Sablan during yesterday’s hearing before the U.S. House Subcommittee on Nutrition and Horticulture laid out his plan to put the CNMI into the national Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program or SNAP.
He called the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s current nutrition program for the CNMI “food stamps lite” because recipients here get only half of what other Americans receive under SNAP.
The Fitial administration said its own effort to get more food stamps “is progressing through the hard work of our local Nutrition Assistance Program office and Department of Community and Cultural Affairs.”
Press Secretary Angel A. Demapan, in an email, said Gov. Benigno R. Fitial during the recent Federal Regional Council meeting in San Francisco, “received positive feedback from the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Services on the working relationship between CNMI officials and their federal counterparts.”
“The administration, through NMI’s NAP office has been strongly advocating for the implementation of Electronic Benefit Transfer Card for some time now,” Demapan said.
The governments of the CNMI and American Samoa, he added “have jointly ventured into an agreement in late April of this year seeking for implementation of the EBT technology in both jurisdictions.”
This technology will replace paper food stamps with an electronic card similar to the one used for an automated teller machine.
Demapan said the assessment phase for the electronic card is in process and the CNMI’s case is expected to be reviewed and discussed toward the end of this month.
“The administration is pleased to see that this effort is progressing,” Demapan said adding that CNMI officials have been “working hard on this for too long now.”
For his part, Sablan said the governor would have to agree to incorporate the CNMI into the national SNAP “because it would require that the local government shoulder some of the administrative costs of the program.”
Right now, Sablan said the administrative costs “come right off the top of the block grant without any local contribution.”
So even if USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack agrees, “people in the CNMI might still continue to go hungry, unless the governor sits down with his advisors and realizes that a small local contribution in administrative costs would yield a large benefit to thousands of hungry people in the islands.”
Sablan said he hopes Fitial understands “the good sense behind this trade-off.”
Sablan is a member of the U.S. House Agriculture Committee’s Nutrition Subcommittee, which has oversight over the USDA’s Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program.
In his testimony, Sablan said “literally thousands of my constituents are going hungry and they need our help.”
He said the average single-person household benefit in the CNMI is just $111 per month while in Guam it’s $208 per month because Guam is included in the national SNAP program.
“Not only do my constituents get less help feeding their families, but the food they buy is more expensive,” Sablan said.
On Rota, for instance, frozen whole chicken costs over $4 per pound. “If you go down to the Safeway on Maine Avenue here in D.C., you can buy fresh whole chicken for 99 cents per pound. How do we expect people in Rota and other places in the NMI to get by when they face that kind of cost differential?” Sablan asked.
Worse
Sablan said “it gets worse.”
Last May, the benefits had to be cut by 24 percent in NMI because more people are becoming eligible. Meanwhile, the fixed, block grant NMI gets from USDA had to be “divvied up” into smaller and smaller benefits.
In fact, he added, poverty is growing so quickly that the local government had to stop adding people to the food stamp program, rather than continue to dilute the benefits for those already enrolled.
He said 500 eligible people are in a waiting list. These people, he said will remain wait-listed and more people will be added to the wait-list, until either the U.S. Congress acts or the USDA secretary uses his authority to get food to people who need it.
AYUDA Act
Sablan has introduced H.R. 1465 or the AYUDA Act, which would put the NMI into the same national SNAP.
He explained that AYUDA means “assuring you uniform dietary assistance.” That is exactly what the bill would do — assure Americans in the NMI the same dietary assistance that Americans in California, or Georgia, or Guam get.
“All we are asking is fairness,” he said.
He told the subcommittee that H.R. 1465 has received great support from his colleagues, including ranking member Rep. Joe Baca.
“Maybe we can roll it into the farm bill, when we get that important legislation out of the Agriculture Committee and on to the floor of the House,” he said.
“In the meantime, however, my people are hungry. It is probably no exaggeration to say that some people in the Marianas are starving, not getting the minimum level of nutrition necessary for healthy life. I don’t want to wait for Congress to act,” he added.
Sablan said he has appealed to Vilsack who has broad authority to extend to the NMI any and all federal nutritional assistance programs, including SNAP.
He cited the Congressional Research Service report confirming that Vilsack has complete authority provided for in Public Law 96-597.
Not enough
Sablan said the USDA has negotiated a block grant with the NMI governor each year to pay for a food stamp program in the islands.
“Maybe this system worked at the beginning to make sure people who needed food assistance got enough help. But lately these negotiations have resulted in what I called earlier ‘food stamps lite,’ an inadequate substitute for the aid other Americans get to ward off hunger,” he said adding that he has been working with Vilsack, since 2009 to shore up the block grant program “and make it serve my constituents more equitably.”
Vilsack and his team have been receptive and helpful, Sablan said.
In April 2009, Vilsack responded to Sablan’s request, acting on his own authority to increase the block grant by 13.6 percent to match the increase in SNAP aid that was included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
USDA, he added, maintained that increase in subsequent fiscal year budgets. That helped, he said. The said department has, also at his request, encouraged the local government to incorporate features of the SNAP program into the local program such as standard utility allowance.
USDA is also guiding the NMI government to upgrade its accounting and tracking systems with new computer hardware and software. “That’s a help,” Sablan added.
Hopeful
Sablan said he remains hopeful that Vilsack will take immediate action on his appeal recently “to take cognizance of the 24 percent cut in benefits and the 500 people wait-listed and to reprogram funds for this fiscal year to do something to help hungry families.”
Sablan noted that he has not gotten a flat “no” from the secretary on his request that is why he remains hopeful.
But, ultimately, he added he requested Vilsack in June to use his statutory authority under Public Law 96-597 to incorporate the NMI into the national SNAP.
Same experience
Sablan said USDA Undersecretary Kevin Concannon in a recent interview with Hagstorm report made clear the inherent problem with block grants that USDA and NMI negotiate every year.
In his own experience, Concannon has said that block grants cannot respond to changes in need that occur with rising unemployment and economic downturn.
Concannon also expressed concern that federal regulations on civil rights dictate that the SNAP program be run in the same way nationwide.
Sablan said he certainly concurs that what he is seeking with H.R. 1465, the AYUDA Act, and what he is asking Vilsack to do by including the NMI in the national SNAP “is a simple matter of equity.“
“All Americans should have the same access to food aid when they are hungry. I urge this Committee and the Department of Agriculture to work with me to put the NMI under the national SNAP. People are hungry. We cannot wait another day,” he said.
