If only an anonymous member of President Trump’s team would publish an op-ed explaining how cutting the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), as proposed in the House-passed Farm Bill of June 2018, and intensifying work requirements for public benefits, as championed by the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, would hurt millions of Americans. Then our country’s most economically unprotected classes finally might become a policy priority in Washington.
These cuts would dim the future of those who are vulnerable to the reach of our criminal justice system. If we cut $20 billion from temporary public benefits such as SNAP — the food stamp program — we limit the survival options for a large number of American families and belie the administration’s purported objective of prison reform.
Congress has failed to pass a Farm Bill by the Sept. 30 deadline, jeopardizing access to food for 42 million Americans. The Republican-backed bill threatens to leave at least 2 million SNAP enrollees with limited options for securing food as a result of increased work requirements and senseless restrictions on certain formerly incarcerated persons. This would upend the intended priorities of the First Step Act — GOP-proposed prison reform legislation on the congressional agenda.
[For more on this story by WILLIE D. FRANCOIS, go to https://thehill.com/opinion/cr...rmines-prison-reform]
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