As many as 5 million people will have to work longer hours each week to avoid a 90-day limit on food stamp benefits under revisions proposed by the Republican chairman of the House Agriculture Committee but uniformly opposed by its Democratic members. Chairman Michael Conaway’s package would cut food stamp spending by $20 billion over 10 years, according to documents released by Democratic staff workers.
The cuts would be offset in part because states would be required to provide a job-training slot for every able-bodied person at risk of losing benefits. The Conaway plan would expand the number of people subject to the 90-day limit.
“SNAP already has strict work requirements,” say the Democratic documents. “A new nationwide bureaucracy is not good policy” because of the short time frame — two years — states would have to expand “education and training” programs, currently a small adjunct of SNAP, to handle an estimated 3 million to 5 million people.
For his part, Conaway says there will be no overall cut in SNAP spending under his approach because there will be “a significant, unheard-of amount of money” going into job training. “Not one person gets kicked out of the program,” he said. Some people may find the work-or-training requirement to be too onerous and will drop out, he told cattle producers in Texas. “That’s your choice. … If you want to help yourself, we’ll help you.”
At present, able-bodied adults without dependents (ABAWDs) who do not work at least 20 hours a week or spend an equal amount of time in workfare or job training are limited to 90 days of benefits in a three-year period. The work target would rise to 25 hours a week in 2026. Conaway would also expand those covered by the work requirement to include able-bodied adults from ages 18 to 65; it now covers those 18 to 60 years old. At the same time, he would exempt able-bodied parents until their children are 12 years old, up from the current 6 years.
Preliminary calculations are that 3 million to 5 million people would be affected by the new work requirements. By comparison, an estimated 9 percent of current SNAP recipients — or nearly 4 million people — are ABAWDs. Half of them work enough hours that they are not subject to the 90-day limit.
Some recipients would likely drop out of SNAP if the training programs proved cumbersome or not worth benefits that now average $123 a month per person and $248 a month per household. The Congressional Budget Office says the decline might equal 3 percent of SNAP caseloads.
Anti-hunger activists say the vast majority of SNAP recipients subject to the 90-day limit are already working. “It’s a matter of are they able to get a stable schedule so they get consistent hours” to meet the 20-hour target, said Ellen Vollinger of the Food Research and Action Center.
Some of Conaway’s proposals are at cross-purposes to his goal of moving people into better-paying or more highly skilled work, said Vollinger. The chairman’s package, for instance, would restrict so-called categorical eligibility, which allows people with high expenses to apply for SNAP even if their income is more than 130 percent of the poverty level. Vollinger said categorical eligibility reduces the so-called benefit cliff people face as their income rises and federal benefits taper off. SNAP enrollment, she said, would drop by 400,000 people if Conaway’s proposal on categorical eligibility is adopted.
The package would also require states to pursue child support payments from non-custodial parents, and non-cooperative parents would be disqualified from SNAP. Democratic staffers estimate that implementing this provision would cost more than $2 for each $1 it saves.
Conaway told the cattle producers that he is willing to write a farm bill that will be passed with support from only the House’s sizable Republican majority — 238 seats to the 192 held by Democrats. “I’m going to put a House bill on the table,” he said. “Got to get it done. When? Next month.” Democrats, he said, have “abandoned rural America. They don’t understand the value of work.”
Last week, the Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate Agriculture Committee dismissed the idea of large cuts in SNAP. Only a bipartisan farm bill will pass in the narrowly divided Senate, they said at a farm policy conference.