Democrats are deeply conflicted about the food aid requirements that President Joe Biden negotiated as part of the debt ceiling deal, fearing damage has been done to safety net programs that will be difficult to unravel in the years ahead.
Thank you for supporting our journalism. This article is available exclusively for our subscribers, who help fund our work at the Chicago Tribune.The draft of a bill that President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy of Calif., negotiated to raise the nation's debt ceiling, is photographed Monday, May 29, 2023. Democrats are deeply conflicted about the food aid requirements Biden negotiated as part of the debt-ceiling deal.
The result of the tense back-and-forth was a deal that played to both sides, but one that many Democrats agonized over as they weighed whether to vote for the package that Biden signed Saturday. Many struggled to square cutting access to food for marginalized communities with an outcome that allowed the United States to avoid defaulting on its debt.“In order for this country to not default on its bills, we then turned and made our most vulnerable communities default,” said Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo.
Republicans have tried for decades to expand work requirements for these government assistance programs, arguing they result in more people returning to the workforce, despite several studies that have found they have little impact on employment. The end result could be more people receiving SNAP benefits overall. An estimate from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released Tuesday said that the changes in the debt ceiling package would add almost 80,000 people to the rolls of SNAP in an average month.
“I think it’s important that understands that it’s good for us to have a strong, no vote because this isn’t a deal that he would have made if we hadn’t been held hostage,” Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington state, chair of the Progressive Caucus, told The Associated Press this past week. The White House and Democrats who ended up supporting the negotiated deal said they believe the issue of work requirements and risk posed by Republicans have been put to bed.“The most important thing to me is the fact that this closes the door on that debate,” said Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, who leads the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee and has been a longtime champion and defender of the SNAP program.
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