As House and Senate farm bill conferees try to resolve their differences over SNAP, the Berkeley Food Institute (BFI) published a policy brief that shows how some proposed changes to the program would undermine the very things that make SNAP successful.
“Pressing threats to SNAP in the latest legislation include expanding work requirements, measures to improve ‘integrity’ by making proof of eligibility increasingly burdensome, restricting EBT card replacement allowances, and creating an unwieldy national database in order to prevent duplicative enrollment,” writes the BFI’s Athena Roesler. “These changes are notable in that they both ignore participants’ dignity and add bureaucratic complexity that would discourage people in need from accessing SNAP.”
For instance, the House version of the farm bill would reduce the limit on benefits from three months to one month for able-bodied adults without dependents —so-called ABAWDs — under 60 years of age who aren’t working at least 20 hours a week or enrolled in a government-run employment training program.
The BFI brief says this change isn’t grounded in the reality of life in the low-wage economy. “Food insecurity is a symptom of poverty or lack of adequate income,” Roesler writes, “and adding stricter work requirements while failing to address hurdles to employment (such as a lack of child care, transportation, formal education, a criminal record, or health conditions) is both harmful to participants and a waste of government money.”
The House plan, she writes, also ignores “two decades of evidence from similar TANF [Temporary Assistance for Needy Families] work requirements passed in 1996. TANF participants reported they lost benefits for reasons unrelated to their desire to work, including not understanding program rules, administrative glitches, and the state’s lack of capacity to identify justified exemptions related to poor health, lack of transportation, or low education. Lessons learned from TANF also show that the most vulnerable participants, who had less capacity to navigate complex administrative processes, were the most likely to lose benefits.”
SNAP, the nation’s largest hunger-relief program, accounts for nearly 80 percent of the total cost of the farm bill. In 2017, 42.2 million Americans received SNAP, with an average monthly benefit of $125.80 and a total cost of about $68.1 billion.