WASHINGTON, D.C. — If there was a moment that made it clear President Donald Trump’s proposed 2018 budget has zero chance of making it through Congress without many changes, it might have been during an exchange between lawmakers and recently installed USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue.

 

It was the morning of May 24, and the U.S. House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture was conducting one of the first hearings regarding Trump’s budget, a spending plan that includes a 19 percent cut to the USDA next year. Included in the blueprint is a recommendation that the nation’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) take a $193 billion cut over the next 10 years.

The USDA oversees SNAP. While subcommittee members asked Perdue, a farmer

and former Republican governor of Georgia, questions about a variety of issues connected to the proposed budget, it was the SNAP issue that took center stage. In one sharp exchange with Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), Perdue seemed to defy Trump’s plan and continued to defend the food stamp program.

DeLauro used Perdue’s own words from a recent House Agriculture Committee meeting. “You stated – and this is a quote – ‘SNAP has been a very important and effective program,’ ” she said. “And that as far as you’re concerned, ‘We have no proposed changes. You don’t try to fix something that isn’t broken.’ Do you still feel those words to be true?”

“Absolutely,” Perdue responded. At another point during the hearing he said he knew full well that “you will be able to put your own stamp” on the budget process as it progresses during the coming months, noting that Congress must approve anything in a spending plan. Anti-hunger groups, Democrats and some Republicans have defended the value of the SNAP program, particularly when the recession began in late 2008. Some eligibility guidelines were eased once the economy plunged, allowing millions more to access assistance who otherwise wouldn’t have qualified.

Craig Gundersen, an ag professor at the University of Illinois who has studied SNAP and its effects on food insecurity for years, said, “SNAP is a great program. It is the key component of the social safety net against food insecurity.”

Cutting the program by the amount Trump’s budget team is proposing would be “wrongheaded,” said Rep. Sanford Bishop Jr., a Democrat also from Georgia. “This proposal does not match our country’s values.”

DeLauro noted when SNAP’s guidelines were eased going into 2009, it was done so on a bipartisan basis. At the time, about 28 million people received assistance in 2008 and it cost the federal government approximately $33 billion, according to the USDA. By last year, about 44 million people were on the food stamp rolls, costing about $71 billion.

When Perdue noted to the panel that lawmakers will control the budget-approval process, he pointed out that the 2018 spending plan includes an uptick to SNAP to $73.8 billion. Cuts, which would include deferring about 25 percent of the costs of the program to individual states, would not begin until the 2019 budget year.

Rep. Andy Harris, a Maryland Republican, said during the hearing he was thankful the administration is trying to scale back the program because as the economy continues to improve, fewer people need to rely on SNAP.

He said that since 2008, the federal government has spent an additional $300 billion to expand SNAP. “I’m glad the administration is trying to restore some sanity to this program,” Harris said.