State Senate Democrats rally at State Capitol for fair housing
The Fair Housing Act became law nearly 60 years ago. It prohibits discrimination based on race, color, national origin, religion and gender. Lawmakers who attended say there's much more that needs to be done.
'We have to address income inequality and sort of give everybody a level playing field,' said Sen. Sharif Street (D-Philadelphia). 'But, we also need to make sure that the regulators that call the balls and strikes are there. We have to make sure we continue to make investments at the state and local level, but we've also got to make sure that we never go back to a world in which housing discrimination is permitted.'
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Lawmakers say that starts with increasing funding for affordable housing, which advocates have also called for.
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Kansas lawmakers react to Senate passage of Trump mega bill
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The GOP's Big Bill Is Massively Unpopular — If People Actually Know About It
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Democrats pick fight over how GOP's SNAP change hits states
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'The most absurd example of the hypocrisy of the Republican bill: they have now proposed delaying SNAP cuts FOR TWO YEARS ONLY FOR STATES with the highest error rates just to bury their help for Alaska: AK, DC, FL, GA, MD, MA, NJ, NM, NY, OR. They are rewarding errors,' Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), top Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee, wrote this week as she sounded off in a series of posts on X over the plan. In another swipe at the plan, Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) wrote on X that he had to text his state's governor that 10 states with 'the MOST ERRORS in administering the program' are 'exempt from food assistance cuts,' at that Hawaii is not exempt because the governor has done 'good work in reducing the error rate by 15 percent.' The comments come as Democrats and advocates have argued the measure could lead to states having to cut benefits because of the shift in cost burden. Recent figures unveiled by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) showed Alaska's payment error rate hit 24.66 percent in fiscal year 2024. The national average was 10.93 percent. Murkowski said after the vote that she didn't 'like' the bill but sought to 'to take care of Alaska's interests.' But she also said she knew 'that, in many parts of the country, there are Americans that are not going to be advantaged by this bill.' 'I don't like the fact that we moved through an artificial deadline, an artificial timeline to produce something, to meet a deadline, rather than to actually try to produce the best bill for the country,' she said. 'But when I saw the direction that this is going, you can either say, 'I don't like it and not try to help my state,' or you can roll up your sleeves.' Republicans also criticized Democrats for challenging a previous GOP-crafted SNAP provision that sought to provide more targeted help to Alaska, as GOP leadership sought to win Murkowski's support for the bill, which ultimately passed the Senate in a tie-breaking vote. However, Democrats opposed previously proposed waivers for the noncontiguous states of Alaska and Hawaii, decrying 'special treatment.' In remarks on Wednesday, House Agriculture Chairman Glenn Thompson (R-Pa.) the Senate 'had to add something to get to address that challenge that Alaska has.' 'The goal is, from a functionality perspective, they need to get their error rate down as soon as possible, because when the time comes, and they have to start to pay, they don't want to be that high error rate that you're coming in now,' he said. 'In most states, Alaska would be a challenge, I think, but most states have been under 6 percent at one time in past years,' he said. However, he also wasn't 'crazy about' work requirements exemptions for some Indigenous populations in the Senate's version of Trump's megabill that didn't appear in the House bill, as Republicans seek to tighten work requirements. 'It's what the Senate had to do,' he said, though he noted that 'economic conditions are challenging on those sovereign lands and in high unemployment, high poverty.' It's unclear whether the carve-outs were the result of talks Alaska senators had with GOP leadership around SNAP in the days leading up to the Senate passage. The Hill has reached out to their offices for comment. The Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development said Alaska has 'one of the largest indigenous populations in the nation,' with Alaska Natives representing 17 percent of the state in 2010. At the same time, the Senate bill nixed temporary exemptions that had been preserved in the House bill for former foster youth, homeless individuals and veterans. Despite being preserved in the House plan, Thompson criticized the carve-outs, which were secured as part of a previous bipartisan deal in 2023. 'It cheats all those individuals from having access to that to us funding their SNAP Employment and career and technical education, because the whole goal here is to raise these people out of poverty if they're struggling in poverty, because that's how you qualify for SNAP,' he said. 'And the fact is, they were made ineligible for the really great benefits.' Other proposals in the party's SNAP plan seek to limit the federal government's ability to increase monthly benefits in the future, changes to work requirements and include a chunk of farm provisions. The plan comes as Republicans sought to find ways to generate north of $1 trillion in savings of federal dollars over the next decade as part of a major package that also advances President Trump's tax agenda, which is estimated to add trillions of dollars to the nation's deficits. Republicans say the proposed spending reductions, which are achieved also through changes to programs like Medicaid, are aimed at rooting out 'waste, fraud and abuse' in the federal government. But preliminary research released this week by the Urban Institute found that just the SNAP changes could affect about 22 million families, who researchers said could be at risk of 'losing some or all of their SNAP benefits' under the plan. Asked if last-minute changes to the plan to help other states and not his bothered him, Sen. Jim Justice ( who ultimately voted for the plan, told reporters this week, 'Yes and no.' 'But at the same time, I think they probably had more severe need and so I think it'll be fine,' Justice, a former governor, said Tuesday. 'If it's like any business deal that I've ever seen in my life, you know, the parties of a good business deal walk away after they get something done, and they walk away, and they're probably holding their nose a little bit, and they're probably regretting certain things and saying, 'Doggone, we didn't do good on this and that and everything,' That's a good deal.'
