Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue has long spoken out against the “permanent lifestyle” of able-bodied adults who receive food stamps. Now the USDA is asking how it can more stringently enforce its 90-day limit on benefits to those who work fewer than 20 hours a week. For years, conservatives have targeted the so-called able-bodied adults without dependents (ABAWDs) in the program as freeloaders.
The USDA said it would accept public comments for 45 days, beginning with the publication, on Friday, of a Federal Register notice asking for ideas about how it can tighten its time-limit restriction on ABAWDs. Officials said they had good intentions — to help people move to better-paying jobs and an independent life or to improve their training so they boost their wages — but they also expressed displeasure that states waive the limit in the name of high unemployment rates or insufficient jobs.
“Too many states have asked to waive work requirements, abdicating their responsibility to move participants to self-sufficiency,” said Perdue in a statement. “Past decisions may have been the easy short-term choice, but USDA policies must change if they contribute to a long-term failure for many SNAP [food stamp] participants and their families.”
The number of food stamp recipients zoomed to a record high of 47.6 million in 2013 during the slow economic recovery from the 2008-09 recession. The USDA said participation remains high — an average of 42.1 million people per month during 2017 — even though last year’s unemployment rate of 4.5 percent was well below the 7.6 percent jobless rate of 2013. Nine percent of food stamp recipients, or roughly 3.7 million people, are ABAWDs, according to the USDA, although many of them work enough hours that they are not subject to the time limit.
“As Americans go back to work, it is appropriate to review how [the food stamp program] can better promote self-sufficiency so that fewer Americans need assistance from the program,” said the USDA in the Federal Register notice. In the notice, the agency asked for suggestions on policy, program, and regulatory changes that would reduce food insecurity “by helping able-bodied SNAP recipients obtain and maintain employment and aligning program regulations with the president’s budget proposals related to ABAWDs.”
President Trump has proposed both stricter limits on state waivers of the 90-day limit and increasing the age span of people covered by the limit. At present, ABAWDs are limited to 90 days of benefits in a three-year period unless they work at least 20 hours a week or spend an equal amount of time in workfare or job training. States can waive the 90-day limit if the local jobless rate exceeds 10 percent, if the local jobless rate is consistently 20 percent higher than the U.S. average, or if the area has been designated a labor surplus area by the Labor Department. The White House proposal would limit waivers to counties with a jobless rate of 10 percent or higher. It would also apply the 90-day limit to people ages 18 to 62; the current age span is 18 to 49. Further, it would end the authority states have to exempt 15 percent of ABAWDs from the time-limit restriction.
A White House database indicated last December that the USDA was working on a regulation titled “Modifying ABAWD time-limit waivers with the goal of moving individuals to work as the best solution for poverty.” The first step in that initiative would be an advance notice of proposed rulemaking, which is what the USDA published in the Federal Register.
“The administration does hope to come forward with a rule,” said the USDA’s Brandon Lipps, who oversees public nutrition programs. Lipps said the USDA also would work with Congress, in case lawmakers want to pass a bill to revise the ABAWD limit.
“We welcome the opportunity to weigh in on the harshness of this rule and ways to help, not harm, very poor unemployed people,” said Stacy Dean of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a think tank. “Unfortunately, this appears to be another effort on the part of the administration to make this rule even more punitive and unfair.”
The proposal to allow waivers only in high-unemployment counties would disqualify 600,000 to 700,000 recipients, according to a Center on Budget report.
During a news conference, Perdue declined to say if the government should require able-bodied adults to work longer hours in order to receive benefits. Wisconsin legislators have passed a package of welfare bills that extends the work requirement for ABAWDs — including those with school-age children — to 30 hours a week. Federal law allows a 30-hour target for ABAWDs, but Wisconsin would need a USDA waiver to apply a work requirement to adults with children.
“We will look at it very carefully and reasonably,” Perdue told reporters.
The Federal Register notice is available here.