The GOP’s Work for Welfare Advance

Wall Street Journal ^ | May 13, 2025 | WSJ Editorial Board

[karpov]

The House’s big, beautiful budget bill is bigger than it is beautiful, so it’s worth noting the better parts of the draft. The House Agriculture Committee is moving on a modest welfare reform in food stamps that will resuscitate the program’s connection with work. Americans who manage to sift through the media distortions will approve.

By one think-tank estimate, nearly 13 million able-bodied adults were on food stamps in 2022, and the benefit covers some 12% of the U.S. population. People are supposed to work as a condition of benefits, but millions don’t. Live in California? The Biden Administration in January waived the program’s work requirement in the entire state for two years. The House bill cracks down on these waiver abuses.

Republicans will require work for able-bodied adults up to age 64 from age 54 now. The GOP is right that healthy older Americans shouldn’t check out of the economy early and can volunteer in their community or work in plenty of modern part-time jobs. Parents with children age seven or older will also be required to work. This is a far more substantive work requirement than the one Republicans are considering in Medicaid, which wouldn’t take effect until 2029 in any case.

The GOP will also put states on the hook for a slice of benefit costs, with a cost-sharing formula that encourages states to manage their rolls better. Food stamps exploded under President Biden, and the bill misses the opportunity to claw back his 2021 regulatory expansion of benefits, instead of merely trying to prevent future unilateral expansions.

But the GOP food-stamps bill notches incremental wins and is a point in the larger bill’s favor. Work as part of welfare used to be an area of bipartisan agreement in Washington.

---

TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: foodstamps; welfare

[karpov]

full article

[Recompennation]

How bout claw back the car full of yards thats so so obvious given that the12years of didtdonotin/ bitemes gave all the entitlementers new cars.
Take a ride and note where you see the yard car lots, new paved driveways, new metal roofs galore and car porches everywhere, and high speed fiber internet service since 2008. His gift to them, broadband comoonocation 52 billion worth of you didn’t build thats.

[bk1000]

Too many EBT/SNAP users are morbidly obese. I don’t think that is within the spirit of the program.

[ridesthemiles]

THAT STATISTIC IS 3 YEARS OLD.

BETCHA IT IS DOUBLE THAT NOW-—and the people on food stamps are NOT all “AMERICANS”.

[Vaduz]

The GOP’s Work for Welfare Advance

If that were true they wouldn’t be deporting them.

[Georgia Girl 2]

The whole idea of food stamps was to.help the working poor.

[Alberta's Child]

EBT/SNAP has nothing to do with hungry people. It’s designed to subsidize this country’s grocery store chains. That’s it.

Morbidly obese welfare recipients are evidence that the program is working — to perfection, in fact.

[Georgia Girl 2]

Well that’s what its morphed into but the original reason for food stamps was to help the working poor stay afloat which is why you had to be employed to qualify. We need to get back to that. Or end the program.

[tiki]

If RFK has his way they won’t be able to buy junk food anymore.