Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee: What they’re saying: “Van Orden’s votes harm farmers and hungry Americans” [The Cap Times]

The Cap Times: Derrick Van Orden didn’t care. He voted to cut funding to feed hungry Americans. And, ultimately, he hurt Wisconsin farmers.

Derrick Van Orden made a promise to Wisconsinites that he’d protect the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) from cuts – but just days later, he broke it by voting YES to advance “the largest cut in the program’s history.”

Now, Van Orden has been facing blowback for “breaking his word” and voting for a bill that slashes SNAP and “harm[s] farmers and hungry Americans” – all to fund tax breaks for billionaires at the expense of Wisconsinites. 

As a reminder: more than 34,000 families in WI-03 depend on SNAP, 40% of which have children. 

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The Cap Times: Van Orden’s votes harm farmers and hungry Americans

  • The Republican majority on the House Agriculture Committee is derelict in its duty to farmers in Wisconsin and nationally, and to the millions of hungry Americans who rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
  • Instead of producing a comprehensive five-year farm and food policy bill, members of the committee’s GOP majority — including western Wisconsin U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden — stumbled over themselves last week in a headlong rush to approve a GOP scheme designed to satisfy Wall Street speculators, billionaire campaign donors and Republican Party strategists who couldn’t care less about rural America.
  • The big-money interests had one priority last week: advancing a budget reconciliation bill that proposes to slash safety-net programs for needy Americans and fund tax breaks for the rich.
  • And last week Van Orden and House Agriculture Committee Republicans did their part.
  • That’s where the Ag Committee came in. Trump and Johnson demanded that the committee approve huge cuts to anti-hunger programs, and Agriculture Committee Republicans obliged by backing a proposal to eliminate $290 million in nutritional assistance funding over the next decade. Van Orden claimed that he and his GOP allies were simply “holding states accountable for their waste, fraud, abuse.” But that wasn’t what was happening.
  • The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation labeled the proposed SNAP-funding cuts “unconscionable” and said they could “(make) it even harder for people to afford healthy food at a time when so many are struggling to make ends meet.”
  • Republicans, including Van Orden, who is supposed [to] represent western Wisconsin’s heavily agricultural 3rd District, had a chance to work with Democrats to make the measure better. Instead, they barely showed up.
  • National Farmers Union President Rob Larew warned that while there were some good elements to the measure, “this is not the best way to produce a meaningful farm bill.”
  • The bottom line is clear: Whatever final form Trump’s “big beautiful bill” takes, it will harm working farmers and hungry Americans.
  • Cutting taxes for the billionaire class was all that mattered to them.
  • “Every $1 invested in SNAP creates more than $1.50 in economic activity and has double the economic impact in rural communities,” [Craig] explained. “It provides a huge return on investment for the American taxpayer. Every dollar we spend on food travels through the entire food supply chain. SNAP supports nearly 400,000 jobs in grocery stores, warehouses, trucking companies and farms. It helps pay the wages of the clerks who stock the store shelves, the truckers who deliver the food, the manufacturers who package it and the American farmers who grow it. Today, if you vote for this bill, it will result in $30 billion in lost revenue for our farmers. Because when you’re taking food off the kitchen tables of America’s seniors and children, you’re decreasing demand for the food our farmers grow.”
  • That was a commonsense assessment of what was wrong with the plan presented to the ag committee. But Derrick Van Order didn’t care. He voted to cut funding to feed hungry Americans. And, ultimately, he hurt Wisconsin farmers.

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