Kelly, Colleagues Warn About Republicans Raising Food Costs to Give Tax Breaks to Billionaires

“Our position on this legislation is perfectly clear: Congress should not give tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans by taking away food assistance from millions of Americans.”

This week, Arizona Senator Mark Kelly and the entire Senate Democratic Caucus sent an open letter to the American public warning that Republicans are trying to take food away from hungry families in order to give tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans. After promising to lower prices for families, Republicans in Congress passed a budget resolution that would fast-track cuts to nutrition assistance, which would increase grocery costs and make it harder for families to put food on the table. 

Earlier this year, Republicans in both the House and the Senate passed budget bills that pave the way for deep cuts to SNAP. The House budget bill would require at least $230 billion in cuts, while the Senate bill sets a minimum requirement of $1 billion in cuts. This would be a more than 20 percent cut to a program that helps millions of struggling families afford groceries. 

“SNAP supports 42 million Americans, including nearly 8 million seniors, 16 million children, 4 million people with disabilities, and 1.2 million veterans, in putting food on their tables each month. Cuts of this magnitude—or anything close to it—would be devastating to American families in every state,” said the senators. 

They continued, “Taking away SNAP would also hurt the farmers who grow our food, the manufacturers that package it, truckers who distribute it, and small businesses in our communities that sell it. Each SNAP dollar stimulates the economy: every $1.00 in food assistance provided by the program in a weak economy generates an additional $1.50 in economic activity. Because adequate nutrition is so important for children’s health and development, the long-term return on investment is even greater: every $1.00 invested in SNAP for children returns $62 in value. In 2020 alone, SNAP supported 200,000 grocery industry jobs and created nearly 45,000 new jobs in supporting industries, including agriculture, manufacturing, transportation, and municipal services.” 

The senators concluded by urging the public to join them in fighting to protect food assistance and hold Republicans accountable for their closed-door attempts to write tax and budget legislation that would “feed corporate and wealthy individuals’ greed by taking food assistance away for tens of millions of Americans.” 

The full text of the letter can be found here.