Senate Bill 7, a Republican-sponsored bill that would significantly reduce the number of people who can receive food stamps in New Hampshire, has passed the state Senate on a party-line vote. Given the Republican majority in both houses, it is expected the bill will pass and Gov. Chris Sununu will sign it.
The bill is mean-spirited, callous and without any sense of compassion, and will likely increase hunger and malnutrition in our state. SB 7 is expected to deprive 17,000 low-income families with children of food stamps. This is literally taking food from the mouths of poor children.
When low-income people have food stamps, they can spend the money they do have on other basic needs, such as housing or utilities. Without food stamps, precious dollars have to go to food. With inadequate cash, the question becomes where does remaining money go: housing, utilities, medication, school expenses, clothes or child care? Where is the most compelling need, all things considered? It can be a Sophie’s choice.
Right now food assistance is probably the most important public benefit reaching masses of people in the United States. It is a bulwark against hunger, malnutrition and absolute destitution.
Contrary to conservative fantasy world, great numbers of food stamp recipients are working but they are not making enough money to pay all basic expenses. Yet that does not stop some conservatives from calling food stamp recipients “welfare slaves.” You have to wonder what happened to the moral sense that no one should go hungry.
The program is not perfect and there is some fraud, but it remains the most effective and targeted public benefit ever devised in the United States.
New Hampshire had opted for a slightly more generous income and assets test that allows more families to obtain food stamps but now any generosity for low-income families is apparently too much.
Hunger and malnutrition aside, SB 7 is fiscally stupid, downshifting costs from the federal government to cities and towns. One hundred percent of food stamp benefits are paid by federal funds. If people lose their federal benefits, they have the right to go to their home city or town for help, and those cities and towns must assist under our local welfare law.
Of course, many probably will not go to local welfare for different reasons (including lack of awareness about the local welfare legal obligation) but if they do, the law mandates cities and towns to “relieve and maintain.”
Food need falls squarely within the mandate of local welfare law.
SB 7 is a direct hit on the local taxpayer, but the bill’s sponsors avoid that fact. They talk airily about promoting freedom – freedom from food, actually. They also talk about work requirements. They seem to forget that the food stamp program already incorporates work requirements.
There is unintentional irony in this bill. Republicans invoke New Hampshire values and state’s rights but this bill is anything but a New Hampshire bill. The bill is forcing the state to adopt a federal asset test. New Hampshire has long had a state waiver that gives the state more flexibility to respond to changing economic circumstances.
Readers of the Monitor may have seen the March 3 letter to the editor from Mary Anne Broshek of Andover. Broshek, who is a genuine expert on food stamps (she was in charge of eligibility at the Department of Health and Human Services for many years) certainly did not see SB 7 as a New Hampshire bill. She wrote that the bill prohibited state flexibility and sought to solve a problem that does not exist.
She also pointed out that the Republican bill sponsor, Sen. Kevin Avard, co-wrote the bill with a lobbyist representing a conservative group pushing similar measure in state houses throughout the country.
The lobbyist outfit, the Foundation for Government Accountability, is a right-wing think tank based in Naples, Fla. The bill template for SB 7 was lifted from a template on its website with room for fill-in-the-blanks.
The Foundation for Government Accountability is a member of the State Policy Network, a coalition of groups that pressure for a hard right-wing agenda in state houses nationwide. It has close ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council, the billionaire-funded organization of Koch brothers fame, dedicated to free-market fundamentalism.
We should not see SB 7 outside the context of a national effort to shred the safety net. The billionaire class, and its political tool, the Republican Party, is making a concerted effort in all states to take away working-class gains. This bill is just one of many take-aways directed against low-income working people. The hard right-wing lobby groups just find a local sponsor and they are in business. It is no accident that they go to states where Republicans control both legislative houses.
When SB 7 was in front of the New Hampshire Senate, Republicans pushed a successful amendment. Instead of affirmatively cutting 17,000 families off immediately, they gave the Joint Health and Human Services oversight committee the right to do it. This move was essentially a meaningless gesture as the Republican majority controls the oversight committee.
Speaking on the Senate floor, Sen. Dan Feltes of Concord articulated the perfect response: “In the words of Ann Richards, ‘You can put lipstick on a pig and name it Monique, but it’s still a hog.’ ”
SB 7 is soulless and needlessly cruel. It flies in the face of what we know about increasing economic inequality, and it will only make that inequality worse. On its merits, the bill deserves to go down.
(Jonathan P. Baird of Wilmot works at the Social Security Administration. His column reflects his own views and not those of his employer.)