Delayed for weeks by the partial federal shutdown, the Trump administration published its proposal to restrict states from allowing able-bodied adults to collect SNAP benefits for more than 90 days if they are not working at least 20 hours a week. The Federal Register notice ignited a campaign to block the proposal, which opponents said is contrary to the 2018 food and farm law.
Congress decided against changing SNAP work requirements despite a determined effort by conservative Republicans for broader and stricter work requirements for “work capable” adults aged 18-60 unless they had children below age 6. At present, able-bodied adults without dependents (ABAWDs) aged 18-50 are limited to 90 days of food stamps in a three-year period unless they work at least 20 hours a week. States can waive the time limit in areas with high unemployment or too few jobs.
Anti-hunger activists say the administration proposal will end benefits for several hundred thousand people. In the Federal Register, the USDA said it is “confident these changes would encourage more ABAWDs to engage in work or work activities if they wish to continue to receive SNAP benefits.”
Ohio Rep. Marcia Fudge, who chairs the House Agriculture subcommittee on nutrition, sent a letter to USDA asking for an extension of the 60-day comment period, ending April 2, that was announced. “This language was vetted in detail for five full months by Members of the 2018 Farm Bill Conference Committee before being struck from the final bill,” said Fudge. She said the proposed rule “does just the opposite” of the new law.
The anti-hunger group Food Research and Action Center and two think tanks, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Center for American Progress, launched a drive to generate public comments against the proposal. FRAC said the proposal would drive up hunger and poverty rates. In an essay published in late January, Cossy Hough, a clinical associate professor at the University of Texas, said there were 775,000 ABAWDs: “The target group is small but particularly vulnerable, as individuals’ average annual income is about $4,800. Stricter work requirements for SNAP recipients are not the way to help people ‘lift themselves out of pervasive poverty.'”
The USDA says its proposal will save $1.5 billion a year. It would would require a jobless rate of 7 percent in areas with high relative unemployment and eliminate labor surplus areas as a criterion for a waiver. It also would limit waivers to a 12-month span, prevent states from covering broad swaths of territory with a single waiver, and end states’ ability to stockpile one-month exemptions for a portion of their ABAWD population.
To read the proposed SNAP rule, click here.