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**VIDEO RELEASE** Conaway on SNAP: We MUST Get this Policy Right

Washington, April 11, 2018

Over the past three years, the House Agriculture Committee conducted an extensive, three-year review of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). From the onset, House Agriculture Committee Chairman Mike Conaway (TX-11) has committed to getting the policy right – not setting a savings number and molding the policy to meet that. It’s about improving policy and modernizing the program to help lift people out of poverty. Hear more from Chairman Conaway about his approach and goals in the 2018 Farm Bill in the video below.

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Chairman Conaway's remarks:

Mr. Speaker, SNAP is about the families that are living paycheck to paycheck here in our nation.

It’s about helping households across this country not so much worry about where their next meal is coming from, but letting them worry more about how their children are being educated, their own work and quite frankly their own future.

It’s about helping every citizen realize the American dream by modernizing a program that helps lift folks out of poverty, rather than trapping them there.

Mr. Speaker, this will not be easy.

There will be people who demonize our efforts.

Some will even criticize the process.

We’ll have those that paint a doomsday scenarios about what we are trying to get done.

Some will say it’s too much, too soon, too fast.

But, Mr. Speaker, nothing could be further from the truth.

Our committee has spent the last three years examining every area of this program.

We’ve heard from citizens across this nation who have been helped by SNAP, and identified modest improvements that we believe will better serve those in greatest need.

I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, that these reforms are about maintaining the American value of generosity. The generosity that says no American should go to bed hungry each night.

But, Mr. Speaker, it also maintains and strengthens that great American tradition of self-sufficiency – that compels us to work to improve our own stations in life.

By doing this, by modernizing SNAP, by making these changes that incentivize work, by encouraging collaboration, by promoting and improving access – we will be ensuring better nutrition for American families.

And, as budgets tighten in our country and across this government, we will be preserving a program that must be preserved for future generations.

Mr. Speaker, we must to get this policy right. As I said, we MUST get the policy right.