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This will sound like a liberal comment, but it’s a serious question:

It’s easy to conclude from the article that a lot of able-bodied adults were getting benefits they didn’t need because, as the article indicates, enrollment in the program dropped 85% when a work requirement was re-instituted.

But that reading assumes they “voluntarily” dropped, i.e., that upon being required to work, they chose not to do so and dropped their SNAP benefit request, implying they didn’t really need it anyway.

A different reading, however, would be that the government simply cut them off if they didn’t have a job. Nothing voluntary about it. In fact, that’s pretty much what the article says, i.e., no work, no SNAP benefit.

This is one of those issues that might bear a little closer scrutiny before jumping to a conclusion, I’m thinking. Like I said, this will come off sounding like a liberal comment, but I don’t intend it that way. It’s conceivable that someone simply can’t get a job where he lives and now can’t afford to eat either. I’m skeptical of that conclusion applying very broadly, but it’s certainly possible that it’s happening in some cases.

And then there’s the issue of: if you get a job and start making money, do you lose access to SNAP altogether? That is, do you lose more than you gained by working, for that’s sometimes a real issue with government largesse.

Add to that the probability that a whole lot of people on SNAP (the able-bodied ones without dependents now, not the families) are likely making money in the cash economy and you get a pretty confusing mess to sort out.