Weekly Recap: Governor Northam Announces More Than 300,000 Virginians Now Enrolled in Expanded Medicaid Program, Energized Take the Majority 2019 staffers attend 2 day training, Gov. McAuliffe’s book “Beyond Charlottesville” now available to purchase…
Take the Majority 2019 All Staff Training
Over 100 dedicated Take the Majority staff members came together over the last two days from every corner of Virginia for in-depth training ahead of the November elections. Their fearless, relentless, authentic energy is going to make huge waves across the Commonwealth this election season. We can’t wait to see all of the great work they will be doing for their candidates! Want to get involved? Look no further! Sign up to volunteer today!
Governor Terry McAuliffe’s book is now available! Get your copy of Beyond Charlottesville: Taking a Stand Against White Nationalism
Book Description
The former governor of Virginia tells the behind-the-scenes story of the violent “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville — and shows how we can prevent other Charlottesvilles from happening.
When Governor Terry McAuliffe hung up the phone on the afternoon of the violent “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, he was sure Donald Trump would do the right thing as president: condemn the white supremacists who’d descended on the college town and who’d caused McAuliffe to declare a state of emergency that morning. He didn’t. Instead Trump declared there was “hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides.” Trump was condemned from many sides himself, even by many Republicans, but the damage was done. He’d excused and thus egged on the terrorists at the moment when he could have stopped them in their tracks.
In Beyond Charlottesville, McAuliffe looks at the forces and events that led to the tragedy in Charlottesville, including the vicious murder of Heather Heyer and the death of two state troopers in a helicopter accident. He doesn’t whitewash Virginia history and discusses a KKK protest over the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee. He takes a hard real-time behind-the-scenes look at the actions of everyone on that fateful August 12, including himself, to see what could have been done. He lays out what was done afterwards to prevent future Charlottesvilles — and what still needs to be done as America in general and Virginia in particular continue to grapple with their history of racism.
Beyond Charlottesville will be the definitive account of an infamous chapter in our history, seared indelibly into memory, sure to be cited for years as a crucial reference point in the long struggle to fight racism, extremism and hate.
Where to purchase:
Amazon: www.amazon.com/Beyond-Charlottesville-Taking-Against-Nationalism/dp/1250245885
Barnes & Noble: www.barnesandnoble.com/w/books/1130580955
IndieBound: www.indiebound.org/book/9781250245885
Books-A-Million: www.booksamillion.com/p/Beyond-Charlottesville-Taking-Stand-Against/Terry-McAuliffe/9781250245885
iBooks: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/beyond-charlottesville/id1453125398
Kobo: www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/beyond-charlottesville
Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Terry_McAuliffe_Beyond_Charlottesville?id=YByIDwAAQBAJ
Governor Northam Announces More Than 300,000 Virginians Now Enrolled in Expanded Medicaid Program
ALEXANDRIA — Governor Ralph Northam today announced that more than 300,000 Virginia adults are enrolled in health coverage and receiving medical services since the Commonwealth expanded its Medicaid program. Governor Northam made the announcement at Neighborhood Health, a community health center serving more than 25,000 patients annually at 12 locations in Alexandria, Arlington, and Fairfax County.
“Because we expanded the Commonwealth’s Medicaid program, hundreds of thousands of additional Virginians now have access to medical care and an opportunity to lead healthier, more productive lives,” said Governor Northam. “The tremendous progress we have made with enrollment shines a light on the need for quality, affordable health care in Virginia and across our country. We will continue to get the word out to newly eligible individuals who may be unaware that the rules for health coverage have changed.”
The new coverage is available to men and women ages 19 through 64 who are not eligible for Medicare and who meet income requirements, which vary by family size. For example, a single adult with an annual income at or below $17,237 may be eligible for coverage. An adult in a three-person family with a total household annual income at or below $29,436 may be eligible.
The Virginia Department of Medical Assistance Services (DMAS) tracks Medicaid expansion enrollment through a dashboard, available here.
“Our new members are proactively using their new coverage to address ongoing health challenges,” said Secretary of Health and Human Resources Daniel Carey, MD. “To date, more than 229,100 newly eligible adults went to the doctor, filled a prescription or received some other health service. Those include 33,000 members with hypertension, 18,800 with diabetes, 16,100 with substance use disorder and 3,300 with cancer. We can see that Medicaid expansion is addressing urgent health needs for these individuals.”
