For Immediate Release
Media Contact: Caitlin Cook (304) 543-4879
(Charleston, WV) – Following Congress passing the 2018 farm bill, Kelly Allen, Policy Outreach Coordinator at the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy, released the following statement:
“The farm bill agreement reached this week and passed by Congress today will help hundreds of thousands of West Virginians put food on the table while boosting our local economies. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is our nation’s most effective anti-hunger program and protecting and strengthening SNAP is key to moving shared prosperity forward in the Mountain State.
With both Senate and House chambers rejecting the partisan House-passed bill that proposed reducing food assistance from those in need through cuts and harmful changes, the bill awaits President Trump’s signature.
Congress passed a farm bill that ensures that SNAP will continue to help feed children and their parents, seniors, people with disabilities, and working people with low pay and inconsistent hours who struggle to make ends meet. That includes 1 in 5 people right here in West Virginia.
We commend House and Senate leaders for working together, across party lines, to continue the bill’s bipartisan tradition of ensuring no American goes hungry. A special thanks to West Virginia’s congressional members Senator Capito, Senator Manchin and Representative McKinley for voting to protect food assistance for the hundreds of thousands of West Virginians.”
The West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy is a public policy research organization that is nonpartisan, nonprofit, and statewide. The Center focuses on how policy decisions affect all West Virginians, especially low- and moderate-income families.
