Trump Administration to Stiffen Food-Stamp Work Requirement

Wall Street Journal ^ | December 4, 2019 | Jacob Bunge

[karpov]

The Trump administration is set to tighten work requirements for recipients of federal food aid, potentially rendering hundreds of thousands of people ineligible for the program by mid-2020.

The administration said Wednesday that it had completed a new rule curbing states’ ability to shield adults without dependents from federal work requirements tied to receiving assistance through the program formerly administered via food stamps. Officials say the rule, which takes effect April 1, 2020, will save the government billions of dollars and encourage more people to work at a time when jobless rates are near a 50-year low.

The rule is the first to take effect among several Trump administration proposals to restrict access to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which provides aid to 36.4 million people. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the program, separately has proposed tightening eligibility requirements for low-income households and changing how utility costs factor into eligibility.

“This rule lays the groundwork for the expectation that able-bodied Americans reenter the workforce where there are currently more job openings than people to fill them,” said USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue.

Critics, including Democratic members of Congress, have said the Trump administration’s efforts deepen hardships for poor families and circumvent congressional authority over government assistance programs.

“Putting up barriers to food assistance will not incentivize or equip people with what they need to seek and maintain work,” wrote representatives for Oxfam America, a poverty relief group, in a 2018 letter opposing the proposed tighter work requirements.

For able-bodied adults without dependents, U.S. law limits SNAP benefits to three months, unless recipients are working or in training for 20 hours a week. States can waive those limits in areas where unemployment runs 20% above the national rate, which was 3.6% in October.

[Flaming Conservative]

Glad she’s getting her financial life together. But, doesn’t the program allow credit for schooling OR work? What I mean is, that working towards a GED should have made her eligible. If it couldn’t work out to the required 20 hours, I believe they’ll accept volunteer service OR an actual paying job. At least I’ve read that.

[mouse_35]

She has a child so she was getting food stamps but my foster son is a deadbeat dad. She needed cash assistance and couldn’t get it without being in the state employment program. They did not count her GED classes as time toward her work requirement and they would not allow her to study during her required hours at the employment office.

She was fortunate in that we could give her and my granddaughter a place to live and help with some necessities. We are a single income family. My husband is disabled and we chose not to go on SSDI as long as I could support us. We are glad to help, but it has been a serious stretch sometimes!

[Trump.Deplorable]

Here is some friendly advice, 100% of those work at home jobs you see on the internet, on phone poles, or in questionable publications, are scams.

The only work at home job you can get is the one you create for yourself, that would be like selling stuff on ebay/internet, consulting, maybe guitar/music lessons, stuff like that.

[zerosix]

Bet what percent are working for the government, one agency (teachers, etc.) or another.

I’m hearing many if not most college students get food aid, dittos military families. There is absolutely no valid reason for anyone attending college or university, to be getting food aid. Quit school, get a job and no need for welfare!

At various times, I’ve heard ads on radio and maybe even tv to sign up “clients” for food aid, almost always with Obama administration.

Americans who work to support their families are getting fleeced to pay for students’ keggers and parties!

This nonsense must stop!

[Lizavetta]

Why hasn’t he targeted FIRST a citizenship requirement?!

[Go Gordon]

One of the problems with the work requirement is that it is nearly impossible to get a job if you don’t have a HS diploma or a GED. My ex-foster daughter-in-law ran up against this problem. She was putting 20-30 applications a week and could not get hired until she finished up her GED.

So who's fricken fault is it she didn't stay in school? Why, after screwing up by not staying in school, did she not go get her GED? Its hard to sympathize with someone who brings it on to their self.

[ridesthemiles]

The work at home things you see all over ARE SCAMS.

STAY AWAY FROM THEM.

[lastchance]

Now let the government also go after those cronies receiving $$$S. Lots of fraud and waste to curb at all levels of income.

[lastchance]

And the cost of getting a GED has gone way up. The testing companies know they hold the cards. Now if this country would acknowledge that the rearing children is an important job and contributes to society that would be good. Also why not include volunteer work?

[lastchance]

Thanks for being a foster parent.

[kingu]

If you’re asking me which I would prefer to see; absolutely, abolish all public assistance and let charities handle it. But absolutely let charities handle it, don’t handcuff them with dozens upon dozens of regulations, requirements, minimum standards, etc, etc, etc.

But so long as public assistance exists, it should take into account the areas where people live, what the current rents are, etc. I’ve seen the scam in many many different forms. I’ve also reported many for doing the scam (and almost never is there any follow up...)

But the scam artists are really few and far between. Most are just trapped in the public assistance treadmill.. Get an extra day in the week, loose your foodstamps. Hit the wrong mark, rent goes from $300 to $900 (or much more), etc.

There needs to be an incentive to get off public assistance, the way it is currently set up, there’s every incentive to live there for the rest of your life (and your children’s lives, and their children’s lives..) The problem is that it’s currently managed by politicians who are extremely susceptible to sob story newspaper reports, whereas most private charities are much more likely to reply with what really happened.

So yes, ideally, abolish public charity, put it back in the hands of the community where it belongs. Until that happens, the hard cut off lines need to be prorated into something far more sensible that doesn’t punish people for working for themselves.

[Pollster1]

Good. Those who demand that working Americans support them need to put in the work to earn that welfare payment. Being a parasite on society should not be the easiest option, not for those who are capable of working.

[Buckeye McFrog]

The work at home things you see all over ARE SCAMS. STAY AWAY FROM THEM.

Yup. Especially the ones saying you can make money stuffing envelopes at home. I worked in a place where we had a piece of equipment from Pitney-Bowes that could stuff 10,000 in an hour. That was in the early 1980's, they probably do a lot more than that now. I doubt you can keep up.

[PapaBear3625]

I’ll bet many of them are in fact working - firewood delivered, houses painted! Cash only!

Or maid, nanny, cook. As a servant, she could do her employers shopping, put it on her foodstamps card, get cash, and get most of her real food needs met at a food bank.