{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.hawley.senate.gov/hawley-op-ed-no-american-should-go-to-bed-hungry/", "Hawley Op-Ed: No American Should Go to Bed Hungry", "2025-10-28", "2025", "2025-10", "Republican", "Senate", "MO", "Josh Hawley", "H001089", "www.hawley.senate.gov", "hawley", "https://www.hawley.senate.gov/press-releases/page/", "scraper", "WASHINGTON \u2013 Today, U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) penned the following op-ed on his legislation to fund food benefits that are set to run out on November 1 due to the ongoing government shutdown. Read the full op-ed here or below.\n\nThe federal government has been shut down for 28 days and counting. That\u2019s 28 days too long and already the second-longest federal shutdown ever. Saturday will be another grim milestone. That is the day about 42 million Americans will lose federal food assistance.\n\nCongress must not let that happen. America is a great and wealthy nation, and our most important wealth is our generosity of spirit. We help those in need. We provide for the widow and the orphan. Love of neighbor is part of who we are. The Scripture\u2019s injunction to \u201cremember the poor\u201d is a principle Americans have lived by. It\u2019s time Congress does the same.\n\nThe government shutdown has already touched countless lives, and not for the better. Key services have been curtailed and hundreds of thousands of federal employees \u2014 from air traffic controllers to Capitol Police officers \u2014 are working without pay. But letting federal food assistance lapse would introduce an entirely new stage of suffering. The best solution would be to pass a clean funding bill to reopen the government in its entirety, but if that can\u2019t be done, Congress at the very least needs to pass my bill to ensure food assistance continues uninterrupted.\n\nMillions of Americans rely on food assistance just to get by. The program often known as food stamps \u2014 officially it\u2019s now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP \u2014 is a lifeline that permits the needy to purchase basic food items at the grocery store. Last year, SNAP enrollees hit about 42 million. That\u2019s over 12 percent of the American population.\n\nWe\u2019re not talking about high earners who don\u2019t really need the assistance. SNAP broadly limits assistance to those who make 130 percent of the poverty line and below. These days, that\u2019s folks who earn about $42,000 or less for a family of four. For these good people, food assistance is not an optional extra. They need it to feed their children.\n\nThe millions of Americans who receive food assistance include young parents raising children, men and women with disabilities, families suffering from temporary job loss and workers who have fallen on hard times. Among SNAP\u2019s many beneficiaries are veterans. Approximately 1.2 million of our warriors receive food assistance.\n\nSurely it is not hard to understand why SNAP is so essential to so many. The American economy has not been kind to working people in recent years. What cost $100 five years ago costs $125 today. So if you\u2019re not earning 25 percent more than you were five years ago, you\u2019re getting poorer. That\u2019s most families in America. And nowhere do they feel it more than at the grocery store.\n\nBut nobody in America, this richest of nations, should go to bed hungry, and certainly no child. We have a proud tradition of helping those in need. The federal government stood up the first food stamp program in the 1930s, during the Great Depression. In 1960, while touring impoverished West Virginia, then-Senator John F. Kennedy promised, \u201cWe will see to it that every American is fed and fed right.\u201d A year after his assassination, Congress wrote the Food Stamp Act into law.\n\nFederal food benefits, distributed in partnership with the states, have grown to be one of our most vital forms of aid. My constituents in Missouri will tell you. A few days ago, a retired teacher from southwest Missouri wrote me about her four grandchildren. They rely on SNAP to buy groceries. Upon hearing that assistance may soon be unavailable, one of the children asked her: \u201cGrandma, what will we do? How will we eat?\u201d\n\nAnother Missourian relayed a similar story. She had to take time off from work for medical reasons, and now she and her husband, who is disabled, rely on SNAP for groceries. She wrote me: \u201cI understand getting rid of the SNAP program for those who are doing fraud or giving it to illegal aliens. But what about those who need it? Why is the government hurting the honest SNAP people?\u201d A third letter, from a wife in mid-Missouri whose husband has suffered brain damage, said simply of food stamps, \u201cWe would not eat without them.\u201d\n\nThere is no reason any of these residents of my state \u2014 or any other American who qualifies for food assistance \u2014 should go hungry. We can afford to provide the help. Preventing debilitating poverty through the food program costs only about a tenth of our annual defense budget. Of course, aid should be limited to those who truly need it. But there is no cause, and no excuse, to deny aid to the poor entirely.\n\nCongress can still pass legislation during a shutdown, and it should pass my bill to keep SNAP benefits going. Last I checked, members of Congress are still getting paid. Republicans blame Democrats, and Democrats blame Republicans, but all these people have food to spare. One suspects that if senators couldn\u2019t buy groceries, the government would never close down again.\n\nBut this isn\u2019t about politics at all in the end. It\u2019s about who we are. The character of a nation is revealed not in quarterly profits or C.E.O. pay, but in how it treats the small and forgotten \u2014 the last, the least, the lost. America is a great nation precisely because we have loved our neighbors as ourselves. Congress should live up to that legacy now.", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T19:32:54Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.hawley.senate.gov/hawley-op-ed-no-american-should-go-to-bed-hungry/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.5139700844883919, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}