Trump may just blow up the farm bill over demanding food stamp work requirements – By Tara Golshan (vox.com) / May 9 2018
The president is expected to take a hardline position with Congress.
President Donald Trump may blow up negotiations over the farm bill by demanding work requirements for food stamps.
Trump is expected to tell lawmakers Wednesday that he will veto any farm bill that doesn’t include stricter work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly referred to as food stamps, the Wall Street Journal reported.
That demand, which could mean tens of billions of dollars in cuts to the anti-poverty program that serves more than 42 million Americans, is likely a nonstarter for Democrats, whose votes are needed for the bill to pass. The $100 billion legislative package, which Congress largely renews every five years to subsidize agriculture and food assistance programs, needs bipartisan support to pass the 60-vote threshold in the Senate. Eighty percent of the farm bill’s spending is on nutrition programs.
Currently, the House Republicans’ proposed farm bill, which was written behind closed doors and without Democratic input, is estimated to slash $20 billion from SNAP over the next 10 years. More than 2 million people could be pushed off the program, according to an analysis by the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, if the stringent proposed work requirements and anti-fraud measures are put into place. The House is expected to vote on the bill in the next week. The Senate has yet to put together its own version.
The Senate Agricultural Committee’s Republican chair, Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts, has said their proposal would be more bipartisan and was unlikely to include harsh work requirements. But Trump’s push to make the farm bill more partisan could bring the legislative package to a standstill.
The farm bill is often seen as bipartisan, but it — like many other issues — has been plagued by partisan fights in recent years. The last farm bill, which finally passed in 2014, was delayed for two years after a similar conservative push over SNAP. Roberts said that wouldn’t happen this time.
“We’re going to make efficiencies,” he said, according to the Journal. “The nutrition title is exceedingly important to the minority and we have to have 60 votes.”
That might all change if Trump gets his way.
The House’s farm bill has already erupted into a partisan food fight
There are already work requirements for able-bodied adults ages 18 through 49 without dependents to receive food stamps; recipients have to work at least 20 hours per week in order to receive food aid for more than three months in a 36-month period. On average, a SNAP recipient usually receives $126.39 per month, and an average household receives $256.11 monthly — about $1.40 per meal. States often waive those requirements when the economy is doing poorly and reinstate them in healthier job markets, designed to offer stability during the ebbs and flows of the economic cycle. Poverty experts see it as an “important macroeconomic stabilizer.”
The House farm bill would extend the work requirements for people up to age 59 beginning in 2021 and ask for proof of working at least 20 hours a week monthly. The minimum work requirement would also be increased to 25 hours by 2026. Those who violate the requirements (or fail to properly prove they’ve completed the work) would be cut off from benefits for an entire year. If they violate the requirements repeatedly, recipients could be cut off from benefits for up to three years.
Poverty experts argue these stricter work requirements will add onerous paperwork to the program, cut off millions from necessary aid, and ultimately have dire public health consequences like increasing food insecurity.
“My own sense is that this is a cost-cutting push, period,” James Ziliak, the director of University of Kentucky’s Center for Poverty Research, said. “The disconnect is that some people don’t want to acknowledge that there are people in need.”
The impact of these reforms is clear: The Congressional Budget Office expects it would cut around $20 billion in costs from the program over the next 10 years, derived directly from reducing the benefits. Instead, the reforms would increase administrative costs by requiring beneficiaries to file more paperwork to maintain eligibility.
There are currently about 42 million Americans living below the poverty line, almost half of whom are children, who rely on SNAP to purchase food. It’s expected that roughly 2 million would be pushed off the rolls altogether or see reductions in already meager stipends.
There are some investments in the benefits in the House proposal, with funding for the Food Insecurity Nutrition Incentive program, which would double SNAP benefits when buying fruits and vegetables. But those improvements largely pale in comparison to the cuts low-income families would experience.
SNAP cuts derailed the farm bill last time. Trump could do it again.
House Republicans say their conservative farm bill proposal is aimed at reducing poverty and promoting self-sufficiency.
“We believe that breaking this poverty cycle is really important,” Rep. Mike Conaway (R-TX), the chair of the Agriculture Committee, told reporters in early April — a continuation of President Trump’s executive order this month charging his Cabinet secretaries to review their agencies’ welfare programs and institute work requirements wherever possible.
Democrats beg to differ.
Rep. Collin Peterson, a conservative Minnesota Democrat and the Agricultural Committee’s ranking member, said Democrats “were pushed away by an ideological fight I repeatedly warned the chairman not to start.”
“This bill as it is written kicks people off the SNAP program,” Peterson said at the bill’s markup hearing. “The chairman calls it self-selection. Call it whatever you want, it’s reducing the SNAP rolls.”
House Republicans are arguing that their proposed work requirements for SNAP, which they tout as having widespread approval nationwide (the public is much less supportive of cutting welfare programs), can gain bipartisan support in the Senate. But the political dynamics in Congress indicate otherwise.
This partisan fight is reminiscent of one Congress had in 2012, when lawmakers’ failure to reach consensus let the funding expire for two years. The impasse was over a partisan fight over SNAP. The House, then held by a Republican majority, proposed a policy that would have thrown 2 million to 3 million people off food assistance.
Needless to say, Trump’s push to potentially cut SNAP, a program that experts find has little fraud and has positive impacts on public health (I’ve explained those benefits in more detail here), could reignite that fight and risk leaving these programs without funding altogether.
https://www.vox.com/2018/5/9/17335738/trump-farm-bill-supplemental-nutrition-assistance-veto-threat