In June 2018, Governor Northam signed the two-year state budget that expanded eligibility for adults after working with a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers to craft a plan that will enable Virginia health care providers to receive $2.4 billion in federal funds over two years in return for medical services to new Medicaid members.
“These newly eligible men and women have inspired our agency to take a more member-centered approach to serving our entire population,” said DMAS Director Dr. Jennifer S. Lee. “We have learned a great deal from our new members, including the financial struggles they faced before receiving coverage. Nearly two-thirds tell us that they were forced to go without needed medical care in the year before Medicaid expansion. Today they have greater stability in their health and finances.”
More information about the new health coverage and eligibility rules is available at www.coverva.org. The website includes an eligibility screening tool to help individuals assess whether they may qualify for coverage. Visitors to the website can sign up to receive regular information through email and text about the new coverage and enrollment process. Information is also available by calling 1–855–242–8282. Individuals who are deaf or hearing impaired can call 1–888–221–1590.
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Get tickets to DPVA’s Pints on the Patio!
Join us for an evening under the lights with cold brews, specialty cocktails, local fare, and shining entertainment! Featuring Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger and Larry Barnett’s Blue Wave Trio Band.
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DATE/TIME/LOCATION
• Date: Thursday, August 15, 2019
• Time:
5:30–6:30 PM Private Cocktail Hour
6:30–8:30 Reception
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DETAILS::
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Gun control could finally have its moment in Virginia (Vox)
Gun control had already become a rising issue in Virginia after 12 people were killed in a mass shooting in Virginia Beach on May 31. A recent legislative breakdown over gun laws demonstrates how it could be a centerpiece of the state’s upcoming elections.
Virginia has a Democratic governor, Ralph Northam, but both houses of its legislature are narrowly controlled by Republicans, who have a 51–48 majority in the lower house and a one-seat advantage in the Senate.
Although Virginia has had a history of being gun-rights friendly — the state is home to the National Rifle Association — some Democrats believe gun control could be a winning issue in the state. But any action on guns in Virginia won’t happen until after voters go to the polls in November.
Candidates in tight races have already seized on the issue: In Virginia House of Delegates District 94, where NRA-backed Republican candidate David Yancey won after having his name drawn out of a bowl to break a tie with Democratic candidate Shelly Simonds, Simonds is trying again, on a platform that includes universal background checks, an extreme risk protective order, and a ban on high-capacity magazines.
Yancey, meanwhile, has proposed making it easier to for state law enforcement to prosecute illegal firearms sales. Simonds, though, is betting that Virginia voters want to go further than that, and Democrats are hoping she’s right.
A special session on gun violence was shut down before lawmakers could even talk about gun control legislature
All three Democratic candidates for Congress who flipped Virginia House seats in the 2018 midterm elections ran on gun control platforms, according to CNBC: Jennifer Wexton, Abigail Spanberger, and Elaine Luria.
The May 31 shooting, combined with legislative drama earlier this month, all but guaranteed the issue will be prominent as Virginia prepares for its state legislative elections this year.
Lawmakers assembled on July 9 for a special session Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam called to address the issue of gun violence. Lawmakers filed about 30 bills in response to the Virginia Beach shooting, including measures that would restrict gun use and make the punishment for violating gun laws stricter.
Virginia currently has some of the loosest gun laws in the country: The only significant gun control measure in place is a ban on gun sales to high-risk individuals and those convicted of domestic violence, according to the Washington Post. Northam put forward a package of eight proposals to tighten the state’s gun laws:
- Background checks on all firearm sale
- A ban on assault weapons, high-capacity magazines, bump stocks and silencers
- Limiting purchases to one handgun every 30 days
- Requiring stolen or lost firearms be reported within 24 hours
- Creating a Extreme Risk Protective Order that would allow law enforcement to confiscate firearms from people deemed to be threats
- A ban on firearms for those subject to final protective orders
- A stricter punishment for people who give children access to a loaded, unsecured firearm
- Allowing localities like the library or municipal buildings to create stricter firearm rules than state laws.
