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For Immediate Release
September, 11 2019, 12:00am EDT
Contact:
Yetta Stein, Communications Associate
Western Values Project Action
yetta@westernvaluesproject.org
(406) 529-1682
Former Monsanto Employee to Utilize Trump's Revolving Door to Join Bernhardt's Swampy Interior
Fish and Wildlife Nominee Aurelia Skipwith to Face Senate Committee Today
Whitefish, MT.
Today, the Senate will hear from Trump's nominee to be the Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) Aurelia Skipwith, a former employee of agrochemical corporation Monsanto.
"Skipwith has a history of working with big-time special interests like Monsanto. Outside of her days at the agrochemical corporation, her resume is surprisingly scant for someone that would be charged with managing America's fish and wildlife. But like so many other Trump political appointees, Skipwith has already rubbed elbows with oil and gas interests and is poised to continue to curry favors for special interests at the expense of our public lands, fish and wildlife if she is confirmed," said Jayson O'Neill, Deputy Director of the Western Values Project.
While Skipwith was working for Monsanto, the corporation lobbied Interior, Congress, and other federal agencies on the Endangered Species Act. In 2012, Skipwith even won an award from the agrochemical corporation for her work.
After Skipwith joined FWS as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Fish, Wildlife and Park, FWS decided to rescind a ban on farms within national wildlife refuges using bee-killing pesticides - a decision highly favorable to Monsanto. This wasn't the only departmental action that would ostensibly benefit agrochemical corporations. Secretary Bernhardt is under investigation by Interior's Inspector General for his role in suppressing a scientific assessment on the impacts of pesticides on endangered and threatened species.
According to her publically released calendars, Skipwith has been deeply involved in the administration's rollback of habitat protections for the imperiled sage grouse and spoke at the oil and gas association Independent Petroleum Association of America's (IPAA) regulators' forum. The IPAA is a former client of Secretary Bernhardt's whose political director was caught on tape laughing about the connections and access they have within the Trump administration.
In July 2017, Skipwith sent memos to the National Park Service and FWS requesting they review rules that prevented hunters from killing bears and wolves using extreme techniques, like "baiting the animals with greasy doughnuts, ambushing mothers with pups in dens and shooting animals from boats while the bears are swimming."
Skipwith's qualifications for the nomination have been called into question, given that her resume offers no previous experience working within FWS, aside from her work as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Fish, Wildlife and Parks over the last two years within the Trump administration. She was originally nominated under the tenure of former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke - who ran in the same circles as Skipwith's then-fiance. Recently, 27 former FWS employees united in opposition to her nomination, critiquing her background and experience.
Her nomination was celebrated by both scandal-ridden Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who resigned in disgrace in late-2018, as well as current conflict-ridden Interior Secretary David Bernhardt. Her original nomination died at the end of the previous Congress, but she was renominated for the same position on July 17, 2019.
Western Values Project brings accountability to the national conversation about Western public lands and national parks conservation - a space too often dominated by industry lobbyists and their allies in government.
LATEST NEWS
Jayapal Says White House Should 'Worry' About Progressive Caucus Support for Debt Ceiling Deal
"I'm not happy with some of the things I'm hearing about," the Washington Democrat said, stressing that still needs to see legislative text.
May 28, 2023
Rep. Pramila Jayapal said Sunday that the Biden White House should be concerned about securing the Congressional Progressive Caucus' support for the newly announced debt ceiling agreement, given that the deal includes work requirements for aid programs and other provisions sure to infuriate the Democratic Party's left flank.
Jayapal (D-Wash.), the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), toldCNN she is "not happy with some of the things" she's hearing about the tentative agreement but emphasized that she still needs to see legislative text, which is expected to be released Sunday afternoon.
Asked whether the White House and Democratic leaders still have to worry about whether the CPC—which has 101 members in the House—will support the final agreement, Jayapal responded, "Yes, they have to worry."
While noting that the spending cuts in the deal aren't nearly as large as the House GOP wanted, Jayapal raised concerns about the new work requirements for some recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits.
The White House-GOP agreement would reportedly impose work requirements on adult SNAP recipients who are up to 54 years old and have no children—up from the current age ceiling of 49. Under current law, as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explains, "non-elderly adults without children in their homes can receive benefits for only three months every three years, unless they are working at least 20 hours a week or can document they are unable to work."
The broadening of work requirements would sunset in 2030, according to the White House, and SNAP eligibility would be expanded for veterans and people who are homeless.
Jayapal said Sunday that SNAP work requirements are "absolutely terrible policy," adding that "we have seen reams of data that show that, when you put these work requirements in, they're really just administrative red tape that prevent the people who need help from getting help."
"I told the president that directly when he called me last week on Wednesday that this is saying to poor people and people who are in need that we don't trust them," Jayapal said, noting that people on SNAP receive an average of $6 per day in benefits. "I think it is really unfortunate that the president opened the door to this."
