The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill to suspend the debt ceiling Wednesday, which some lawmakers, including New Mexico Representative Melanie Stansbury, say goes too far in cutting funds for government programs. Several programs that impact New Mexico are on the chopping block as the bill makes its way to the Senate.
Stansbury was the only New Mexico representative to vote against the bill.
"It cut food assistance for over 700,000 Americans, it gut NEPA [National Environmental Policy Act] and fundamental, bedrock environmental programs, it clawed back over 150 million dollars in community COVID funding and it's going to force every American with student loans to have to start repaying those loans in the next couple of months," she said.
In 2020, New Mexicans received about $50 million dollars per month in food assistance from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which will see a portion of the cuts.
The bill calls for COVID-19 relief funding that had not been assigned to a program or service yet to be scaled back. But Stansbury said similar legislation, like the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, will be protected.
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