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Kilili presses USDA for more food stamp funding
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Posted on May 04 2012
WASHINGTON, D.C.-Following up on his meeting with USDA Food and Nutrition Services Administrator Audrey Rowe last week, Delegate Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan (Ind-MP) has alerted Rowe to the 13.6-percent cut in food stamp benefits that the CNMI government began on May 1. In a letter yesterday to Rowe, Sablan reported on the new cut, which lowers daily benefits to a maximum of just $3.64 per person in a family of four.
“This only underscores the plight of my constituents who depend upon federal food aid and adds to the urgency of their situation,” Sablan wrote. “[W]e must do more both for the remaining months of the current fiscal year and in the context of negotiations for fiscal year 2013 to ensure adequate food assistance for families in the Northern Marianas.”
The 13.6-percent cut is the same percentage that benefits were raised in 2009 after Sablan petitioned Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack for equal treatment for the Northern Marianas. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that year upped food aid nationwide by 13.6 percent.
“t appears that all the benefit of that Recovery Act increase, which continues for other Americans until Oct. 1, 2013, has now been erased for families in the Northern Marianas,” Sablan told Rowe.
Sablan was also able to win an additional $1 million for this year’s food stamp grant, which, added to the 13.6-percent increase that began in 2009, brought the fiscal year 2012 total to $13.148 million. Vilsack specified that the extra $1 million could only be used for benefits and not for any local administrative costs of the program. The additional benefit funds appear to be used up now that the CNMI has begun an across-the-board cut.
“More and more people need this food assistance to feed their families,” said Sablan. “USDA and the CNMI must do a better job of looking ahead when negotiating each year’s block grant, so that the program does not run out of money like this.”
Sablan has been working to include the Northern Marianas in the national Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, or SNAP, which automatically provides more money when more people need help.
Benefits are also higher under SNAP. Maximum monthly benefits for a family of four on Guam, which is in SNAP, are $985 compared to just $435 in the Northern Marianas.
Sablan’s bill H.R. 1465, the AYUDA Act, includes the CNMI in SNAP. It has 37 co-sponsors and is now listed as priority legislation by the Congressional Out of Poverty Caucus.
