spending. Now, sitting on the House Agriculture Committee he could wield a decisive vote in determining how the committee will, as instructed by the Trump Administration, cut $230 billion in spending from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). These proposed cuts will take food from the tables of the poorest families in this country to pay for tax cuts for the richest 1% of Americans.
SNAP is a recurring target for Van Orden’s Republican Party. Van Orden has spoken as a defender of the program, even sharing his own story of his family relying on SNAP benefits when he was a kid. He called the program “a hand up, not a hand out”. Yet this week, DVO has a decision to make. Will he defend the nation’s largest anti-hunger program, vital for so many low income families? Or will he side with the Trump administration and decimate a program that well over 40 million people rely on who, as Van Orden notes, just need a hand up.
I would hope, that as even the President has grudgingly admitted that his tariffs will cause prices to rise, Van Orden would recall his gratitude for that “hand up” when he needed it. I hope he would do the right thing as a member of the Agriculture Committee and say loudly and clearly that with rising food prices cutting any funding from SNAP is morally wrong and wrong for us, his constituents.
To his credit, after pressure from constituents, Van Orden came out in opposition to the current plan to shift 25% of SNAP costs to state governments–this proposal would severely impact the poorest states, those with the most needy recipients, much harder than wealthier states. Van Orden instead proposes to focus on correcting “inefficiencies” within the SNAP program by tying the state’s share of SNAP payments to that state’s SNAP error rate.
However, these error rates or “inefficiencies” are false flags used by Van Orden and other Republicans to justify massive cuts. USDA policy changes counted the entire benefit amount as an error if there were any procedural mistakes, regardless of the household being eligible and receiving the correct benefits. SNAP already has a rigorous quality control system. Most over-payments are honest mistakes made by households or USDA, and quickly rectified. Hardly the massive fraud Republicans like Van Orden claim. Using these false numbers to justify massive cuts to a program thousands of Van Orden’s constituents rely on is deception, and will harm Wisconsin families.
There are families across Western Wisconsin in similar situations to that of Congressman Van Orden’s when he was a child; those who through no fault of their own need that hand up, just like he did. A $230 billion cut would decimate program services and put thousands of Wisconsinites into food insecurity. Any cuts to the program are direct cuts to the poorest families in our country.
It’s not just the recipients of SNAP that will be affected. Programs already cut by the Trump administration, cuts supported by Van Orden, have crippled family farms in Wisconsin. A program called the Local Food Purchase Assistance Program refused to pay nearly 300 small farms in Wisconsin after Trump cut funding for their already-committed grants. SNAP benefits are often used to pay for this fresh, local produce, and cutting these benefits would further slash the already meager incomes of Wisconsin’s farmers and deny low income Wisconsinites a valuable source of nutritious food.
Will Congressman Van Orden drink the Republican Kool-Aid and convince himself that cutting $230 billion from needy families is a good option for funding tax cuts for those high income Americans who already have too much? Or will he listen to his constituents, and remember the times when his family was in need? A brave legislator would break with the Republican policy to put more money in the pockets of the rich while children go hungry.
