By Antranette Scott
Once again capitalist figurehead Donald Trump has continued his assault on the working-class. This time he’s focusing his attack on hungry working class families and students who receive reduced/free lunch. The administration is trying to strip more than 3 million workers of food stamps.
The attack will cut $25 billion from SNAP over the next decade by ransacking the Broad-Based Categorical Eligibility. This important provision helps states streamline SNAP eligibility for families that have applied for certain other assistance programs for low-income people. This key categorical eligibility also gives states the flexibility that they need to smooth benefit cliffs in SNAP that prevent low income families from facing sudden loss of benefits whenever a wage goes up slightly.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities gives a concrete example of how the loss of this eligibility is bad for workers. They give the example of a woman earning $12.50 an hour and raising two kids. This puts the family at 125 percent of the federal poverty level, and they receive approximately $161 per month in SNAP. Thanks to the categorical eligibility, if that worker gets a 50 cent raise per hour (an additional $86 per month in earnings), the family’s monthly food assistance benefit will go down by $31, leaving them with a net gain of $55. Under Trump’s heartless rule, that same worker would lose all their SNAP benefits overnight! For making 50 cents more per hour the worker would be losing $75.00 a month.
This sudden loss of benefits also would have devastating effects at school cafeterias across the country. When a family loses SNAP benefits through the gutting of categorical eligibility at home, that immediately makes school children ineligible for a reduced/free lunch. For some students this is the only time in the day that they have access to a nutritional meal.
Here at the Workers Voice we know that the best way to trim the budget is to stop feeding the Pentagon our hard-earned tax dollars. With nearly 1 trillion dollars of OUR tax dollars being allotted to imperialist wars and the highest polluters on our planet, we see where the Trump administration’s priorities lie: in fattening the wallets of war profiteers! Trump and his goons do not care about working people.
We need our tax dollars spent on quality education, access to adequate healthcare, and job development. This resolution to undermine and defund SNAP is not going to benefit the working class. We need to organize to get our needs met. We need to agitate and say NO to defunding SNAP! No to Imperialist Wars! No to politicians that don’t care about workers!!! Only by ending the rule of the capitalist class can the workers see the wealth that our labor generates go to uplifting us ALL!