N/U SNAP – Farm Bill

Meredith Lee Hill and Garrett Downs, 3/13/2023, food and agriculture policy reporters for POLITICO. "Republicans launch opening salvo against food aid," POLITICO, https://www.politico.com/news/2023/03/13/republicans-snap-benefits-cuts-00086638

House Republicans are taking their first shot at slashing federal spending on nutrition programs for low-income Americans. It won’t be their last.

Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.), is introducing a bill Tuesday, shared exclusively with POLITICO, to expand current restrictions on who qualifies for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps. It’s the first of what is expected to be a wave of GOP efforts this year to set limits on SNAP, the country’s largest food assistance program, which grew significantly during the pandemic. But while Republicans have telegraphed their desire to curb nutrition spending, House Democrats have yet to mount a coordinated response, raising concerns in the caucus about whether they can fend off likely GOP attacks on the program during the negotiations over the debt limit, budget and 2023 farm bill.

Johnson’s bill would expand the age bracket for able-bodied SNAP recipients without dependents, who have to meet complicated work requirements. The legislation would also limit the federal government’s ability to waive those work requirements for states he says are abusing loopholes in the system.

Supporters say enhancing work requirements as outlined in Johnson’s proposal is key to reducing cycles of perpetual poverty, and it will also save taxpayers money.

“We know that work is the only path out of poverty,” said Johnson, a member of the House Agriculture Committee whose family received SNAP benefits when he was a child growing up in Pierre, South Dakota.

Johnson hopes his proposal will be folded into the upcoming farm bill, which lawmakers will draft later this year, but it will face stiff resistance in the Democrat-controlled Senate. Other GOP lawmakers are now pressing for similar work requirements to be part of any deal on the debt limit between the White House and the House GOP. Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) reintroduced a bill in January that would raise the age for food assistance work requirements by a decade to 59.

Democrats, however, note the majority of people who receive SNAP benefits are already working and, at the moment, are grappling with surging food prices, a challenge exacerbated by the end of a pandemic-era increase in aid.

“These guys talk about states’ rights all the time, except when it comes to poor people,” said Rep. Jim McGovern, one of the biggest anti-hunger advocates in the House.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations committee who’s had a series of budget talks with her Republican counterparts, noted this is a perennial fight.

“This is not something new, this go round. All you have to do is look back over the years,” DeLauro said. She added many House Republicans, who are currently eyeing broad cuts across anti-hunger programs and other social spending, would “decimate” food assistance programs if given the chance.

But even though they know what’s coming, some House Democrats are quietly raising alarms about their lack of plans to push back on the GOP proposals, which are likely to come up during negotiations over the debt limit, federal budget and farm bill.

“We need to be prepared for a showdown on food security — and right now, we’re not ready,” said one House Democrat, who was granted anonymity in order to speak plainly about internal caucus matters.

As POLITICO first reported last year, some Democrats have been particularly concerned about the leadership atop the House Agriculture Committee, which oversees SNAP and other federal food assistance programs. A handful of Democrats have pressed their leaders multiple times to remove top committee Democrat David Scott (D-Ga.) from his post, citing Scott’s health and concerns about his ability to effectively lead the committee. A steady churn of committee staff turnover under Scott has added to Democrats’ worries about their ability to effectively push back on Republicans. So far, leadership has rebuffed their efforts.

SNAP is at risk of devastating cuts – Johnson’s proposed work requirements hike puts millions at risk

Katie Bergh and Dottie Rosenbaum, 3/20/2023, Senior Policy Analyst on the Food Assistance team. Prior to joining the Center, she worked as a Senior Policy Advisor for Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-ME), where she managed her work as a member of the House Agriculture Committee and House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and related agencies. She holds a B.A. in Biology from Kalamazoo College and an M.P.P. from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Dottie Rosenbaum is the Senior Fellow and Director of Federal SNAP Policy on the Food Assistance team. She lends her deep and expansive knowledge of SNAP and other assistance programs to the development and implementation of the team’s federal agenda. She works closely with other Center teams, federal and state agency partners, and national and state advocacy partners on SNAP policy development, strategy, and technical assistance. Before joining the Center, she was a budget analyst at the Congressional Budget Office., "House Republicans’ Proposals Could Take Food Away From Millions of Low-Income Individuals and Families," Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/house-republicans-proposals-could-take-food-away-from-millions-of-low

House Republicans are planning to release an annual budget resolution soon that will likely call for deep cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). House Republican leaders are pressing for cutting the deficit, refusing to raise revenues, and even calling for more tax cuts, while saying they will shield certain areas of the budget (Medicare, Social Security, and military spending) from cuts. This approach makes Medicaid and SNAP prime targets for proposed cuts.[1] Prominent Republicans have put forward several proposals to cut SNAP (the focus of this analysis) and there is a legislative vehicle to try to enact them: this year’s expected farm bill to reauthorize SNAP and other Agriculture Committee programs.[2] Policymakers should reject these damaging proposals and instead focus on protecting and strengthening SNAP, including by improving benefit adequacy, expanding access for populations who have low incomes and are underserved by or excluded from SNAP, and enhancing customer service and modernization.

Republican policymakers are reportedly considering many SNAP cut proposals, all of which would end up taking food benefits away from families with low incomes and weaken the program’s effectiveness at reducing food insecurity and poverty. Notably, a bill from House Agriculture Committee member Dusty Johnson and more than 20 other House Republicans would dramatically expand the population of people subject to policies that take SNAP away from people not meeting onerous work and work-reporting requirements. This is a punitive and ineffective approach that would put SNAP’s grocery benefits at risk for adults up to age 65 and many families with school-age children in which parents or other adults are unable to work or cannot find jobs with enough hours.[3]

Altogether more than 10 million people, about 1 in 4 SNAP participants, live in households that would be at risk of losing food assistance benefits under this bill. That includes about 6 million people who would potentially be newly subject to the time limit and at risk of losing eligibility for SNAP, and about 4 million children who live in families that could have their SNAP benefits reduced, harming the entire household.

House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington[4] has similarly called for stricter work requirements in SNAP, even while such requirements have proven counterproductive and most SNAP participants who can work already do so. Budget plans put forward by the Republican Study Committee and by Trump-era Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought would also take food assistance away through harmful work requirements while, respectively, instituting a strict block grant (often used to promote large, unspecified cuts) and radically restructuring SNAP by capping program spending.[5]

In addition, the extensive cuts that House Republicans passed in their 2018 farm bill and similar measures the Trump Administration pursued by regulation could offer clues to what may be ahead in the farm bill debate.[6] In 2018 we detailed how such provisions would hurt older people, workers, children, women, people with disabilities, and veterans.[7] The House-passed bill would have caused more than 1 million households with more than 2 million people to lose benefits altogether or have them reduced.[8] Those provisions were soundly rejected on a bipartisan basis in the Senate.

SNAP cuts could not come at a worse time. Food inflation remains high and SNAP’s temporary, pandemic-related benefits ended after February issuances. The result of the latter was a reduction of at least $95 per month in SNAP benefits for 17 million SNAP households in the 35 states and other jurisdictions that still were providing the additional benefits, the loss of which in the other states has been felt for months.[9] With the end of these temporary benefits, SNAP benefits average only about $6 per person per day.[10]

Despite its modest benefit amounts, SNAP is our nation’s most effective and important tool to fight hunger, reaching over 40 million children, parents, older adults, disabled people, workers, and other low-income people each month, or about 1 in 8 people in the U.S. SNAP has been found to reduce food insecurity and is linked to improved health, education, and economic outcomes and to lower medical costs for participants.[11]

Some policymakers have suggested SNAP’s spending levels are problematic and justify cuts, but SNAP spending is driven by need, that is, the number of people who qualify for assistance under the program’s rules and who apply (and, during the pandemic, by the emergency benefits provided). And the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that SNAP spending will fall this year as temporary COVID-19 relief measures end and the economy continues to recover from the pandemic recession, and then will remain flat (even without adjusting for inflation) for the next decade.[12]

Main Impact of Proposals That Take Food Assistance Away From People Who Don’t Show They Meet a Work Requirement Is to Increase Poverty and Hardship

Many Republicans have long sought to expand SNAP’s already harsh work requirements, including its rule limiting benefit receipt to three months out of every three years for adults aged 18 through 49 who can’t document they meet the work requirement or are otherwise exempt. Former President Trump, for example, sought through regulation to substantially narrow the ability to waive this three-month time limit in areas with insufficient jobs and, in 2013 and 2018, House Republicans expanded harmful work requirements in their proposed farm bills.

More recent proposals are consistent with that effort. Johnson’s bill (H.R. 1581) would expand the population of people who must document they work or participate in a qualifying employment and training program a certain number of hours or face a three-month time limit to include adults up to age 65 (instead of age 50) and adult participants who live in a household with school-age children. It also would take away states’ existing flexibilities to waive punitive work rules in areas with insufficient jobs.[13]

Arrington, meanwhile, is seeking to cut “tens of billions” of dollars from SNAP and other programs by “reinstating” work requirements in budget negotiations this year.[14] Vought, the former OMB director whose plan many Republicans reportedly are embracing, has said that “a work requirement food stamp program is a lot easier to sell than [Medicare] premium support.”[15]