ANSWER: The wealthy. Van Orden provides decisive vote to cut anti-hunger program despite months of claiming otherwise
Derrick Van Orden has been lying to Wisconsinites’ faces. After claiming for months that he’d stand up for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Derrick Van Orden rubberstamped the extreme Republican bill to slash SNAP last night, and then even bragged that Republicans took his “recommendation” for cuts.
Derrick Van Orden: “And it turned out that through a very vigorous lobbying process with the committee that they decided to go with my recommendation…”
What was Van Orden’s recommendation? Slashing $300 billion from SNAP and jeopardizing the program more than 34,000 households in WI-03 – 40% of which have children – rely on. It’s a slap in the face to the Wisconsinites who’ve been urging him to side with hungry children instead of the ultra-rich.
Read more to see how Van Orden turned his back on WI-03 voters…
The Cap Times: Will Van Orden support the needy or the wealthy?
- Now, sitting on the House Agriculture Committee, [Derrick Van Orden] could wield a decisive vote in determining how the committee will, as instructed by the Trump administration, cut $230 billion in spending from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). These proposed cuts will take food from the tables of the poorest families in this country to pay for tax cuts for the richest 1% of Americans.
- Will [Van Orden] defend the nation’s largest anti-hunger program, vital for so many low-income families? Or will he side with the Trump administration and decimate a program that well over 40 million people rely on who, as Van Orden notes, just need a hand up.
- I hope he would do the right thing as a member of the Agriculture Committee and say loudly and clearly that with rising food prices, cutting any funding from SNAP is morally wrong — and wrong for us, his constituents.
- There are families across western Wisconsin in similar situations to that of Van Orden’s when he was a child; those who through no fault of their own need that hand up, just like he did. A $230 billion cut would decimate program services and put thousands of Wisconsinites into food insecurity. Any cuts to the program are direct cuts to the poorest families in our country.
- It’s not just the recipients of SNAP that will be affected. Programs already cut by the Trump administration, cuts supported by Van Orden, have crippled family farms in Wisconsin. A program called the Local Food Purchase Assistance Program refused to pay nearly 300 small farms in Wisconsin after Trump cut funding for their already-committed grants. SNAP benefits are often used to pay for this fresh, local produce, and cutting these benefits would further slash the already meager incomes of Wisconsin’s farmers and deny low income Wisconsinites a valuable source of nutritious food.
- Will Congressman Van Orden drink the Republican Kool-Aid and convince himself that cutting $230 billion from needy families is a good option for funding tax cuts for those high income Americans who already have too much?
- Or will he listen to his constituents, and remember the times when his family was in need? A brave legislator would break with the Republican policy to put more money in the pockets of the rich while children go hungry.
