Oh SNAP: Mass. Rep. McGovern’s mission to fight food insecurity

Good Monday Morning, everyone.

With just about every social welfare program under the microscope these days — and subject to draconian cuts — U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern, D-2nd District, is drawing a line around aid to the hungry.

Last week, the central Massachusetts lawmaker rolled out legislation that would protect the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, as food stamps are formally known, from “backdoor benefit cuts.”

The program helps put food on the table for 42 million families nationwide, including 1 in 5 children, according to one analysis, at a cost of about $119 billion in 2022.

The Republican budget framework for 2025 calls for $2 trillion in mandatory spending cuts. And most analysts believe you can’t reach that number without hitting SNAP or other big social programs, Newsweek reported.

“SNAP helps make sure children, seniors, veterans and Americans with disabilities have enough food to stay healthy. Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress are going after these very modest benefits — about $2 per meal — to pay for tax breaks for billionaires,” McGovern, the ranking Democrat on the House Rules Committee, and a senior member of the House Agriculture Committee, said in a statement.

McGovern was joined on the bill by Democratic U.S. Reps. Shontel Brown of Ohio and Jahana Hayes of Connecticut. As of last week, it had picked up 56 cosponsors in the House, McGovern’s office said.

As it’s currently written, the legislation would bar any changes to the formula the U.S. Agriculture Department uses to determine benefits so that they “do not result in an increase in hunger among low-income families.”

That formula, known as the Thrifty Food Plan, represents the cost of groceries needed to provide a healthy, cost-conscious diet for a family of four. The maximum benefits under SNAP are updated annually based on that formula.

The House Republican budget resolution, which passed in February, calls for $230 billion in cuts to SNAP. Congressional Republicans are primarily targeting changes to the Thrifty Food Plan to execute these cuts, McGovern’s office said, citing reporting by Politico.

“It’s a special kind of cruel to take food out of the mouths of hungry people to fund yet another tax break for the richest people in this country,” McGovern said. “Our bill is simple: it will protect modest SNAP benefits and make sure future updates don’t make hunger worse.”

It comes at a difficult time for consumers, who already are facing high prices and, for many, food insecurity.

In 2023, an estimated 13.5% of households, or 1 in 7, were food insecure, up from 10.5% in 2020, Time reported, citing USDA data.

And it’s no secret that anxiety over the economy and grocery prices was a big factor for voters in the 2024 election.

President Donald Trump notably made grocery prices a centerpiece of his campaign and even stopped at a supermarket in battleground Pennsylvania, where he picked up the tab for some customers.

But as Trump and Republicans look for savings to pay for an estimated $4.5 trillion tax cut package, it’s “hands off SNAP,” Brown said.

The SNAP program “is our most effective anti-hunger tool ensuring children, families and seniors get the nutritious food they need to live healthy lives,” Hayes added. “Efforts to shrink the program will devastate our most vulnerable communities.”

Advocates welcomed the bill.

“We want a country where children thrive, families have what they need and our economy works for everyone, and that vision requires protecting and strengthening SNAP. We urge Congress to reject proposals that would weaken SNAP and instead focus on strengthening this nutrition lifeline,” Crystal FitzSimons, the interim president of the Food Research & Action Center, said.

A Million Here, A Million There Dept.

A super PAC aligned with Boston Mayor Michelle Wu got a major infusion of cash from an old ally as she heads into the thick of her reelection campaign against challenger Josh Kraft.

The group, Bold Boston, was the beneficiary of a $100,000 donation last month by 1199 SEIU, the well-connected and deep-pocketed union that represents tens of thousands of health care workers statewide, according to filings. The news was first reported by Commonwealth Beacon.

The PAC, formed in 2023, supported Boston City Council candidates during that campaign cycle, the online news organization reported.

Wu, who’s been running for weeks, officially launched her reelection over the weekend.

All business

Four of the state’s leading business groups sent a message to the Healey administration and senior legislative leaders last week, as they sketched out their priorities for the new legislative session.

The groups — Associated Industries of Massachusetts, the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, the Massachusetts Business Roundtable and the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation — also laid out what they believe are some of the most significant public policy challenges facing the state.

If you’ve been paying attention to matters on Beacon Hill and beyond of late, some of them won’t surprise you. They include the state’s cost of living and the cost of doing business, along with the ongoing exodus of working-age adults to friendlier economic climes (Cough, New Hampshire, Florida, cough).

Leaders said they wanted to “work collaboratively” with Gov. Maura Healey and her administration, along with legislative leaders, to find solutions to all those challenges.

“By focusing on growing and maximizing the state’s labor force, supporting core economic sectors, viewing policy through the prism of cost and maintaining strong public finances, Massachusetts can thrive in a challenging environment,” the business leaders wrote in a joint letter.

