SNAP cuts
New U.S. Census poverty data confirms that SNAP is essential to reducing hunger in America. The 2023 Census poverty data released in September shows that the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) kept 3.4 million people – many of them children – from poverty last year.
SNAP provides food assistance to nearly 40 million Americans per month. Most recipients are working families with children, elderly persons, and people with disabilities.
If a program works, why would Congress want to cut it? Some leaders are pushing $30 billion in new SNAP benefit cuts and restrictions on the foods SNAP recipients can buy. These policies will help no one except callous lawmakers looking to score political points. But they will hurt many by increasing hunger, poverty, and hardship.
SNAP is the last line of defense against hunger in this country. I urge lawmakers and candidates to publicly support SNAP and work to protect and strengthen it in the next Farm Bill.
William Deignan
Medford
Harris & the border
Kamala Harris stated that when she was attorney general of a border state for two terms, she saw the violence and chaos that transnational, criminals organizations cause and the heartbreak and loss from the spread of their illicit drugs. So why, as vice president and border czar, did she do nothing but parrot the Democratic talking point that the border was secure when she knew it wasn’t? Kamala Harris is all talk and no action.
Donald Houghton
Quincy
Mass. senators
Haven’t heard much from Massachusetts Senators Edward Markey and Elizabeth Warren lately on their feelings about illegal migrants doing bad stuff, not only on towns throughout the state but also on the islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. I guess their major concern and focus is on the Green New Deal.
Tony Meschini
Scituate
Migrants
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) noted that “Facts do not exist, only interpretations.” And this is the Democratic Party credo these days as her advisers counsel Kamala Harris to interpret an unprecedented migrant invasion across our southern border as a Trump debacle, the inflation that shorted kitchen tables across these fruited plains as “transitory” initially, and our weakened military as stronger by virtue of DEI initiatives. Magical thinking infects all major campaigns but the verbal legerdemain in the Harris camp does Houdini proud.
Paul Bloustein
Cincinnati, Ohio