When the legislature convened, the GOP shut down the meeting in less than two hours. The group refused to address gun control, saying that not enough research had been conducted on the appropriate legislative direction prior to the “premature” session, and suggested Virginia do what it did after the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, when then-Gov. Tim Kaine, commissioned a blue-ribbon panel to study mental health and gun control. The legislature ultimately passed some of the panel’s recommendations.
Before adjourning the session, Republican leaders in both the House and Senate said that they would send bills submitted in July to the Virginia State Crime Commission to be studied, according to the Virginian-Pilot.
The commission will then release a report by mid-November, which will help them make “evidence-based” decisions. They also pledged not to vote on any measure until November 18 — about two weeks after the state’s election on November 5.
“It is shameful and disappointing that Republicans in the General Assembly refuse to do their jobs, and take immediate action to save lives,” Northam said in a statement afterward. “I expected better of them. Virginians expect better of them.”
A majority of Virginians support some form of gun control — it’s activists who are more protective of their Second Amendment rights
Virginia is the only state legislature that could flip its controlling party this upcoming off-year election. With only a slim 51–48 majority in the House and a 20–19 majority in the Senate, Republicans are facing a tight race. Democrats are hoping that they can energize their base around the issue of gun violence to finally gain control in both the House and Senate in more than 20 years.
Political strategist Joshua Ulibarri, who polled for the Virginia House Democratic Caucus in 2015 and 2017 elections, argued that candidates like Jennifer Boysko and John Bell were successful in those elections in part because of their strong gun control platforms.
It also helps that Virginia is now trending blue, Ulibarri added, although it’s not just because of outrage against President Donald Trump.
“A lot of its because the Republican Party in Virginia had been so extreme on so many issues — from guns to choice to health care — that the suburban districts that were red in nature had become blue over time as suburban, college-educated, Anglo women shifted away from Republicans and towards Democrats,” he said. “And at the same time, you have increased interest among people of color and then diversification in the electorate, that those three storms together have really pushed the state solidly blue.”
House Speaker Kirk Cox has already called Northam’s special session “an election-year stunt” to distract voters from a string of scandals in the Democratic Party: Northam had been accused of wearing blackface in his 1984 yearbook, causing his approval rate to drop from 59 to 40 percent; Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax was subsequently accused of sexual assault; and Attorney General Mark Herring also admitted to wearing blackface in the past.
There is a stark partisan divide on the issue: 82 percent of Democrats in the state favored gun control compared to 64 percent of Republicans who opposed it, according to a July survey released by the Wason Center for Public Policy. But there’s more bipartisan support for specific gun control measures, like the ones Northam had introduced during the special session.
76 percent of Republicans and 96 percent of Democrats supported making all gun sales subject to background checks, according to the survey. 65 percents of voters also said they supported a ban on assault weapons (49 percent for Republicans and 84 percent for Democrats).
In some of the districts expected to be most competitive, including Simonds and Yancey’s race, Democratic candidates are emphasizing their views on guns. Democratic candidate Dan Helmer is running in Virginia House of Delegates District 40, one of the rare spots of red left in Virginia’s DC suburbs — Republican Tim Hugo won by a mere 99 votes after a recount in 2017. The former Army veteran, who has been endorsed by gun control organization Giffords, recently appeared on a NowThis video to challenge Hugo’s corporate donors to spend their money on families of Virginia Beach victims and other victims of gun violence.
“It’s time to support commonsense measures that would save lives, from universal background checks to bans on dangerous weapons and accessories,” he said. “Corporate donors to Tim Hugo like Visa have been subsidizing his elections, ensuring our lives are more dangerous. Virginians want to be safe.”
Despite the enthusiasm around gun safety, Philip Van Cleave, the president of gun rights group Virginia Citizens Defense League, said gun rights advocates won’t be backing down. The growing debate around gun control has recently woken up several gun owners, Van Cleave said, which is “going to blow up in [Democrats’] faces.”
“It’s kind of like the sleeping majority that aren’t out there necessarily voting like they should, not really paying attention,” he said. “When you do stir them up and get them to the polls — watch out.”
