New York City and 22 Democratic attorneys general want the U.S. Department of Agriculture to back away from a proposed rule that would tighten eligibility for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, saying it would take away food from 3.1 million people and free lunches from 265,000 children during the coronavirus pandemic.
“Millions of Americans — including more than 8,000 District residents — will go hungry if USDA finalizes this SNAP rule,” Washington, D.C., Attorney General Karl Racine said in a statement, reports The Hill. "Protecting access to food stamp benefits is crucial at a time when millions of people are suffering from job losses and hundreds of thousands are battling coronavirus."
Changes are being sought to an existing rule that allows people who already qualify for other social programs to skip the application process for SNAP, referred to by many as food stamps, which allows people to get help automatically.
States have limited resources to process new SNAP applications, as the pandemic has left high unemployment numbers in its wake, said the attorneys general.
“The Rule’s human costs would be bad enough, but the Rule also will impose substantial additional administrative burdens on the States in the midst of a pandemic in which the States already are the front-line public health and economic responders,” the attorneys general wrote in a letter to Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue.
A group of state attorneys general last month won a preliminary injunction against USDA over another proposed SNAP rule that expanded work requirements.
As states lose tax revenue during the pandemic, some have called on USDA to tighten SNAP requirements for college students, which USDA denied earlier this month. States have similarly pushed to tighten Medicaid requirements as a way to balance their budgets.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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