House Agriculture Committee Ranking Member David Scott today delivered the following statement at a full Committee hearing entitled, “Innovation, Employment, Integrity, and Health: Opportunities for Modernization in Title IV.” Watch the full hearing here.

[As prepared for delivery]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

This hearing comes at a momentous time.  

We just finished saving our country from default, so now we can turn to the future. 

We are about to start working in earnest on the next farm bill.

My Democratic colleagues and I have said, and will continue to say, we stand united against efforts to take food away from children, families, or any vulnerable Americans – in the farm bill or any legislation.

We can surely find areas that we can work together to improve the program. I know the Chairman’s priorities: innovation, employment, integrity, and health opportunities. 

We also care about these issues.

On innovation: we can use innovation to improve program access, improve application processing time, or create more intuitive and integrated applications.

On employment: we can provide additional support to help participants get and retain jobs.

We can provide work supports, like transportation and child care assistance, which research has shown time and time again does more to encourage employment than punitive time limits.   

And we can ensure that education – something critical to job readiness – is incentivized in addition to training programs.

On integrity: we can combat EBT skimming, so no one loses their benefits because of a fraudulent actor, and ensure SNAP recipients have the same theft protections as credit and debit card holders.

On health: we can incentivize healthy eating and improve SNAP nutrition education.  Incentives work!  Look at the GusNIP program’s great impact on fruit and vegetable consumption.

We know how important SNAP is to low-income Americans, retailers, and American agriculture.

42 million Americans currently receive SNAP.

248,000 retailers participate in SNAP, providing jobs in nearly every community, urban and rural.

In 2019, 55.6 billion dollars in benefits were redeemed at superstores, supermarkets, specialty stores, farmers markets, and convenience stores.

The Economic Research Service found that 1 billion dollars spent in SNAP generates an additional 32 million dollars in income for U.S. agriculture. 

That is in addition to the 1.5 billion dollar increase in gross domestic product that comes with every 1 billion dollars in SNAP spending. We are talking about a 1.5 times return on investment in the American economy here.

For these economic reasons and for the moral imperative, we have as Americans to care for one another.  As a Christian, feeding the hungry is mentioned many times in the Bible. Mathew 25:35, Isaiah 58:10, James 2:14-18, Proverbs 28:27, I can go on! 1^st John 3:17-18, Luke 3:11, Proverbs 31:20, Proverbs 22:9, Proverbs 19:17, Mathew 14:15-21.  I’ll stop there not because that is all of them, but because I couldn’t even list each instance in the five minutes I have for an opening statement. 

Because it is the right thing to do, and because of all these reasons, I will stand firm against taking food away from families and children.  I will fight against efforts to take away the right and dignity to choose what foods a family can purchase with SNAP benefits.

I hope that we can come together to craft a bipartisan nutrition title that keeps food on the tables of Americans in need and supports our Nation’s farmers.

I yield back.