WASHINGTON — Republican Representative Marc Molinaro, a former mayor who turned over an open chair in the Hudson Valley last year and helped the GOP take back the House, often tells the story of how his mother relied on food stamps and subsidized school lunches to feed him like a child.
With Republican leaders pushing to tighten job requirements for food stamps and other government aid programs as a way to cut federal spending, Mr. Molinaro is in a politically awkward position.
“I grew up on food stamps; my mom worked and worked hard, but she’s a single mom,” he said recently during a brief interview at the Capitol. “That is a red line for me. We are not going to touch or diminish services or support for single mothers.
Mr. Molinaro’s reservations help explain why Republican leaders have had such a hard time uniting around a budget blueprint that could deliver the kind of sweeping cuts the party is seeking in exchange for raising the debt ceiling to bankrupt all these avoid summer.
Any cuts proposed by the Republicans will immediately become a line of attack for the Democrats, forcing the party to toil to cobble together a budget plan that can win the support of both mainstream Republicans in competitive districts like Mr. Molinaro as right-wing hardliners pushing for the biggest cuts possible.
With a razor-thin majority and Democrats staunchly opposed to cuts on the scale they demand, Republicans can afford no more than a few renegades in their own ranks if they hope to push through a fiscal plan. They have already ruled out reductions in Medicare or Social Security, determined to protect themselves and their most politically vulnerable members from accusations that they support cutting benefits for older Americans.
But even the seemingly simpler steps, such as cuts to food aid programs, can lead to a politically charged mood.
Just months into his first term, Mr. Molinaro is already answering pointed questions at town halls in his Hudson Valley district, where voters have elected two Republicans and two Democrats over the past eight years, about whether he plans to restrict access to federal nutrition programs. to limit. .
“The most vulnerable must be protected,” Mr Molinaro said in the interview. “We have always had work requirements. I’m going to spend my time persuading my colleagues to focus on fraud, waste and abuse’, where ‘a lot of savings can be made’.
Top House Republicans have placed increasing job demands on participants in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, otherwise known as SNAP, one of the central elements of which spending blueprint they will eventually release. It’s a key tenet of conservative orthodoxy, and Republicans have proposed it as a simple way to curb what they believe is the country’s uncontrollable spending, arguing that it would also lift Americans out of poverty.
Republicans may soon be forced to put the issue to a vote. Speaker Kevin McCarthy told reporters last week that House Republicans could soon pass legislation modeled on a letter he sent to President Biden last month outlining budget cuts his conference would pursue, including “strengthening work requirements for people without dependents who can work”.
Representative Dusty Johnson of South Dakota, a favorite of Republican leaders, introduced legislation earlier this year that would subject able-bodied adults with no dependents to work requirements until they are 65 years old, raising the current age from 49. more difficult to obtain work requirement waivers, removing the ability states have to request that the mandate be relaxed if there are not enough jobs to provide work to recipients.
Proponents of an overhaul argue that states are abusing the waivers, seeking jobs even when jobs are immediately available, and that the government is too lax in granting them.
“What most Republicans I speak to are most interested in is getting rid of a loophole that states are blatantly using to ignore job requirements,” Johnson said in an interview. “Bearing in mind – and I think this has been misreported – no pregnant woman is subject to these requirements, no one with young dependent children at home; none in high unemployment areas.”
Mr. Johnson, who also grew up on food stamps and now serves as chairman of the Republican Main Street Caucus, is considered one of the most influential mainstream conservatives in the House. But most lawmakers who have co-sponsored the legislation so far are either members of the far-right Freedom Caucus or legislators from safe seats. Of the 38 Republicans who applied, only three represent competitive districts.
“We want them to get back to work,” Representative Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who turned a chair in central Oregon in November, told The Oregonian. Oregon is one of 19 states operating under a waiver that seeks to eliminate Mr. Johnson’s legislation.
It could be an especially tough vote for lawmakers in politically competitive districts in states that routinely request such waivers, including New York and California. Representative David Valadao, whose seat is the most Democratic district held by a Republican, opposed the party leadership in 2013 when he voted against legislation that cut $40 billion in funding for food stamps.
“I do not believe in making drastic changes to this program at a time of such great economic uncertainty without giving states flexibility in enforcing proposed requirements,” said Mr. Valadao then. “It is unfair to the American people for Congress to implement policies that include job requirements when our national economy suffers gravely.”
Asked if he would support tougher job requirements for food stamps, New York Representative Mike Lawler, a Republican who ousted the House Democrats’ campaign chairman in November when he swept to victory in the Hudson Valley, objected.
“All of these ideas are clearly being fleshed out,” Mr. Lawler said in a brief interview. “Nothing is concrete yet.”
Meanwhile, the Democrats are already preparing their attack ads. CJ Warnke, the communications director of the House Democrats’ political action committee, accused Republicans of “continuing their extremist attack on families and children.”
“MAGA House Republicans are threatening to default and not pay their own bills, while at the same time attacking SNAP benefits,” Mr Warnke said, adding that Republicans stated that millions of Americans “shouldn’t have food on their tables.”
Republicans are well aware of the political danger associated with the proposal. In 2018, when they controlled the House, Senate and White House, Republicans led by President Donald J. Trump repeatedly tried to add similar job requirements to food stamp recipients. The attempts failed, after a bipartisan group of lawmakers negotiating the two-year and 10-year legislation deemed the move too politically toxic.
Five years later, the issue is just as fraught.
Representative Glenn Thompson, a Pennsylvania Republican and the chairman of the Agriculture Committee responsible for this year’s farm bill, has sounded more ambivalent than many of his colleagues about the urgency of stricter job requirements.
Any dispute over the food stamp program could derail the farm bill, which is considered critical legislation by both political parties because it has huge implications for both low-income families who rely on federal food aid programs and the agricultural industry.
Mr Thompson told reporters he did not believe there was much fraud within the food stamp scheme.
“Principle one, frankly, is that we have a responsibility to help people and families who are struggling financially to get to the next rung on the ladder of opportunity,” said Mr. Thompson. “Some people don’t actually recognize that we have work requirements.”
Still, Mr Thompson admitted there are “probably some improvements we can make” to the program and said it was not “helpful” for lawmakers to suggest that the program remain completely unchanged.
Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, suggested it was a battle the party should be prepared to fight.
“If you’re going to live off taxpayers and some kind of SNAP program and government money, there should be a work requirement,” Jordan said. “This is going to be a big fight when we get to the farm bill.”
Luke Broadwater reporting contributed.