With time short for agreement on the farm bill, House Republicans are insisting on a stronger work requirement as a condition of eligibility for SNAP. Over the weekend, House Speaker Paul Ryan said, “[H]aving a work requirement in food stamps, having an education requirement in food stamps, is the best possible way” to put Americans to work.
“The farm bill is the perfect opportunity to get people off the sidelines, into the work force, into school, into good careers, and employers need it, so it’s a win-win-win,” said Ryan in a video posted by the House Agriculture Committee. During a news conference last week, Ryan said, “We still have millions of jobs unfilled,” and “with the farm bill, we want to get more people from welfare to work.”
Farm-bill negotiators aim for enactment of the 2018 farm bill before Sept. 30, when the current law expires. To do that, they must agree on a final version of the bill, pass it in both chambers and have President Trump sign it within the next three weeks. The House has scheduled seven days of work and the Senate 12 for the rest of September.
While House Republicans are enthusiastic about stronger SNAP work requirements, no House Democrat voted for the idea. The closely divided Senate rejected, by a 2-to-1 margin, a proposal that mirrored the House GOP plan. At present, able-bodied SNAP participants are required to register for work and accept a suitable job, if offered. The GOP-written House bill would require “work capable” adults ages 18-59 to work at least 20 hours a week or spend equivalent time in job training or workfare. States would be given $1 billion for training programs for an estimated 3 million people a year.
Democratic Rep. Marcia Fudge, also from Ohio, said Republicans rely on “unproven and unrealistic work schemes.” Other critics say some people will lose benefits because they fail to file paperwork on time to prove compliance, or the out-of-pocket expense to attend a training class will outweigh the value of SNAP benefits, which average $123 per person per month. The GOP plan “hurts hungry families,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, when farm-bill conferees met last week.
House Agriculture chairman Michael Conaway says he is willing to compromise on work requirements, but other members of the “big four” negotiators say more concessions are needed.
In the farm-bill video, Ryan said 12 million young, able-bodied Americans “are not working. They’re not looking for a job, they’re not in school; they’re slipping through the cracks.” Work requirements in SNAP would help put them to work, he said.
The U.S. unemployment rate is 3.9 percent, said the Labor Department on Friday in its monthly jobless report. The labor force participation rate of 62.7 percent was down slightly. Some 96 million people are not in the labor force. That group includes retirees, students, people caring for children or other family members, “and others who are neither working nor seeking work,” says the Bureau of Labor Statistics.