Category: US Politics

  • Hot Chicken

    Yes, House Republicans voted to allow SNAP recipients to use their benefits to buy hot chicken. A friend posted on Facebook about this, and my response got long enough that I decided it should be its own post.

    Standard SNAP rules allow all cold foods to be purchased. SNAP can’t be used for tobacco or alcohol, or for personal hygiene products (no soap, tampons, deodorant) or items labeled as “supplements” rather than food. SNAP can be used to buy seeds and edible plants. It can’t be used for pet food. And it can’t be used to buy hot food — not soup, not a hot sandwich, and not a rotisserie chicken. This restriction has been in place since the 1970s.

    Dems have been pushing to lift this rule, with the rotisserie chicken as an example of how dumb the rule is. Republicans came back and passed this amendment just to address rotisserie chicken. Dem leadership voted against it because they want the full change, not just the carve-out. (And to clarify, it’s only passed in the House, not been enacted.)

    Some stores definitely help people work around the restriction– they’ll sell people a cold sandwich or frozen pizza, and then let them heat it in the store oven. But they could conceivably get kicked out of the SNAP program for doing so.

    There are some states with approved “restaurant meals programs” that allow people who are homeless/seniors/disabled to use SNAP benefits at approved restaurants.

    Until a few years ago, I would have said, yes, the hot foods restriction is silly, but I wouldn’t have placed it high on the list of things that need to be fixed in U.S. public benefits. But when I was at CLASP and we worked with people whose expertise on public benefits comes from lived experience on a report about SNAP, they told me I was wrong. They taught me that it’s not about the hot chicken, it’s about whether the program treats recipients with respect, and trusts them to decide what makes sense for them and their families.

    So of course, this administration has now approved about a dozen states to have various additional restrictions on what SNAP can be used to buy — generally restrictions on soda or candy bars, but the specific rules are different in each state, and they’re pretty arbitrary (e.g. is seltzer soda? Is gatorade?) The New York Times had a pretty good piece on the inconsistency and absurdity of these rules.

    My favorite comment on these proposals comes from someone who used to work for a state agency, and then was at USDA. At a conference, someone asked her shouldn’t SNAP promote health, and wasn’t it better for health if people didn’t eat so much sugar. Her response was that it’s absolutely a matter of mental health to be able to buy your kid a birthday cake.

    So, yes, SNAP recipients should be able to buy hot chicken. But allowing hot chicken and adding a bunch of new confusing and complicated restrictions isn’t the answer.

  • Why lobby at all?*

    Following the enactment of the Big Ugly Bill, I read a couple of pieces that wrestle with what’s the point of lobbying (or advocating, if the L-word makes you nervous) given that hundreds of organizations and thousands or even millions of people fought back against this monstrosity and it didn’t change the results.

    I’ve been doing this work for nearly 30 years, through some years where we had some big wins and some years where we had some awful losses, and I thought some folks might be interested in my perspective.

    Short version (tl/dr): It was always a long shot to stop this bill, but that doesn’t mean lobbying is pointless.  Stay angry, keep fighting, don’t despair.

    Long version:

    The first thing to realize is that changing votes on these big high profile deeply partisan bills is the single hardest thing to do in politics.  By the time a bill gets to the floor, 99 percent of members are locked into their positions, and nothing is going to move them, not data, not stories of voters, not polls, not money. Moreover,  a competent speaker or majority leader knows if they have the votes, and won’t bring a bill to the floor if they don’t.  John McCain’s thumbs down on the Affordable Care Act repeal was a historic exception, but I literally can’t think of another example like it.

    Does that mean that there’s no point in lobbying on these big bills?  No, of course not.  One reason to keep lobbying is that it does shape the final bill.  As terrible as this bill is – and it’s awful – there were Republicans pushing to make it even worse. That didn’t happen (much) largely because some of the more moderate vulnerable Republicans pushed back.

    Lobbying is also important for accountability purposes. Almost always, the most reliable way to change a vote is to change the person casting it. When someone who voted for this bill is running for re-election, you want to be able to say that they were confronted with the facts of what the bill would do, and the faces of the people who would be harmed, and they voted for it anyway.  And of course sometimes, under pressure, people say really stupid and awful things like “they’ll get over it,” and “well, we’re all going to die.”  

