NBC News: “[Arizona] Families Going Hungry Because of Trump’s Food Stamp Cuts”

Last summer, Crane and Ciscomani cast key votes to pass House Republicans’ Big, Ugly Law – which gutted food assistance from low-income families to pay for tax breaks to the rich.

Arizona’s SNAP enrollment has been halved since last year – a figure that includes roughly 200,000 children. And the Arizona Department of Economic Security has acknowledged that even some Arizonans “who should be getting [SNAP]” have been cut off from the program thanks to Crane and Ciscomani’s cuts.

“My boys are telling me nonstop, ‘I’m hungry, I’m hungry,’” one mother said.

DCCC Spokesperson Lindsay Reilly:
“Eli Crane and Juan Ciscomani voted to allow hundreds of thousands of Arizona kids to go hungry so they could hand out tax breaks to their billionaire buddies. Their record is shameful and disqualifying, and voters will hold them accountable in November.”

Read for yourself: 

NBC News: The families going hungry because of Trump’s food stamp cuts

• PHOENIX — The line outside a suburban office building was already 15 people long when Tiffany Hudson showed up with her 7-year-old son cradling his blanket. It was 7 a.m. At the front of the line was a woman hooked up to an oxygen tank who had arrived 90 minutes before the building opened.
• Hudson and her children have been swept up in a wave of new restrictions and bureaucratic hurdles that have begun to ripple across the country as a result of Trump’s marquee legislation.
• The law extends tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations while cutting $187 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, often referred to as food stamps, over the next decade.
• Since the law was enacted last summer, about 3.5 million people have fallen off the SNAP rolls nationwide as of January, according to federal data. No state has seen a more dramatic drop than Arizona.
• These changes are going beyond their stated aims and have made it harder for many more people in Arizona to receive food assistance, even if they should be eligible, according to policy analysts, service providers and more than two dozen people who said they believed they were wrongly cut off from the program.
• The number of people receiving food stamps in the state has fallen by around 50% as of March compared to a year earlier, including about 200,000 children who have lost their benefits, according to state data.
• As a mother caring for two young children, [Hudson] should be exempt from the law’s expanded work requirements… She described being caught in a monthslong paperwork back-and-forth with state employees since February… Unable to reach anyone by phone, she finally decided to show up in person… But after waiting for four hours to speak with someone, she was told she needed more documentation.
• Among those who showed up that morning were a woman who had come with her elderly father, a young Native American couple, a man in an addiction recovery program and a mother with a toddler clinging to her leg… Native Americans and people participating in drug or alcohol rehabilitation programs are among those who are exempt.