\u201cWork requirements are bad policy. They don\u2019t reduce spending, they create administrative burdens, and they simply don\u2019t work.\n\nThe fact that this is a GOP priority is cruel, and every American should know what they\u2019re trying to do to poor and working families.\u201d— Rep. Pramila Jayapal (@Rep. Pramila Jayapal) 1685284434
Outside advocates and economists have vocally condemned the debt ceiling agreement's real-term spending cuts, attacks on aid programs such as SNAP and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and cuts to IRS funding, but progressive lawmakers have been largely quiet since details of the tentative deal began emerging Saturday night.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) wrote in a "Dear Colleague" letter on Sunday that Republicans will release legislative text at some point in the afternoon and top Biden administration officials will brief the Democratic caucus on the deal at 5:00 pm ET.
Politicoreported Sunday that "Democrats are pissed that Republicans got a briefing on the deal last night—and that they won't get the same until 5:00 pm tonight."
One unnamed senior Democrat told Politico that rank-and-file lawmakers are "furious that they will learn about [the details of the deal] from Republicans and Sunday talk shows."
Some members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, meanwhile, have responded angrily to the tentative agreement, which would lift the debt ceiling until January 1, 2025 and put spending caps in place for 2024 and 2025.
Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) called the deal "insanity," complaining that it wouldn't cut spending aggressively enough.
During a press briefing Sunday morning, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) downplayed the Freedom Caucus outrage, saying he's confident that a majority of House Republicans will vote for the agreement.
The Treasury Department warned Friday that the U.S. government will run out of money to pay its obligations on June 5 unless Congress lifts the debt ceiling.
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Progressives Condemn Biden-GOP Debt Ceiling Deal as 'Cruel and Shortsighted'
"For no real reason at all, hungry people are set to lose food while tax cheats get a free pass."
May 28, 2023
Progressive economists and advocates warned that the tentative debt ceiling agreement reached Saturday by the White House and Republican leaders would needlessly gash nutrition aid, rental assistance, education programs, and more—all while making it easier for the wealthy to avoid taxes.
The deal, which now must win the support of both chambers of Congress, reportedly includes two years of caps on non-military federal spending, sparing a Pentagon budget replete with staggering waste and abuse.
The Associated Pressreported that the deal "would hold spending flat for 2024 and increase it by 1% for 2025," not keeping pace with inflation.
The agreement would also impose new work requirements on some recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) while scaling back recently approved IRS funding, a gift to rich tax cheats.
In exchange for the spending cuts and work requirements, Republican leaders have agreed to lift the debt ceiling until January 1, 2025—a tradeoff that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is pitching as a victory to his caucus, which includes far-right members who have demanded more aggressive austerity.
President Joe Biden, for his part, called the deal "a compromise, which means not everyone gets what they want."
"After inflation eats its share, flat funding will result in fewer households accessing rental assistance, fewer kids in Head Start, and fewer services for seniors."
Lindsay Owens, executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, said in a statement Saturday night that "this is a punishing deal made worse only by the fact that there was no reason for President Biden to negotiate with Speaker McCarthy over whether or not the United States government should pay its bills," alluding to the president's executive authority.
"After inflation eats its share, flat funding will result in fewer households accessing rental assistance, fewer kids in Head Start, and fewer services for seniors," said Owens. "The deal represents the worst of conservative budget ideology; it cuts investments in workers and families, adds onerous and wasteful new hurdles for families in need of support, and protects the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations from paying their fair share in taxes."
The agreement comes days before the U.S. is, according to the Treasury Department, set to run out of money to pay its obligations, imperiling Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid payments and potentially hurling the entire global economy into chaos.
House Republicans have leveraged those alarming possibilities to secure painful federal spending cuts and aid program changes that could leave more people hungry, sick, and unable to afford housing, critics said.
"For no real reason at all, hungry people are set to lose food while tax cheats get a free pass," wrote Angela Hanks, chief of programs at Demos.
While legislative text has not yet been released, the deal would reportedly impose work requirements on adult SNAP recipients without dependents up to the age of 54, increasing the current age limit of 49. Policy analysts and anti-hunger activists have long decried SNAP time limits and work requirements as immoral and ineffective at boosting employment. (Most adult SNAP recipients already work.)
"The SNAP changes are nominally extending work requirements to ages 50 to 54. In reality, especially as the new rule is implemented, this is just an indiscriminate cull of a bunch of 50- to 54-year-olds from SNAP who won't realize there are new forms they need to fill out," said Matt Bruenig, founder of the People's Policy Project.
Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, wrote on Twitter that the agreement is "cruel and shortsighted," pointing to the work requirements and real-term cuts to rental assistance "during an already worsening homelessness crisis."