    But there’s also a lot more opportunities to lobby where you can have a bigger impact.  One is at the state or local level, where legislation and policies often get much less attention, and a small number of committed advocates can make a bigger splash.  And the state level is where many decisions are made – including what happens next to food assistance under SNAP, and health care under Medicaid.

    You can also often have much more of an effect by lobbying earlier in the process. While it’s rare to change a vote on the floor, I’ve frequently seen lobbyists (including citizen lobbyists) persuade a lawmaker that an issue that they had never heard of was worth paying attention to. Early engagement is critical to drawing attention to an issue, to building champions, to shaping “message bills” that are probably not going to be enacted, but that plant the seeds for future legislation.  Rosa DeLauro has been pushing for an expanded child tax credit since at least 2016.

    Stay angry, keep fighting, don’t despair.

    *With apologies to Marge Piercy

  • What to do now

    I’ve started writing a post multiple times this week, only for it to be overtaken by events before I could finish. So, for now, I’m not going to try to summarize all the things that have happened since Trump took office, but just jump in with a few thoughts about what we can be doing right now. (That said, if you have specific questions about what the hell just happened, send them my way and I’ll do my best to explain.

    1. Speak truth. In the face of this enormity, it’s important to name what’s happening. Sam Bagenstos, who was the General Counsel at HHS until two weeks ago, had a great post this morning about why it’s important to write about the illegality of what Trump and Musk are doing. The point is not to say “this is illegal, so the courts will fix it and we don’t have to worry about it.” Bagenstos is not naive about the power of the courts and how much damage will have already occurred even if they rule against Trump. But if we let them claim that this is politics as normal, or that they’re violating technicalities that only lawyers care about, we’re giving up more than half the battle.
    2. Document the harm. If you need data that has suddenly disappeared from the Census website, if your doctor doesn’t have access to the pages that provide evidence-based recommendations, if you got a stop-work order, if you can’t access the portal you need to get paid, don’t just sit and stew. Write down what happened, and the impact it’s having, and share with your members of Congress, with the press (NY Times form), with the groups suing the administration (National Council of Nonprofits form), and with your uncle who voted for Trump.
    3. If you’re not directly impacted, help the folks who are. In particular, there’s been an immediate cut off of support to both international aid and domestic refugee resettlement groups. I’m hearing in some cases, groups aren’t being paid for work they’ve already done and staff are either already being laid off or will be imminently. If you’re in the DC area, Lutheran Social Services of the National Capital Area has been the major resettlement agency. And check in on your friends and neighbors who are federal employees.
    4. Call your members of Congress, especially if you’re represented by a Republican.
      • Stay calm, don’t yell at the underpaid staffer who is answering the phone, but be clear about the specific harms you’re seeing, and the danger of letting unelected and unconfirmed wildcards have access to the government’s financial systems and personnel records. (Seriously, if I had my money in a bank with this poor controls, I’d pull it out.) I’m not betting on the spine of Congressional Republicans, but if enough people call them and show up at their town halls, they might realize that it’s in their interest to speak up.
      • If they’re Democrats, tell them that they need to speak out more vocally, and that they should not be supporting any of the nominations at this point, and that nothing should be moving under unanimous consent. If they don’t know what to do, they should say “what would Mitch McConnell have done?” and do that. They probably can’t stop this shit from happening — unless they convince at least some Republicans to join them — but they should be using every opportunity to call it out.
    5. What about protests? I think Mariame Kaba is right that the most impactful protests right now are against institutions that have pre-complied — that are shutting down anything that could vaguely be called DEI, that are taking away care and services from trans kids. Trump doesn’t care if people protest against him, but your local library or hospital might. (see picture below of protests outside of the UVA hospital).

    That said, if Indivisible or MoveOn decides that we’ve reached the point where we need mass action, I’m going to trust them.

    Finally, take care of yourself. Pick something you can do, then look away from the screen for a little while. Get outside. Call a friend. Bake something good. Cancel a subscription you don’t need.