McGovern 'ashamed' of low SNAP benefits
PHOTO/SAM BONACCI
U.S. Rep. James McGovern last year touring Running Start's coworking space in Worcester.
As President Donald Trump is proposing to cut funding to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Worcester Congressman Jim McGovern is instead floating the idea of investing more into food benefits.
"The bottom line is that the SNAP program is, in my opinion, as it now stands, an inadequate benefit," said McGovern, the ranking Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee's Nutrition Subcommittee, said on a Wednesday conference call organized by the Food Research & Action Center.
"The average SNAP benefit right now is $1.40 per person per meal. You can't buy a cup of coffee for that, and the idea that we would be talking about reducing that or making it a greater hardship for people who qualify, in my opinion, is misguided and wrongheaded and heartless and is something we need to stop."
More than 312,000 Massachusetts households received SNAP benefits in 2015, according to the most recent United States Department of Agriculture data, released in January. That year, SNAP provided about $1.2 billion in food benefits to a monthly average of 785,778 people, the USDA said.
According to the Food Research & Action Center, Trump's budget proposes to cut $193 billion from SNAP over the next 10 years. More than 42 million Americans rely on the food assistance program, a number McGovern called "unconscionable."
"I'm ashamed of that as a United States congressman, and I personally believe that Congress ought to be focused on how do we eliminate hunger in this country," he said.
McGovern's district, the state's 2nd Congressional District, stretches west to Amherst and Deerfield and east to Westborough and Blackstone, and to the New Hampshire and Rhode Island borders.
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