Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue shows more enthusiasm for cutting SNAP enrollment than in making full use of food stamps to alleviate hunger during the pandemic, said the think tank Center for American Progress (CAP) on Thursday. SNAP enrollment has rocketed to 43 million, the highest level since October 2017, and estimates of food insecurity have tripled because of the coronavirus.
“President Trump’s appointment of Sonny Perdue to head the USDA had dire consequences before the pandemic, and these repercussions continue to reverberate today,” said a CAP analysis. “An agricultural tycoon determined to gut SNAP now finds himself charged with responding to a growing hunger crisis amid a devastating pandemic.”
A USDA spokesperson was not immediately available for comment.
The CAP analysis pointed to three regulations written under Perdue’s direction to narrow SNAP eligibility and end benefits for an estimated 3.7 million people. At a House hearing on March 10, three days before Trump declared a coronavirus national emergency, Perdue insisted the first of the rules, affecting 700,000 recipients, should take effect as scheduled on April 1. The rule on so-called ABAWDs — able-bodied adults without dependents — was blocked by a federal judge.
The Trump administration has blocked proposals by Democrats in Congress for a temporary 15 percent increase in SNAP benefits, and Perdue blunted a provision in the Families First coronavirus bill that allowed emergency allotments to SNAP recipients “not greater than the applicable maximum monthly allotment.” The USDA interpreted the provision to mean benefits could be increased to the maximum a person could receive under current rules, rather than a supplemental amount. Some 40 percent of SNAP recipients, roughly 12 million people with the lowest incomes, already received the maximum benefit, so they did not see any additional aid, said the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
“Secretary Perdue’s decision ensured that they were excluded from the emergency aid,” said the CAP.
U.S. district judge John Milton issued a preliminary injunction in early September that could lead to additional benefits. Milton, based in Philadelphia, is hearing a case that challenges the USDA interpretation. The Pennsylvania Department of Human Services has followed the injunction with a request that the USDA expand SNAP benefits to the 40 percent that had been left out. Those households would get a supplemental benefit equal to 50 percent of their usual SNAP benefit under the state’s proposal, reported Gant News.
Perdue and the administration have put the spotlight on the $4 billion Farmers to Families Food Box giveaway as their response to the pandemic. Nearly 98 million boxes of food had been distributed as of Thursday. Perdue calls the food box a “win-win-win” because contractors buy surplus food at the farm level, package it, and deliver it to nonprofit organizations ready for distribution. Critics say the program is inefficient and began operation last May without a format to assure the boxes, containing fresh produce, dairy products, pre-cooked pork and chicken, were distributed equitably.
The Trump administration supported House Republican proposals for broader and stricter SNAP work requirements during drafting of the 2018 farm bill. When Congress rejected those ideas, the administration said it would pursue them under its own authority. The economic boom then underway was a good time to move people into jobs, Perdue said in announcing, in late 2019, stricter enforcement of the 90-day limit on food stamps for ABAWDs unless they work at least 20 hours a week or are part of a workfare or job-training program.
“Government can be a powerful force for good, but government dependency has never been the American dream,” he said.