Republican plan to cut spending would hurt rural communities, USDA says

The Department of Agriculture (USDA) on Wednesday hammered against the debt limit bill that House Republicans released this week, arguing it would harm rural communities by limiting federal programs for food, housing and health care assistance.

The plan revealed by Republicans this week proposes expanded work requirements for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), a federal program that provides income for food to low-income families. The expanded requirements would mean that people between the ages of 18 and 56 would need to participate in at least 20 hours of job training a week to get SNAP benefits for more than three months.

Of the more than 42 million people receiving the benefits this year, the move could affect about 1 million of them, the agency told Reuters.

“Congressional Republicans have put forward an extreme proposal that would increase food insecurity by taking food assistance away from older Americans who rely on SNAP by adding burdensome, bureaucratic requirements and limiting states’ flexibility to protect especially vulnerable people who are already subject to work requirements, like veterans and individuals experiencing homelessness,” the agency said in a release.

Outside of the changes to SNAP benefits, the agency railed against the wider effects of the bill. It argued the bill would cut the number of food safety inspectors, hampering production and leading to higher costs at the grocery store and restaurants; cut rental assistance in rural communities for as many as 63,000 current recipients; and prevent 84,000 farmers and ranchers from receiving conservation planning assistance.

The White House and Democrats have gone to bat against the Republican proposal. The GOP has called for commitments on spending cuts from Democrats in exchange for a raise to the debt ceiling.

“Speaker McCarthy and Congressional Republicans doubled down on threatening default in order to extract a wish list of extreme, unrelated policies that will hurt hard-working families,” White House Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young said in a statement last week. “The legislation Congressional Republicans have drafted is designed to avoid leveling with the American people about how these cuts would impact their lives.”