It’s true that gun rights advocates have been historically more energized than gun control supporters, which is a phenomenon called the “intensity gap.” German Lopez writes for Vox:
Essentially, even though more Americans support gun control laws, those on the side opposing stricter measures have long been more passionate about the issue — more likely to make guns the one issue they vote on, more likely to call their representatives in Congress, and so on.
Gun control advocates, however, seem more fired up than ever following the Virginia Beach tragedy.
A preview of the showdown came at the State Capitol the day of the special session, where gun control activists in bright red “Moms Demand Action” shirts stood beside armed pro-gun protestors.
Jennifer Herrera, leader of the Virginia chapter of Moms Demand Action, said she is confident people will vote out lawmakers who don’t address gun violence, and her group is helping by knocking on doors on behalf of pro-gun control candidates. With every gun-related death, more people are realizing that gun control is simply “common sense,” she said, which is why people of all different backgrounds — including Republicans and gun owners — are joining her group to keep the state safe.
“It really solidifies the notion that a bullet doesn’t discriminate,” she said. “People are scared, and they want change.”
Climate change could cost Va. coastal cities billions, experts warn Congress (Virginia Mercury)
WASHINGTON — Climate change could cost Virginia coastal cities billions of dollars and put communities and military facilities at risk, a special assistant to the governor warned federal lawmakers this week.
Ann Phillips, who is in charge of helping the state respond to climate change on Virginia’s coastline for Gov. Ralph Northam’s administration, told the U.S. House Budget Committee Wednesday that large-scale federal action is needed to address the looming threat. Virginia localities are already paying to respond to coastal floods, hurricanes and severe weather associated with climate change.
“There is an urgent need for a coordinated federal effort to deal with the impacts this is causing for us,” said Phillips, a retired Navy rear admiral and the special assistant to the governor for coastal adaptation and protection. The Virginia legislature created the cabinet-level post last year.
Philips joined other business leaders, health experts and former military commanders who warned the House Budget Committee of impending disaster if there is no plan to address the rising sea levels, warmer temperatures, more frequent floods and other severe weather events that come from global climate change.
“One reality with climate change, the cost of doing nothing greatly exceeds the cost of doing something,” said Democratic Rep. Bobby Scott.
Virginia has 10,000 miles of shoreline that are subject to tides, so coastal flooding and rising sea levels have significant effects on the state — both for coastal communities and the military. Five Hampton Roads military facilities were all included on a recent list of “most vulnerable infrastructure” by the Navy and Air Force, due to threats of recurrent flooding.
“We are dealing with water where we did not plan for it to be,” Phillips said. “We are not simply preparing. We are living with water now.”
The Virginia Institute of Marine Science Sea Level Report Card estimated sea levels could rise an additional 18 inches by mid-century. That could cause devastating effects for coastal cities, Phillips said. An analysis for Virginia Beach estimated the city could spend upwards of $77 million a year to respond to flooding destruction if sea levels rise.
“The longer we wait [to respond to climate change] the more expensive those costs will rise, and the window and variety of options we have will decrease,” Philips told the panel. “We are behind. We are behind in preparing coastal Virginia. We are behind in preparing the Department of Defense. We are chasing the target because we are not willing to engage up front to set standards and plan appropriately.”
Virginia coastal cities are working on plans to try to plan for and respond to coastal changes. The City of Norfolk has estimated it could spend $1.57 billion on proposed projects to deal with coastal storm risks. Virginia Beach estimated it needs $2.4 billion to reduce risks from flooding and climate impacts.
‘Apollo-type’ investment
Other experts called on the federal government to develop and invest in a sweeping, coordinated effort to solve the problems posed by climate change.
“If we do nothing and continue business as usual, that stability that we have built human civilization on is absolutely over, and we are going to take ourselves into a place, not to be apocalyptic, but we are going to take ourselves into a place where we have not seen civilization before,” said retired Navy Rear Adm. David Titley, now a professor of meteorology at Pennsylvania State University.
Titley called on the federal government to develop a massive response, just as the country once did in what seemed a near-impossible race to the moon 50 years ago. He said $100 billion to $200 billion in an “Apollo-type project” with defined goals could help address the problem.