"House Rs held our nation's lowest-income people hostage in exchange for lifting the debt ceiling," Yentel continued. "The debt ceiling 'deal' could lead to tens of thousands of families losing rental assistance... Expanding ineffective work requirements and putting time limits on food assistance adds salt to the wound, further harming some of the lowest-income and most marginalized people in our country."
The White House and Republican leaders also reportedly agreed to some permitting reforms that climate groups have slammed as a boon for the fossil fuel industry. According toThe New York Times, the agreement "includes measures meant to speed environmental reviews of certain energy projects," though the scope of the changes is not yet clear.
And while the deal doesn't appear to include a repeal of Biden's student debt cancellation plan—which is currently before the U.S. Supreme Court—it does reportedly contain a provision that would cement the end of the student loan repayment pause, drawing fury from debt relief campaigners.
\u201cResuming student debt payments will crush working families and is simply bad policy\u2014but agreeing to codify the pause\u2019s end into law before the Supreme Court decides on broad-scale relief is criminal.\u201d— The Debt Collective \ud83d\udfe5 (@The Debt Collective \ud83d\udfe5) 1685241461
The deal must now get through Congress, a difficult task given potentially significant opposition from progressive lawmakers who are against attacks on aid programs and Republicans who want steeper cuts.
As the Times reported, "Lawmakers in the House Freedom Caucus were privately pillorying the deal on Saturday night, and the Congressional Progressive Caucus had already begun to fume about it even before negotiators finalized the agreement."
Amy Hanauer, executive director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, said Sunday that "it's a relief to see that congressional leaders and the president have come to an agreement to raise the debt limit and avert an economic disaster."
"But by instituting work requirements for critical assistance programs and rescinding important funding to crack down on wealthy tax cheats, this deal will rig the economy even more in favor of the most well-off Americans while failing to fix the real structural problems that led to the current debt crisis in the first place," said Hanauer. "The deal avoids the elephant in the room: it includes no new revenues even though tax cuts of the past few decades were a primary driver of deficit growth."
"And next up, many Republican lawmakers want to double down on tax cuts by pushing through many more tax cuts that would most help wealthy families and corporations," Hanauer added. "They should do the opposite."
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White House Says GOP Is Trying to 'Take Food Out of the Mouths of Hungry Americans'
"The GOP claims doing so is necessary in the interest of $11 billion in deficit reduction. But at the same time, they have doubled down on tax cuts skewed to the rich and special interests."
May 27, 2023
The Biden White House late Friday accused Republicans of attempting to "take food out of the mouths of hungry Americans" by imposing new work requirements on recipients of federal nutrition assistance, a public rebuke of the GOP that came as negotiators worked to finalize a debt ceiling agreement.
Additional work requirements appear to be among the final sticking points in the time-sensitive talks, with the GOP insisting on their inclusion in any agreement to raise the debt limit.
In a statement Friday night, White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said the GOP's proposed work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) are "designed to tie the most vulnerable up in bureaucratic paperwork" and "have shown no benefit for bringing more people into the workforce."
"The GOP claims doing so is necessary in the interest of $11 billion in deficit reduction," said Bates. "But at the same time, they have doubled down on tax cuts skewed to the rich and special interests that would add $3.5 trillion to our debt."
House Republicans have demanded new work requirements for recipients of SNAP, Medicaid, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)—many of whom already work.
Asked Friday whether the GOP would be willing to drop its push for work requirements, Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.)—the party's lead negotiator—said, "Hell no."
"Hell no," he repeated. "Not a chance."
The White House has spoken out against new work requirements for SNAP and Medicaid, but it's unclear whether it opposes fresh work mandates for TANF, which replaced the more generous Aid to Families With Dependent Children program under the Clinton welfare reform law that Biden supported as a senator.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, welcomed the White House's statement against SNAP work requirements, which analysts say could strip food aid from millions of people amid a worsening hunger crisis.
"The president is calling out MAGA GOP hypocrisy of refusing to raise the debt ceiling so the economy doesn't crash simply to take food from hungry people," Jayapal tweeted Saturday. "When you count admin[istrative] costs of bureaucratic red tape, this would produce ZERO savings. Isn't and has never been about saving money."
The White House issued its statement amid growing progressive concerns over the concessions the Biden administration has reportedly granted to GOP hostage-takers.
On Friday, watchdogs, Democratic lawmakers, and policy analysts responded with outrage to reports that the Biden White House is leaning toward accepting Republicans' demand for IRS funding cuts—a giveaway to rich tax cheats.
Progressives have also voiced alarm over reports that the emerging debt ceiling deal includes a two-year cap on non-military federal spending, which would result in cuts to key domestic programs.
"Any deal is a disaster since most government departments and agencies are currently severely underfunded," warned Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project.
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