“It is incumbent on us in the business community to work collaboratively with each other and in partnership with government to collectively build upon the momentum of this past session and carry it into 2025 as we continue to address the state’s competitiveness. Our four organizations are coming together in that spirit of collaboration to offer a framework for action and a roadmap for our continued work together,” they said.

Monday numbers

U.S. Sen. Cory Booker’s, D-N.J., marathon speech on the Senate floor was a galvanizing moment for Democrats as they seek to push back against the Republican Trump administration’s agenda.

Booker is a “moral voice that America needs,” U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., told MassLive last week. “He talked about an America that isn’t about the right and left, but is instead about right and wrong.”

As our friends at Commonwealth Beacon reported last week, a MassINC poll released last month shows that Massachusetts Democrats also are in a fighting mood.

Nearly two-thirds (62%) of Democratic and Democratic-leaning respondents to the poll, conducted from March 17-20, want Democrats on Capitol Hill to “mainly work to stop the Republican agenda.”

A little more than a quarter (27%) want Democrats to mainly work with Republicans, the poll found.

At a town hall in Boxford earlier this month, U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, D-6th District, ran into some of that sentiment firsthand. The Salem lawmaker appeared inclined to agree, though he did admonish the crowd to play nice.

“I have often, as have many Democrats, crossed the aisle to keep [the] government open — sometimes when Republicans needed to be bailed out from their own extremists — to do the right thing for our country,” Moulton said during the town hall, which came right after lawmakers approved a short-term funding measure to keep the government running.

“But this is a different time. [We] need to hold this administration accountable, because they are not listening to the courts, and they are not deferring to Congress in our constitutional role to control the power of the purse.”

They said it

“Governor Healey’s supplemental budget is another example of fiscal irresponsibility that prioritizes government expansion over taxpayer protection. By dramatically increasing spending and allowing electricity rates to rise due to bad policy, this budget puts Massachusetts families and businesses at risk. The Legislature must reject this reckless proposal and demand a more responsible approach that prioritizes affordability and accountability.”

— Paul Diego Craney, executive director of the right-leaning Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance, had plenty to say about the $756 million supplemental budget Gov. Maura Healey submitted to lawmakers last week.

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On your calendars

State Auditor Diana DiZoglio road trips it to Western Massachusetts on Monday for an event focused on making sure the state pays its fair share for the zillions of acres of state forests, state parks and wildlife management areas that aren’t on the local tax rolls.

The Methuen Democrat will present her office’s recommendations for reforming the state’s payment-in-lieu of taxes (PILOT) law to make sure the playing field stays level.

As one local observer tells us, this is a huge issue for the western half of the state, which is predominantly rural and forested. The event at Windsor Town Hall in Windsor, Massachusetts, gets rolling at 1 p.m.

Local officials and state Sen. Paul Mark, D-Berkshire/Hampden/ Franklin/Hampshire, who represents the region on Beacon Hill also are set to be in attendance.

Turned up to 11

English synth-pop legends Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark (That’s OMD, for short) play a rescheduled show at Boston’s House of Blues on July 7 (Tickets here).

Most U.S. listeners probably know the band for their inescapable 1980s hit “If You Leave,” from the soundtrack for the Molly Ringwald-starring “Pretty in Pink” in 1986.

By then, the Liverpool band had moved some distance from its deeply experimental early days. For my money, though, that’s where its music was the most exciting and innovative. After a hiatus, OMD regrouped in 2006 and largely returned to their roots. That includes their 2023 LP “Bauhaus Staircase.” And here’s the title track for your Monday morning.

Your Monday long read

As an American male of a certain age, I am apparently supposed to spend all my time thinking about the Roman Empire.

It’s not entirely inaccurate. Though I confess I’m mostly obsessed with the Second Punic War, and what might have happened if the Carthaginian general Hannibal had decided to march on Rome after the decisive Battle of Cannae in 216 BC. And …

… Okay … send help …

Anyway, recent events also have me thinking about the Late Bronze Age Collapse, centuries earlier, in 1177 B.C., when the civilizations around the eastern Mediterranean all collapsed like dominos, within years of each other.

They included the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Minoans, Mycenaeans and Hittites. Only the Egyptians survived the implosion, but in dramatically diminished form.

Historians still vigorously debate what caused this to occur — some say climate change, some say shifts in migration patterns, while others point to some sort of cataclysmic event. Or some combination of all of that.

What is true is that, back then, as is the case now, all of their economies were tightly interwoven, in an early form of globalism. And as one partner unraveled, the others swiftly followed.

Sound familiar?

Anyway, George Washington University archaeology professor Eric H. Cline is one of the foremost scholars of the era. And his book, 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed, is an indispensable read.

As the “Are We Rome?” crowd will tell you, it’s hard to find perfect analogies in ancient history. But it sure doesn’t hurt to check the roadmap from time to time.

That’s it for today. As always, tips, comments and questions can be sent to [email protected]. If you want to know about “The Pink Moon,” that’s [email protected]. He’s got you sorted. Have a good week, friends.