“The way we buy down this risk is to ultimately decarbonize not only the U.S., but the world economy. And then we can get back to stability and can manage this problem,” said Titley.
Without a massive investment, experts warned the cost to respond to the problems associated with climate change could rise to the hundreds of billions — or even trillions — of dollars. Titley said sea level rise alone could cost the United States hundreds of billions of dollars.
“Really what we are talking about when we talk about climate change and the budget is the cost of doing nothing,” said Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth (D-Ky.). “That is one of the things we have to remain focused on — doing nothing is really not an alternative for this country.”
In terms of public health, climate change could cause more respiratory illnesses, threaten safe water supplies, and lead to more more heat stroke and insect-borne diseases, according to Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association. Those risks could have even greater effects for low-income communities and communities of color, Benjamin said.
For food and agriculture, it could significantly increase the cost of growing food and producing products.
“Climate change for us is a risk to our ability to continue operating,” said Stefani Millie Grant, senior manager for external affairs and sustainability for the trans-national food and household product giant Unilever.
Americans currently spend, on average, about 12.7% of their household budget on food. But climate change could ramp up costs so that rises to 60 to 70% of total household budget, Grant said.
“We ask government to put a policy out there, put a policy out there and help us get there. We can’t do it all ourselves,” Grant said
Republicans said market forces and the private sector — rather than the government — should drive the response.
“The private sector is already working to reduce emissions at their own pace, which is relatively rapid,” said Rep. Dan Meuser (R-Pa.). He said businesses and the Army training facility in his district are already use renewable energy like solar or geothermal to lower costs and increase efficiencies.
“We need to look at trends and be data-driven and economically feasible,” Meuser said.
Ice ‘just keeps melting’
The House Budget Committee is tackling the costs of climate change as a group of House lawmakers floated new plans this week to address efforts to curb emissions.
Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said he wants his panel to create a concrete plan by the end of the year that would result in net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. His panel also held a hearing on the issue Wednesday.
The more progressive wing of the Democratic Party has rallied around a different ambitious proposal, the Green New Deal, which sets a goal for a carbon-free economy by 2030.
The Budget Committee does not have jurisdiction to advance either of those proposals, but it can set spending levels that affect federal investment.
Lawmakers are preparing to vote this week on a new bipartisan budget deal that would suspend the debt ceiling and raise spending caps, allowing the government to spend more money on climate or other programs.
“The deal to raise budget caps empowers us to continue making an investment in clean energy and resilience, while avoiding the potentially damaging fiscal and environmental effects of the sequester,” Yarmuth said at the hearing.
The House is scheduled to vote on the measure Thursday and the Senate is expected to take up the vote next week.
“The ice, unfortunately, doesn’t care what our discretionary funding is, it just keeps melting,” said Titley.
Virginia’s November Elections May Finally Cement Its Status As A Blue State (Huff Post)
Virginia, a red state for decades, has begun to turn blue. From 2008 on, Virginians have consistently voted for Democratic presidential candidates while slowly electing more Dems at the federal, state and local levels.
The state’s legislative elections in just a few months, however, are of particular importance: With the census coming in 2020, whoever wins control of the Virginia legislature in November will have power over redistricting, the process by which legislative and congressional districts are drawn. Republicans hold extremely narrow majorities in both the Virginia House of Delegates and Virginia Senate. If Democrats can win control of those chambers, they’ll be able to redraw the GOP-gerrymandered maps — and maintain power through the 2020s.
It looks like the Dems have every reason to be optimistic. Despite a string of scandals for Virginia Democrats, with Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam’s use of blackface and the allegations of sexual assault against Lieutenant Gov. Justin Fairfax, it’s Virginia Republicans who seem to be losing their grasp on constituents. Democratic candidates are raking in far more donations at the grassroots level, and a recent string of sexist and homophobic comments by Republican incumbents certainly hasn’t helped.
“It looks like the pressure is starting to get to the Virginia GOP,” said Jessica Post, executive director for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, which works to elect Democrats to state legislatures, earlier this month. “Republicans are trying to distract from their abysmal record, but then make comments like these that show just how extreme and out of touch they are. When Virginia Republicans reveal their true selves, we should listen.”
