In The News

Food stamp reform reduces dependency
Program costs are out of control; House bill emphasizes personal responsibility

The Detroit News - Editorial - September 27, 2013

With a record number of Americans on food stamps and illegal trafficking rampant, raids like that on Detroit’s Eastern Market last week are increasingly common. Yet fraud, costing taxpayers more than $300 million a year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture , is the least of the program’s problems. At more than $80 billion a year, the food stamp program discourages employment and hands out funds to non-needy recipients ranging from California surfer dudes to college students.

The good news is that, having separated food stamp legislation from the subsidy-laden farm bill, the House of Representatives is bidding to bring fiscal discipline to the program.

Last week, the House passed common sense food stamp reform that encourages work-for-welfare, tightens eligibility requirements and returns the program to its core purpose of helping the needy get back on their feet. The Senate Agricultural Committee, led by Michigan’s Debbie Stabenow, should follow the House’s lead.

Some 47 million Americans are now enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) — 15 million higher than when the recession ended four years ago. How does a program meant to help the needy balloon when the economy is recovering? The Bush administration eased eligibility rules during the recession. But the program’s costs accelerated when the Obama administration in 2009 suspended the 20-hour-a-week work requirement for able-bodied adults.

Indeed, the work requirements in former President Bill Clinton’s landmark 1996 welfare reform (child poverty rates fell as 60 percent of welfare recipients left welfare for jobs) are the Republican model for the food stamp overhaul.

The Obama administration also eliminated a three-month limit for able-bodied adults to receive food stamps, meaning recipients can now be on the dole for over three years. Employable adults on food stamps without children ballooned by 164 percent from 2007-2011, according to federal data. And the administration further sweetened the program (just one of 80 means-tested welfare programs) with cost-of-living increases, meaning families can receive up to $10,000 in food stamps a year.

The Republican bill would reverse these dependency incentives and promote work.

It would reinstate employment requirements for adults without children and return to states the flexibility of requiring work in return for assistance. The House bill would close the so-called “categorical eligibility” loophole that allows individuals to automatically apply for food benefits if they already get assistance from another federal welfare program such as cash welfare or home heating subsidies.

Since those programs don’t have asset requirements, food benefits often flow to those with bank accounts, homes, or cars worth well above the food stamp limit — which has put nearly 2 million Americans on food stamps who wouldn’t otherwise qualify, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

“The House legislation makes key reforms to the SNAP program to ensure benefits go to those who need them the most,” says Rep. Dan Benishek, R-Crystal Falls, the only Michigan representative on the House Agricultural Committee, which drafted the bill.

The Democratic response to these reasonable reforms has been typical. “It is so stark,” said Michigan Rep. Sandy Levin, D-Royal Oak. “It is so insensitive.”

Yet the food stamp program would still be funded at nearly $700 billion over the next decade and families with children wouldn’t be affected. And its work requirements do not go as far as Clinton’s welfare reform, which required nearly all employable recipients of cash welfare (including single moms) to work.

The White House touts food stamps as “fiscal stimulus” even as two Americans have gone on food stamps for every private-sector job created (7.5 million) since the recession ended.

The House reforms would help reverse this trend by attaching work requirements to handouts.