More than 200 health and medical professionals from across the country sent a letter to the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate agriculture committees urging the farm bill conferees to reject the House bill’s expansion of SNAP work requirements. The experts argued that increased work requirements will further exacerbate health disparities and diet-related illness.
“The House’s proposed changes to SNAP would only add to a growing public health crisis,” the letter reads. “In recent years, preventable diet-related diseases such as cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes have reached epidemic proportions, threatening not only our health, but our economic vitality and national security.”
The House version of the bill would limit SNAP benefits for so-called “able-bodied adults without dependents” who don’t work at least 20 hours per week or participate in a job-training program. The proposal has been slammed by Democrats and many hunger and health advocacy groups. The White House has made it clear that it supports expanded work requirements for federal welfare programs.
“Extensive research shows that SNAP is one of the country’s most effective resources to help people in both urban and rural communities put food on the table and alleviate economic hardship that can compound health disparities,” said Sarah Reinhardt, an analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists, in a statement released with the letter. “The House bill would worsen the country’s widening resource gap and growing epidemic of diet-related diseases.”
The letter’s authors wrote that the House version of the bill “abandons evidence for ideology.” They argued that “[t]he House bill disregards data showing that most SNAP participants who can work do work, and offers untested and underfunded workforce training programs as compensation — an empty solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.”