It’s Tom T. Hall’s song: “It sure can get cold in Des Moines,” but it’s the Iowa legislature that is icy cold, heartless, and just a little touched in the head. Republican legislators are so worried about poor Iowans cheating on SNAP benefits that they’ve passed on a party-line vote, a bill that will require the hiring of upwards of 200 employees and a “search & destroy” that is estimated to cost the state upwards of $18 million — all to find .07% of fraud for SNAP in Iowa, and to send the money (if any is found) back to Washington, D.C.
The $18 million is expected to result in thousands of Iowans incorrectly being cut off from SNAP benefits. The Legislative Service Agency reports that the SNAP program has only .07% of any kind of fraud. USDA pays for the program, not the state, so once Iowa’s Republicans take food out of people’s mouths, the money will go back to Washington to help pay for out-of-state hungry people.
Freshman State Rep. Sean Babniewski reports House Democrats offered 18 amendments to help improve this bad bill. Only one Republican voted for one of the amendments in the hours of debate. The Repubs were told clearly that they had to pass the bill as is since it had already passed the Senate, and any further delays could sour what little appetite there was in either caucus for it. Of the amendments, the Republicans voted against Bagniewski’s proposal to exclude college savings accounts from being counted as an asset to knock a family off SNAP.
Bagniewski adds, “As I mentioned in my speech on the House floor, this is personal to me. I started out in a trailer park with a single mother. We never needed SNAP, but some in my family did. And we certainly knew what economic insecurity looked like. We moved around a lot as she and my stepfather, my father now, got better jobs. We got our first house when I was in fifth grade. I got my first job on the day I turned 16. I loaded bags overnight at the airport to put myself through law school. My family has been fortunate to live the American Dream.
“After law school and I had my first apartment, my mom gave me the boxes of all the belongings I’d accumulated since I was born. I had the chance to finally go through them a few weeks ago and was surprised to find so many of the gifts and cards that I received when I was born. There were clothes and toys, of course. But the most common gifts were cards that once held checks and savings bonds intended to be put away for me to go to college someday. For scrappy kids of limited means, those cash gifts given to babies are a downpayment for a better future. It pains me to think that those gifts, college savings bonds, and a college savings account can be used to block the rest of someone’s family from being able to access food.”
All state House Republicans voted against the amendment, cynically blocking another amendment to create reports on the fraud rate that will be uncovered with this new program. Anytime a Democrat brought up their school voucher program on the floor, the lock-step Republicans reacted with rage again and again. Apparently, it is better to carelessly throw money at private schools than it is to put food in hungry children’s mouths.
Bagniewski continues, “For some reason, these “fiscal Republican conservatives” are willing to spend millions to find 0.07% fraud in the millions going toward the SNAP program. And yet they allowed no oversight whatsoever for the billion-dollar school voucher program they passed in a pure party-line vote in January. One can only wonder why they feel so differently about the two social spending programs.”