The House Farm Bill (
H.R. 2) passed the Committee on Agriculture with only Republican votes and will soon go to the floor, where it faces strong criticism from Democrats who are concerned about the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) provisions.
The provisions in question are widely described as "enhancing work requirements," which sounds like a good thing, but these provisions are very tough on working participants. An
analysis by Dottie Rosenbaum at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) today persuasively argues that the changes "are a bad deal for states and low-income households."
- One provision would require state agencies to ramp up employment and training programs to an unprecedented level, and it would reduce their ability to design these programs to meet local needs.
- Another provision would require up to 7 million working-age SNAP participants to report their weekly wages and hours is much greater detail, in order to enforce new benefit penalties for those who fall short.
I fear this could yield a bureaucratic charade, with enormous investments in documenting the appearance of trying to work, taking participants away from their actual efforts to get on their feet in the private sector and taking program managers away from the main job of helping families get the resources they need to eat.
The House proposal overlooks the great accomplishment of SNAP in recent decades, transforming a program that once had been just about safety net support for non-working families into a much more labor-market-friendly program that is open and accessible to working families as well. For example, at one time years ago, as Nader Kabbani and I found in the
Journal of Human Resources, SNAP policy had perverse incentives for states to make the program less accessible to working people, in order to avoid the appearance of "errors" in benefit amount determination for families with fluctuating incomes. Later, important policy reforms streamlined the program's bureaucracy and simplified paperwork by allowing state agencies to determine the SNAP benefit amount for 6 months at a time, with less need for frequent reporting of minor changes in earnings. The new Farm Bill draft in the House reverses these changes, increasing the burden for program managers, and quite possibly deterring participation by working families with fluctuating incomes.
I recognize that thoughtful people want able-bodied SNAP participants to stay connected with the labor market as much as possible, and I entirely agree. Recently, in a Q and A about the Farm Bill in
Nutrition Today, Ph.D. student Mehreen Ismail and I summarized some of the research on this issue.
Does SNAP discourage work?
More than 30% of all SNAP households had earnings from work in fiscal year 2015. This proportion was 55% among households with children. Most working SNAP participants are employed in low-wage occupations. By design, the SNAP benefit formula supports working households through its earned income deduction and benefit reduction rate. For every additional $1 of earned income, working households experience a $0.24 to $0.36 decrease in SNAP benefits, preventing a steep ‘‘cliff effect.’’ The 2014 Farm Bill authorized $200 million to pilot SNAP Employment and Training (E and T) programs. The E and T programs connect SNAP participants with skills training, job search assistance, subsidized employment, and more. Integrating strategies in a comprehensive, individualized way may enhance the E and T programs’ ability to lift unemployed or underemployed SNAP participants out of poverty.
The best work-friendly safety net is one in which low-wage working people can participate in SNAP with a minimum of fuss, while working as hard as they can.
In my view, the House Farm Bill seems less likely to make SNAP participants hard-working, and more likely just to make them hungry.
