Amid Government Shutdown, New Yorkers Demand Rep. Lawler Reopen Government, Lower Food and Healthcare Costs for New Yorkers
With WIC Running Out of Money, Empire State Voices Donates $1,000 Worth of Food to Tarrytown Community Opportunity Center
TARRYTOWN, NEW YORK — Today, Empire State Voices held a press conference outside Tarrytown Community Opportunity Center, demanding that Congressman Mike Lawler stop playing political games, reopen the government, and get to work lowering costs for his New York constituents. With food assistance programs like SNAP and WIC under attack by Congressional Republicans, local residents spoke on the growing threat of food insecurity in the Hudson Valley. WIC, a program that supplies healthy food and formula for pregnant women, new mothers, and their young children, supports more than 430,000 New Yorkers every month. If the government is not reopened, the program could run out of money as soon as next week.
Earlier this summer, Rep. Mike Lawler helped pass the Republican Tax Law, which included severe cuts to healthcare and food assistance funding across New York. These cuts are expected to force around 860,000 New Yorkers off their health insurance and threaten the food security of 3.5 million New Yorkers. Now, Congressman Lawler has chosen to shut down the government, rather than support a funding bill that rolls back these devastating cuts.
Congressman Lawler has chosen to shut down the government, rather than support a funding bill that rolls back devastating cuts to healthcare and food assistance in the Hudson Valley. | CREDIT: Empire State Voices
“I currently live in independent senior subsidized housing, and SNAP has been crucial to me,” said Mary, a former SNAP recipient and resident of Peekskill. “Unfortunately, because of the recent Republican changes to the program, I lost my benefits and have been unable to get them back, despite my need having remained the same. My story is just one of countless seniors like me across the Hudson Valley. Rep. Lawler, please reverse these harmful cuts!”
“The onus is on our elected officials in Congress, like Representative Mike Lawler, to negotiate in good faith and with urgency so that working families and expectant mothers and young children needn’t live with one more day of uncertainty about where their next meal will come from,” said Kenny Herzog, a Village of Tarrytown Trustee. “I refuse to stay silent while residents of my village here in Tarrytown buckle under the weight of escalating cost of living, stagnant wages, cavalier stripping of humane entitlements, and the indignity of being treated like political pawns. I urge all of you to contact your local, county, state, and federal officials today and demand they do whatever is in their power to advocate for preserving full and timely funding of WIC in New York State, as well as to end this cynical and seemingly perennial exercise of brinksmanship and extortion at the American people’s expense.”
“Congressman Lawler continues to put the needs of billionaires and party leadership over those of his own constituents,” said Dylan Wheeler, NY-17 Regional Organizing Director for Empire State Voices. “He voted for devastating cuts to healthcare and food assistance funding here in the Hudson Valley and chose to shut down the government rather than vote to roll them back. These cuts are now threatening the health and safety of thousands of New York families across his district, and yet he’s doing nothing but pointing fingers and trying to cast the blame on anyone but himself.”
To learn more about Empire State Voices, please reach out to press@empirestatevoices.org
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About Empire State Voices
Empire State Voices (ESV) is a multi-year campaign dedicated to amplifying the voices of everyday working New Yorkers. ESV is fighting for economic policies that make life more affordable for constituents and holding members of Congress across the state accountable when they fail to do the same.
