LA Times Readers React: Kicking the unemployed off SNAP will make people hungry, and it won’t lift them out of poverty
To the editor: The farm bill referenced in David Super’s op-ed article, “The new Republican farm bill will dismantle our programs to feed the needy,” simply reinforces the vitriolic partisanship from leaders who play politics with the lives of real people.
Their misguided proposal for expanded work requirements in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program will impact millions: veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan; men and women who worked all their lives but live in communities where economic recovery has failed to materialize; and parents laid off from manufacturing jobs due to plant closures.
House Agriculture Committee Chairman Mike Conaway (R-Texas) and his Republican colleagues want to reclassify SNAP as a workforce development program in an ideologically driven bid to vilify the poor and kick people off the program. They don’t want to help people lift themselves out of poverty; they simply want to reduce the number of people on SNAP without regard for the consequences to those impacted by these harsh and severe cuts.
Abby J. Leibman, Los Angeles
The writer is president and chief executive of MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger.