In Michigan, more than 50 percent of SNAP households with at least one working-age, non-disabled adult are receiving income from work. More than 80 percent worked in the year prior to or go back to work the year after receiving SNAP. The rates are even higher for families with children – more than 60 percent work while receiving SNAP and almost 90 percent work in the prior or subsequent year. SNAP helps both low-wage workers and those who are between jobs. A recent report by the Washington-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities shows the size of SNAP grows when jobs are scarce and shrinks somewhat after the job market improves. https://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3996
Some GOP lawmakers have met to discuss how to downsize the program with one approach being a proposal by Rep. Steve Southerland (R-FL) that would allow individual states to test new work requirements. During the debate over the combined farm bill that was eventually defeated, the House approved the Southerland amendment. A more far-reaching amendment that would have cut $3 billion a year from the program and imposed new work rules was rejected.
“It doesn’t make sense for Congress to be spending a lot of taxpayer money creating and administering new work rules and the related red tape when most of the people on the program already are working, soon to return to work, or have shown themselves unable to work,” says Stangl.
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