Dems Finally Investing In State Elections
Democratic campaign groups are the first to admit that for years, Republicans had them beat in state legislature campaign fundraising. But after the 2016 election, Democrats have started catching up.
“We started turning things around in 2016,” said Matt Harringer, the press secretary for the DLCC. “So far, looking at our second-quarter numbers, this is shaping up to be the best start to a cycle we’ve ever had.”
The DLCC reported on July 12 that it had raised $5 million in the second quarter of 2019. The Republican Legislative Campaign Committee did not publish its second-quarter earnings or respond to HuffPost’s requests for them.
The DLCC has had its eyes set specifically on Virginia, and invested $1 million into the state’s elections earlier this year. The group says the state’s GOP is in “full meltdown mode,” while Democrats continue raking in donations at the grassroots level.
Fundraising aside, Republican candidates have generally struggled to stay relevant to their increasingly liberal constituents. Amanda Chase, an incumbent GOP state Senate candidate, called rape victims “naive” earlier this month, while the sitting House speaker, Kirk Cox, has found himself floundering in “unfamiliar territory” since his district was redrawn under Virginia lower court-approved maps. Meanwhile, GOP state Sen. Bryce Reeves was busy calling out a colleague’s sexual orientation in a meeting with the NRA over Independence Day weekend — about a year after sending out homophobic fliers to constituents.
Stuff like that is “going to cost them control of the General Assembly this November,” Harringer boasted.
But it’s not just the national Democrats who are focused on winning in Virginia ― state organizations are rallying, too.
Last month, the Virginia House and Senate Democratic caucuses, the Democratic Party of Virginia, the Way Ahead PAC, and the DLCC all came together to announce the “Take The Majority 2019” campaign. The campaign aims to pick up where 2017 left off, when the Dems picked up 15 state House seats, and flip the House entirely.
“We sent Donald Trump a historic message in 2017 when we swept all three statewide offices and picked up 15 House of Delegate seats,” said the Democratic Party of Virginia’s executive director, Chris Bolling.
“We will make history yet again this November by giving Democrats control of the House, Senate, and Governor’s Office for the first time in 26 years. We are on the cusp of making Virginia all blue, we just need to take it.”
All About Redistricting
There’s another group that’s especially invested in flipping the Virginia House: the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, led by former Attorney General Eric Holder. Virginia was the group’s first electoral victory after it formed in 2017 following significant investments in successful state campaigns.
After the 2010 elections, Virginia became one of the most heavily gerrymandered states in the U.S., resulting in years of lawsuits about partisan and race-based gerrymandering that ultimately ended last month when the Supreme Court voted in favor of leaving in place a 2018 decision that GOP-drawn maps were invalid because they discriminated against black constituents.
“As a party, we were not prepared or focused on the issue of redistricting in the way that Republicans were in 2011,” Holder told ThinkProgress this week, echoing groups like the DLCC that have acknowledged their failure to secure seats in state elections.
So Holder created a group “focused solely on the issue of redistricting as we get closer to 2021.”
In 2017, the NDRC’s investments in Virginia paid off with the election of Northam and those 15 delegate seats ― thus giving a Democrat veto power over redistricting for the first time since 1991.
The group has every intention of showing up in 2019 as it did in the last election cycle. In November 2018, it announced its 13 electoral targets in the 2019 and 2020 elections, and Virginia is one of them ― particularly because, for the last decade, Virginians have had to vote under partisan maps while courts deliberated their legitimacy.
“Sure, there’s recourse when bad maps are in place, there are still racial gerrymandering claims you can bring,” Patrick Rodenbush, the group’s communications director, told HuffPost.
“But in the meantime, people who are voting in these [gerrymandered] districts have had to vote in what the courts found were racial gerrymanders. They’re voting on maps that are illegal.”
Ultimately, the best way to prevent this from happening in the future is winning down-ballot elections from the outset, he said.
“The underlying premise here is that the best way to have fair maps is to put in place those who are supporting them from the get-go so you don’t have to play catch-up for the next 10 years.”
Trump Administration Moves to End Food Stamps for 3 Million (Bloomberg via Time)
(Bloomberg) — The Trump administration is moving to end food stamp benefits for 3 million people with proposed new regulations curtailing the leeway of states to automatically enroll residents who receive welfare benefits.
Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said state governments “have misused this flexibility.”
“We are changing the rules, preventing abuse of a critical safety net system, so those who need food assistance the most are the only ones who receive it,” he added.
Conservatives have long sought cuts in the federal food assistance program for the poor and disabled. House Republicans tried to impose similar restrictions on the food stamp program last year when Congress renewed it but were rebuffed in the Senate.
The proposed change in rules for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — often called by its former name, food stamps — would deliver on the goal as the administration has agreed to a deal to lift caps on federal spending.
Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee, said the Agriculture Department’s action “is yet another attempt by this administration to circumvent Congress and make harmful changes to nutrition assistance that have been repeatedly rejected on a bipartisan basis.”
“This rule would take food away from families, prevent children from getting school meals, and make it harder for states to administer food assistance,” the Michigan senator added.
Income cap
The Trump administration rule would rein in states’ ability to enroll recipients earning more than 130% of the federal poverty guidelines — in most cases capping eligibility to an annual income of $32,640 for a family of four.
Forty states and the District of Columbia currently use alternative eligibility criteria that allow participants in some federally funded welfare programs to automatically receive food stamps as long as their income is less than double the poverty level.
Brandon Lipps, an acting deputy undersecretary in the Agriculture Department, told reporters in a conference call previewing the regulatory changes that in some cases states enroll residents for food stamps even though they are receiving federal welfare benefits of minimal value — including brochures.
The proposed regulations, to be released Tuesday, would only allow automatic enrollment of people who receive welfare benefits worth at least $50 a month on an ongoing basis for at least six months. Other than cash, the only welfare benefits that would qualify are subsidized employment, work supports such as transportation, and child care, Lipps said.
The proposed restrictions would eliminate food stamps for 3 million people at an average annual savings of $2.5 billion, Lipps said. A final regulation will be issued after a 60-day public comment period.
As of April, 36 million Americans received food stamps, with an average monthly benefit of $121 per person, according to the Department of Agriculture. Enrollment has declined as the economy has improved and was down 2.5 million from a year earlier.
The federal government pays the cost of food stamp benefits. But states administer the program and determine eligibility of applicants, with the state and federal government splitting administrative costs.
Cutting back automatic enrollment would have a substantial effect, mostly hitting recipients who receive lower monthly benefits and disproportionately effecting working families with children trying to climb out of poverty, Elaine Waxman, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute said in testimony last month to a House Agriculture subcommittee.
“We particularly worry about food‐insecure households with kids and adolescents,” Waxman said. “Food insecure children have higher rates of fair and poor health, have higher rates of hospitalization, increased risk of asthma, and delays in cognitive developments.”
Upcoming Events
To get your event added to the DPVA website and the newsletter, email digital@vademocrats.org with event details!
7/31 LCDC 2020 Democratic Debate Watch Party
7/31 Presidential Debate Watch Party 4
7/31 Democratic Women’s Club of Coastal Virginia Luncheon
8/1 Richmond City Democratic Committee Meeting
8/3 Manassas African-American Heritage Festival Booth
8/3 3rd Annual Democratic Community Picnic
8/3 Coffee Chat with Buta Biberaj
8/5 Virginia Beach Democratic Committee Meeting
8/5 KG Democrats Monthly Meeting
8/6 CCDC August Membership Meeting
8/6 National Night Out in Manassas Park
8/3 National Night Out at Georgetown South
8/7 Arlington Dems Monthly Meeting
8/8 August Dulles Dems Meeting
8/8 Falls Church Annual Potluck Supper
8/10 Arlington Dems — August Breakfast with Tanya Bradsher
8/10 Tri-county Rally for Amy Laufer
8/11 Coffee Chat with Justin Hannah
8/11 Annual LGBTQ and allies family picnic
8/12 KG Branch NAACP Monthly Meeting
8/13 Fundraiser for Linda Sperling at Lone Magnolia Farm
8/15 Back to School Bash with Karen Keys-Gamarra and Karl Frisch
8/17 Westmoreland Democratic Committee Meeting
8/31 Roanoke City Democratic Committee Moonshine & Democrats
9/1 Annual Labor Day Dinner and Silent Auction
