Another round of the shameless, senseless SNAP fights

Early last November, two months before Republicans took control of the U.S. House of Representatives, Pennsylvania’s Glenn Thompson, the incoming chairman of the House Ag Committee, laid down an old GOP marker as one of his upcoming committee goals.

The soon-to-be-anointed ag boss, as previously noted in this space, “believes SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, needs ‘work and job training’ requirements ‘for certain beneficiaries.’”

By Alan Guebert

“Yes, that old ‘no work-no SNAP’ idea,” I wrote, “rejected in the 2018 Farm Bill debate, will likely see its reprise under Thompson.”

And it did on April 17, reported Politico, when House Speaker Kevin McCarthy outlined “broad moves to restrict food assistance for millions of lowincome Americans” as a key element in his “new debt limit negotiating proposal” with the White House.

Truth be told, betting that House Republicans will push for deep cuts to SNAP, the old Food Stamp program, every year (any year, really) is like guessing the rooster will crow at dawn. It’s a slam dunk; bet the farm.

Many of McCarthy’s Republican allies in Congress, however, welcomed his SNAP trial balloon like it was a Chinese spy balloon. “I’m sure it won’t be easy,” said John Thune (S.D.) the number-two Republican in the Senate.

Wall Street, McCarthy’s chosen site for his big deficit/big budget speech, yawned at its no-surprise contents. The three major stock indices — the Dow Jones, Nasdaq, and S&P 500 — each ended the day with sleepy, 0.3 of one percent gain.

Capitol Hill pros, however, weren’t as disinterested. One “GOP Senate aide,” Politico noted, “...was less diplomatic [than Thune]: ‘I mean, Godspeed… We’re going to live in reality over here” in the Senate, he offered.

Moreover, “Senate Democrats have said such measures are dead on arrival in the upper chamber” and, to ensure it, they will also have the “...help of key Senate Republicans.”

They won’t be the only Republicans running from Speaker McCarthy’s pruning saw. “Taking a tough line would please the most conservative GOP members,” Politico explained, “but alienate Republicans from swing districts, and vice versa.”

Currently, there are 18 House Republicans who hail from congressional districts won by President Joe Biden in 2020. Given McCarthy’s paper thin, five-seat House majority, anything that threatens the reelection of a handful of them threatens McCarthy’s debt and budget proposals — as well as his political future.

And everyone — McCarthy, his swing district members, the White House, and Congressional Dems — know it.

Which goes to the heart of what McCarthy hopes to do with his SNAP-cutting gambit: Since the House GOP has no workable plan to raise the nation’s debt ceiling or pass a 2024 federal budget, McCarthy is dancing, buying time while his caucus cobbles together plans to challenge the White House on both fronts.

It’s a high-wire act in a hurricane.

First, McCarthy faces a fast-approaching, midJune deadline to pass a debt ceiling plan. Second, amid constant White House needling, he also needs a 2024 budget plan. Third, Dems hold both the upper hand and upper chamber in debt and budget talks and will kill any House plan deemed too restrictive. Also, few House and Senate leaders