As Congress consider additional and inflexible work requirements for SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program – formerly food stamps) recipients, anti-hunger advocates at the Center for Civil Justice (CCJ) worry that lawmakers are proposing new rules without considering who actually gets SNAP and why. According to U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, 92 percent of recipients nationwide are children, the elderly, the disabled, or people who are already working. The overwhelming majority of SNAP recipients who can work, are working. People who voluntarily quit work are disqualified from benefits under current rules.
Advocates say the SNAP program has grown in recent years – not because people are avoiding work, but because the program and community partners are both doing a better job of reaching out to those who aren’t earning enough to make ends meet. “SNAP is a very important supplement for working households and for social security benefits that are too low to pay for all household expenses,” says CCJ’s Executive Director Terri Stangl. “The program should not be attacked because it has been successful for finding and helping those who it was ended to help. It was intended to help those who – after paying housing, childcare and child support expenses – simply don’t have enough money left each month to feed their families.”
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.