Amy Klobuchar, United States Senator from Minnesota | Twitter
U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), the Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, has expressed strong opposition to the recently passed Republican reconciliation bill in the Senate. Klobuchar emphasized that the legislation would negatively impact families struggling to afford food, rural economies affected by tariffs, and state and local governments trying to invest in critical areas.
Klobuchar highlighted that "SNAP serves 42 million Americans - children, seniors, people with disabilities and veterans." She warned that "this bill will terminate food assistance for nearly 3 million of them and will reduce benefits for millions more."
The senator also noted potential repercussions for farmers and rural businesses: "These cuts also mean farmers, who are already operating on razor-thin margins, will see billions in lost revenue and rural, independent grocers will be in jeopardy."
Klobuchar criticized the bill's approach to shifting costs onto states. She stated that "state and local governments will be forced to choose: provide food assistance or reduce other critical services like law enforcement or health care." Furthermore, she pointed out an issue with how states' error rates are handled: "The message to the country and the nation’s governors is this: raise your error rate and it delays your cuts for a year. Keep your error rate high for another year, you get no cuts again. Yet states with lower error rates must pay hundreds of millions of dollars."
In conclusion, Klobuchar called for collaborative efforts instead of cost-shifting measures: "Rather than shifting costs to states that they cannot pay for, what we should be doing is working together to bring down costs and to pass a bipartisan Farm Bill that will support all of rural America and make sure that families can put food on the table."
