Agriculture and Nutrition Act of 2018

Floor Speech

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Ms. FUDGE. Mr. Chair, I thank the chairman so very much for the fight he put up during this process.

Mr. Chair, I stand today with my Democratic colleagues fighting for the very soul of America. Inscribed on the Statue of Liberty are these words: Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

We have lost our way, Mr. Chair. There is no longer a lamp, nor a golden door. And if we fail to protect the weak, the frail, the poor, the children, the seniors, and the disabled, we have lost our soul. We no longer live up to the promise of America and the true meaning of our creed.

Mr. Chair, it is just cruel to American families and food producers, those who rely on farm bill programs, to put them at risk, only to carry out a hateful, demeaning, and mean-spirited partisan agenda. It is dishonest to promote the idea that SNAP recipients are undeserving; that we are lazy.

Sixty-five percent of our SNAP recipients cannot work. They are children, seniors, and disabled. And most of the others do work--some of them in the very building in which we stand today.

Mr. Chair, I ask my colleagues: What have poor children ever done to you? What have seniors done to you? What have the disabled ever done to you? Republicans are paying for the $2 trillion debt they created in the tax bill on the backs of the poor. It is just sad, Mr. Chair. Really, really sad.

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