Just three days after proposing a rule change designed to take food assistance from nearly 700,000 Americans, White House Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley went on Fox News to rant about the impeachment of Donald Trump with a particularly heinous choice of words.
“As you head into Christmas—you head into the holiday season, people are going to want results from Congress and right now all they’re getting is hatred, vitriol and a sham impeachment hearing that doesn’t do anything to put food on the table of Americans,” Gidley said with a straight face on Friday morning.
Let’s roll the tape.
Campaign Action
Just when you thought this White House couldn’t possibly get any lower, they easily surpass expectations. Gidley positioned the process of impeachment as an obstacle to Americans’ survival, even as the Trump administration prepares to alter the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in such a way that will drastically impact food access for hundreds of thousands—688,000, give or take—of struggling people.
And this is only the beginning, according to Daily Kos’ Joan McCarter. There are other proposed rule changes, further along in the pipeline, that could cause millions more Americans to go hungry, including nearly a million children who receive free and reduced cost meals at school. As McCarter writes, when government assistance is slashed, people turn to food banks.
Jocelyn Lantrip, the communications director at the Food Bank of Northern Nevada, says simply, "Food shouldn't be a luxury.” If the rules go through, she estimates an additional 196,000 people will need help from food banks in Nevada. "That's really hard for food banks to keep up with if you have that kind of decline in benefits," she said. "We support people if they fall outside of the safety net, but we can't replace the safety net as a food bank. We're spinning our wheels already, because when unemployment is low people assume hunger is low, but we're just helping more working poor than before."
Every time I see something like this from this disgusting administration, it fires me up even more to make sure Trump and his ilk are gone in 2020. Please remember and keep this callousness fresh in your memory, while you work towards the same goal.