GOP pushes $33.7B food stamp cut

Delegate Gregorio Kilili Sablan (Ind-MP) expressed dismay over the Republicans’ push to cut national food stamp funding by $33.7 billion over the next 10 years at a time when the CNMI is already getting much less compared to those states and territories that are under the national Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP.

At the same time, members of the U.S. House Subcommittee on Nutrition and Horticulture asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture to investigate what Gov. Benigno R. Fitial reported as “fraud” involving the food stamp program in the CNMI.

Sablan said that Republican action on USDA programs “is consistent with their overall budget goals, which also aim to end the Medicare program our seniors depend on and to take away the tens of millions of new Medicaid dollars we won in the Affordable Care Act-grant funds that the Commonwealth Health Corporation is counting on to pay staff and provide services.”

Sablan is an independent aligning himself with the Democrats in Congress.

Gov. Benigno R. Fitial, chairman of the CNMI Republican Party and wants strong ties with Republicans in Congress, said he is strongly opposed to bringing the CNMI under SNAP because the Commonwealth has to shoulder 50 percent of the administrative cost.

But Sablan said spending $600,000 to $700,000 annually would more than be covered by an increase in food stamp benefits by $12 million to $24 million and the additional $20 million or more in multiplier effect.

Republicans pushed the Agricultural Reconciliation Act of 2012 through the Agriculture Committee last week. This is the same funding source for the CNMI food stamp program and the Women, Infants, and Children nutritional assistance program, also known as WIC.

“To cut SNAP now, while families in this country are still struggling out of the worst economic situation since the Great Depression, betrays a lack of understanding of how this program is designed to respond to economic conditions. SNAP is supposed to grow when times are tough. It provides a safety net. And as conditions improve, which they are now doing, the demand for food assistance will recede and the cost of SNAP will naturally be reduced. But to cut the program arbitrarily, without reference to its purpose or to the continuing need, makes no sense,” Sablan said in a statement he submitted for congressional record.

However, Sablan reiterated that the CNMI has yet to get access to SNAP.

The CNMI receives a block grant that is supposed to be the equivalent of SNAP, but only provides half the assistance that SNAP would.

“Ironically, even with the cuts that are now being proposed in overall SNAP funding, people who need food aid in the Marianas would still be better off under SNAP than under the current block grant system. That’s how big a disparity we are looking at between the help Americans in my district receive and that received by Americans protected by SNAP,” he said.

Since 2009, Sablan has lobbied for increase in the CNMI block grant by 13.6 percent, the same increase that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act gave SNAP. He also was able to get another $1 million added administratively to the fiscal year 2012 block grant.

But he said this piecemeal approach is “not sustainable” nor does it provide an equivalent level of food assistance to CNMI beneficiaries.

“In fact, the block grant system has demonstrated its inherent weakness by forcing the local government, which administers the program, to cut benefits and wait-list applicants, as more people have become eligible,” he said.

Sablan introduced H.R. 1465, or the AYUDA Act, to include the CNMI in SNAP to give CNMI people the same level of benefits provided to other Americans.

Fraud probe

Sablan said that bringing the CNMI under the administrative umbrella of SNAP will also improve management.

“We cannot tolerate waste, fraud, or abuse. Yet when the Northern Marianas governor met Department of Agriculture officials here in Washington in February, he reported to them there is fraud occurring in the Marianas,” Sablan said.

The U.S. House Subcommittee on Nutrition and Horticulture Subcommittee have formally requested that USDA investigate the fraud Fitial reported.

Sablan said the subcommittee has yet to receive response from USDA.

“We have also received reports that the block grant program has been administered in the Northern Marianas in a manner that is in violation of the department’s civil rights policies. The only response I have received from the department on this is that the local operations manual will be rewritten to say that such violations are prohibited, which checks the bureaucratic box, but does nothing to make whole those who did not receive the food assistance they were entitled to,” he said.

The delegate said “even more frustrating” is that the USDA secretary already has the statutory authority to extend SNAP to the CNMI but he has not done so.

A measure approved Wednesday by the Agriculture panel would reduce the food stamp monthly benefit for a family of four by almost $60, repealing increases that were enacted three years ago as part of Obama’s economic stimulus. The changes would also force up to 3 million people out of the program by tightening eligibility rules, the administration estimates, AP reported.