House Republicans returned to one of their original targets in the debt limit debate with President Biden — the authority of states to exempt able-bodied adults from the 90-day limit on food stamps unless they work at least 20 hours a week. Hundreds of thousands of SNAP recipients could be affected if Congress curtailed or eliminated state waivers.
GOP negotiators raised the issue, anathema to congressional Democrats, during weekend talks with administration officials. It was part of an early version of the GOP’s “Limit, Save, Grow” bill but later deleted. The final version of the bill would apply the 90-day limit to able-bodied adults without dependents (ABAWDs) ages 18-55, up from the current 18-49 years.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said stricter work requirements, another way of framing the time limit, were crucial. “Should we borrow money from China to pay people who are able-bodied with no dependents to sit on the couch?” he told reporters after meeting Biden at the White House on Monday.
State waivers were created in the 1996 welfare reform law at the same time ABAWDs were limited to 90 days of SNAP benefits in a three-year period unless they work at least 20 hours a week, perform workfare or are enrolled in job training. Waivers of the 90-day limit are allowed for reasons that include insufficient jobs in a region or a high unemployment rate. Sponsors said the waivers would stabilize enrollment during times of stress. States also have the power to issue discretionary waivers to up to 12 percent of their SNAP cases.
The initial language in the Republican debt bill would have ended the power of states to roll over unused discretionary exemptions from one year to the next. During the Trump era, a federal judge quashed a USDA regulation to limit the availability of waivers in areas with insufficient jobs. Details of the latest GOP proposal on waivers were not immediately available.
An estimated 700,000 people would have lost benefits under the Trump regulation. Analyst Lauren Bauer of the Brookings Institution said the actual figure would have been 1.3 million people.
“As has already been part of the debt limit discussions, exposing new populations to work requirements is ineffective, cruel, and fundamentally misunderstands the low-wage labor market and the characteristics of these populations,” said Bauer on social media.
“We have seen the back-and-forth over waivers (before),” said Ellen Vollinger of the anti-hunger Food Research & Action Center. McCarthy said “every study” showed the efficacy of work rules but Vollinger said time limits “were not going to motivate people to find jobs” if they aren’t available or pay too little.
At latest count, 42.5 million people were enrolled in SNAP with an average benefit of $248.48 per person per month.
“It’s hard to see how House GOP will accept any deal that omits tighter SNAP work requirements entirely. It’s also hard to see how significant SNAP changes would get through Senate.,” said Helena Bottemiller Evich, editor of the Food Fix newsletter.
Meanwhile, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries appointed nine Democrats to a Task Force on Agriculture and Nutrition to “push back aggressively” on attacks of SNAP, WIC and other public nutrition programs. “Equally significant, the task force will continue to honor our commitment to the farmers that feed our nation,” said Jeffries.