David is a member of AFSCME Local 319, Workers Strike Back, and Revolutionary Workers
The U.S. federal government shutdown will soon be entering a qualitatively new stage. On November 1, payments for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) will be halted. Nearly 42 million working-class and poor people who depend on SNAP to feed themselves and their families will be forced to go hungry. If the Democratic and Republican parties refuse to avert this, it will be “the most mass hunger suffering we’ve had in America since the Great Depression.” Particularly affected will be seniors, families with little children, and people with disabilities.
Despite this dire situation, Democratic Party politicians have refused to do what it would take to make sure SNAP benefits continue uninterrupted — fund SNAP at the state level by taxing the rich. In fact, as Trump and the Republicans have made brutal cuts to services at the federal level, the Democratic Party has refused to mount any real fightback all year. Instead, they have led draconian budget cuts of their own in multiple states. Working and poor people are losing out from both the Democratic and Republican parties, both of which represent billionaires. We need independent organizing, strike actions, and a new party for the working class.
The Democratic Party Will Not Save SNAP
In California, Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom is suing the Trump administration, claiming that the refusal to disperse the funds for SNAP is unlawful. California has a Democratic trifecta in the state government, meaning that the Governor and the majorities in both the Senate and Assembly of the State Legislature are all Democrat. California is also home to 199 billionaires, including Mark Zuckerberg (CEO of Meta) and Jensen Huang (CEO of NVIDIA). Just today, NVIDIA, which is headquartered in Santa Clara, became the world’s first $5 trillion company. The state is also home to over 1,200 centi-millionaires, with wealth in excess of a hundred million dollars.
In New York state, Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul is joining the lawsuit alongside Gavin Newsom. Governor Hochul has been a vocal opponent of taxing the rich, even after being faced with thousands of people chanting tax the rich as she entered the stage at a rally for New York City’s Democratic Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani earlier this week. New York state is home to 93 billionaires including Michael Bloomberg and Rupert Murdoch.
In Illinois, Democratic Governor J.B. Pritzker is also joining the lawsuit. Democrats have a trifecta in Illinois. The state is home to 16 billionaires, including Governor Pritzker himself.
In total, Democratic Party politicians in 25 states have joined this lawsuit against the Trump administration. This is a legalistic and performative gesture that will not do what’s urgently needed, which is to carry out an emergency measure of restoration of funding for SNAP. The Democratic Party has a trifecta in 15 states. In every single one of these states, they could be carrying out emergency taxes on the billionaires and multimillionaires and ensuring SNAP funding is uninterrupted. If any state succeeded in winning taxes on the rich to protect SNAP, it would undoubtedly lead to enormous pressures on both parties not only to do that in other states, but also to immediately restore federal funding for SNAP.
The Democratic Party’s unwillingness to fight back has allowed someone like Josh Hawley, a reactionary Republican, to disingenuously pose as a savior of poor people even though he has a despicable record as an anti-poor, anti-worker, anti-union careerist politician. It should be no surprise to working-class people that neither the Democratic nor the Republican Party ultimately represent the interests of ordinary working people.
It was the Democratic Party, under President Bill Clinton, that joined the Republican Party in carrying out a savage gutting of welfare programs hard-fought and hard-won by working people’s struggles. In 1996, Clinton and the U.S. Congress enacted the so-called Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act. Among many other attacks, this bill carried out sweeping cuts to food assistance for the poor, reducing the maximum allotment, denying food benefits to most immigrants for their first five years in the country and to poor adults without dependents, and enacting work requirements.
Militant Labor Organizing Is Urgently Needed
Food stamps—the predecessor to SNAP—were won through the massive struggle of working-class people around the country who were angry at the conditions U.S. capitalism subjected them to during the Great Depression. Absolutely nothing from the New Deal was won because then-President, Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), cared deeply about the working-class in the United States. Everything in the New Deal was won through the ferocious struggles of working-class people, principally earth-shattering general strikes led by Marxist and militant labor fighters.
And in fact, the biggest expansion of SNAP occurred during the era of reactionary warmongering Republican President Richard Nixon. This was not because Nixon was a friend to working and poor people, but because of phenomenal pressure on him and both the Republicans and Democrats from labor strikes and fightback and mass protest movements. These militant developments also led to the Vietnam War being ended, and Roe v Wade, the Environmental Protection Act, and the Occupational Safety and Health Act being passed, all with Nixon in the White House.
This is exactly the kind of militant fightback led by strikes that has been missing in the present-day labor leadership. Most labor leaders are tied at the hip to the Democratic Party. And a few, like Teamster leader Sean O’Brien, have become close to Trump and the Republican Party. Both are devastatingly bad for the working class. This is why Workers Strike Back is building an independent working-class struggle. If you agree, you should join us!
Saving SNAP and other social programs on the chopping block, and beyond that, winning living wages, healthy food, universal healthcare, and affordable housing, will not happen through putting our faith in the Democrats or the Republicans. It will only be through mass protests and mass strikes of public and private sector workers that we will protect all of the social programs that are under attack and win offensive victories for the working class.