Posted by Tribune News Service
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CHICAGO — Some 688,000 food stamp recipients will have to find work by April or risk losing benefits as the Trump administration issues a final rule making it harder for states to get exemptions from work requirements.
Those affected are able-bodied adults under 50 without children or other dependents, who represent about 8% of the 36 million people using the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly called SNAP. Children, the elderly and people with disabilities — who make up the vast majority of SNAP participants — are not affected.
Effective April 1, many of those able-bodied recipients will be limited to three months of food aid over a three-year period unless they are working, in job training or participating in volunteer opportunities for at least 80 hours a month. The work requirements have existed since the mid-1990s, but many states receive waivers for counties with higher unemployment rates or where jobs are scarce.
The new rule makes it more difficult for states to get those waivers by forbidding them for areas where the unemployment rate has been lower than 6% over a 24-month period. Under the current rules, states can get waivers for areas with unemployment rates that are 20% higher than the national average — which currently stands at 3.6% — and have the flexibility to combine areas to maximize exemptions.
The change is expected to save the federal government, which funds SNAP, $5.5 billion over five years.
U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said Wednesday that the rule “restores the system to what Congress intended” and encourages people to enter the workforce at a time that jobs are plentiful. About three-quarters of able-bodied adults without children who receive food stamps are not working, the agency said.
“This was a system through difficult times, not a way of life,” Perdue told reporters in a conference call. In the year 2000, when the unemployment rate was 4%, there were 17 million people on food stamps, versus 36 million today, he said.
But social service agencies say those who don’t have a job have a reason for it, such as little education and skills, a criminal background that makes it tough to get hired, or an undiagnosed disability. Others do work but can’t get enough hours, which has become a growing problem as more jobs become temporary or part-time.
In the months during which they braced for the final rule to be announced, advocates for the poor expressed deep concern that people who struggle to find or land work will go hungry or have to decide whether to pay bills or rent or food. Food pantries are expecting their resources to be strained as more people seek help.
“As a practical matter, for those impacted it will mean less nutritious meals, or meals that are skipped altogether,” the Center for Science in the Public Interest said in a statement. ( http://leftexposed.org/2015/09/center-for-science-in-the-public-interest-2/ “It’s another act of cold and brutish cruelty from an administration that goes out of its way to sabotage the already-sparse safety net for the most vulnerable Americans.”
“It’s another act of cold and brutish cruelty from an administration that goes out of its way to sabotage the already-sparse safety net for the most vulnerable Americans.” (Center for science in the public interest is bias. Robert Shoffner of Washingtonian magazine noted, “There’s a political point of view here, an economic view based on the idea that people are children and have to be protected by Big Brother or Big Nanny from the awful free-market predators. … That’s what drives these people: a desire for control of other people’s lives.”)
The new rule is one of three that the Trump administration has proposed to scale back the nation’s food assistance program. Another would tighten eligibility rules so that people who have too much money saved would not be eligible for food aid, which would mostly affect the elderly and working families. The administration is reviewing comments on those proposals and will issue final rules in coming months.
— Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz
Chicago Tribune
