Today, House Agriculture Committee Ranking Member Angie Craig (MN-02) delivered the following opening statement at a Nutrition and Foreign Agriculture Subcommittee hearing titled “Exploring State Options in SNAP.” Watch the full hearing here.

[As prepared for delivery.]

Thank you, Chairman Finstad and Ranking Member Hayes, for allowing me to join today’s conversation. I’m pleased to support our fantastic Ranking Member of this subcommittee in the first subcommittee hearing of this Congress. You heard me right there… the first subcommittee hearing on nutrition and foreign agriculture. Yes, there were no subcommittee hearings before my colleagues cut food assistance by $186 billion through the Republican budget earlier this year.  

We can’t talk about state options without putting them in the broader context of that partisan process which resulted in a massive unfunded mandate onto states and counties. 

I met with Minnesota’s SNAP administrators last week here in DC. Counties in my state are wondering how they’ll successfully make the programmatic changes demanded by the Republican budget, while also cutting staff due to the major reduction in administrative funding. A reduced workforce also makes it harder to participate in state options that make program operations more effective and efficient.   

The combinations of added red tape and paperwork, program changes and fewer staff create a perfect storm that will send states’ error rates upward – putting states at risk of being fined millions of dollars by the federal government. In effect, Republicans cut their resources and then punish them when overworked staff make more errors administering an increasingly complicated program. 

None of these changes help reduce hunger in our communities. Seniors who rely on SNAP to stay healthy and live independently; parents who use SNAP to keep their children fed; veterans struggling with finding stable housing or employment who use SNAP to keep food on the table do not benefit from states being intentionally overwhelmed and under-resourced by a partisan budget that provides tax handouts to the already rich. 

Minnesota uses a number of options – Standard Utility Allowances, a county-administered structure, and Broad-Based Categorical Eligibility, to name a few – to tailor to the program to our state’s needs. To help our neighbors and communities fed. 

Ohio recently joined Minnesota and the 44 other states using Broad-Based Categorical Eligibility. Last June, they “opted in” to, in their words, “create[e] a sliding scale that encourages people to earn more by slowly reducing their benefits as their income grows… provid[ing] an incentive to accept promotions and pay raises knowing they won’t immediately lose benefits.” 

Lawmakers in Alaska also recently passed legislation opting into Broad-Based Categorical Eligibility… specifically to help with their error rate and speed up application review timelines. 

When this change went into effect a couple of months ago, an Alaska Department of Health spokesperson said it will “result in faster, more streamlined eligibility determinations for many households, which will improve timeliness and reduce the risk of errors associated with incomplete or delayed documentation.” 

State options are common sense policies that help SNAP reach those whom the program was designed to help: people struggling to feed themselves and their families. The elderly, the disabled, veterans and families with children. 

Exercising the options given to states to administer SNAP in ways that meet the needs of residents is not fraud, waste or abuse – it is humane food assistance policy.  

The Republican budget has already made food more expensive for millions of Americans. Undermining or restricting state options will only serve to take food away from more people. 

We should be looking for ways to ensure SNAP remains available for every American when they need it, not making it harder and more expensive for states to administer it. 

Thank you again to the Chairman and Ranking Member for having me here today, and thank you to the witnesses for joining us in DC. I look forward to hearing from each of you.