WASHINGTON — Americans who need food shouldn’t get vastly less help than other citizens just because they live in Puerto Rico, lawmakers on Capitol Hill said Wednesday as they introduced a bill that would level the scales for the island territory.
Lower-income Americans generally get food assistance from the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, but Puerto Rico was cut out of that system — then known as food stamps — in 1981.
Instead, Congress gave Puerto Rico a smaller block grant that cannot cover as many people as SNAP does, and which requires the territory to place severe restrictions on access.
