Senate GOP aims to pare back proposed food stamp work requirements for parents in Trump megabill

CNN
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The Senate Agriculture Committee is proposing some notable changes to the controversial food stamp provisions in the House-approved version of Republicans’ megabill.

The committee, which unveiled its proposal on Wednesday, would dial back the introduction of work requirements for parents of dependent children in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, the formal name for food stamps. The Senate version would mandate that parents of children ages 10 and older work to maintain their benefits, while the House package would impose that requirement on parents of children ages 7 and older. Currently, parents of dependent children are exempt from the program’s work mandate.

(A summary released by the committee said that the work requirement would apply to parents of children over age 10, which conflicts with the text of the proposal. A committee spokeswoman confirmed to CNN that the provision would apply to parents of 10-year-olds and older children.)

The Senate committee also drops the exemptions for veterans, people experiencing homelessness and young adults who have aged out of foster care, according to Katie Bergh, a senior policy analyst at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
The House version includes the exemptions but ends them in 2030.

Like the House version, the Senate would expand the food stamp program’s existing work requirements to able-bodied adults ages 55 through 64 and would curtail states’ ability to receive work requirement waivers in difficult economic times, limiting them only to areas with unemployment rates above 10%. Both versions would also bar refugees, those granted asylum and certain survivors of domestic violence or labor or sex trafficking, among other immigrants with legal status, from receiving food stamps.

Currently, adults ages 18 to 54 without dependent children can only receive food stamps for three months over a 36-month period unless they work 20 hours a week or are eligible for an exemption.

The Senate measure aims at “helping recipients transition to self-sufficiency through work and training. It’s about being good stewards of taxpayer dollars while giving folks the tools to succeed,” Arkansas Sen. John Boozman, the committee’s chair, said in a statement.

But advocates lashed out at the Senate plan, saying it would worsen hunger in the US. Some 42 million people receive food stamps.

“The proposal would also take food assistance away from millions of parents and grandparents who are working but get tangled in red tape, have a health condition but fall through the cracks and don’t get an exemption, or are between jobs and need temporary help,” Ty Jones Cox, vice president for food assistance at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said in a statement.

Senators in multiple committees are currently negotiating pieces of the House’s sweeping tax and spending cuts bill, which aims to fulfill President Donald Trump’s agenda.

The House, which passed the package last month, would enact the deepest cuts to food stamps in the program’s history – reducing federal spending by nearly $300 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The work requirement provision would result in 3.2 million fewer people receiving benefits in an average month between 2025 and 2034, according to a preliminary CBO estimate of the House bill. That includes 800,000 adults who live with dependent children.

Both the Senate and House versions would require that states start covering part of the cost of food stamp benefits for the first time, though the Senate committee is calling for a smaller share.

States’ tab would depend on their payment error rate in the program. In the Senate version, states with error rates below 6% would not have to contribute to the cost of benefits. The amount would then ratchet up in stages, with states that have error rates of 10% or more paying a 15% share.

The House version would require all states to shoulder at least 5% of the cost and as much as 25% for those with error rates of at least 10%.

Both versions would increase states’ share of the program’s administrative costs to 75%, from 50%.

Advocates and state officials have warned that asking states to pick up more of the costs would have dire consequences.

“Shifting the financial burden of SNAP onto states is fiscally unsustainable and risks harming the very individuals and families the program is designed to support,” Tim Storey, CEO of the National Conference of State Legislatures, wrote to House Agriculture Committee leaders last month.

State agencies are “already underfunded and understaffed,” said Crystal FitzSimons, president of the Food Research & Action Center, in a statement Wednesday. Shifting more of the cost to states would leave “strained state budgets unable to absorb the added burden without raising taxes, cutting programs, or reducing access.”

How states would respond to having to pay for a share of the food stamp benefits would vary, but some “would modify benefits or eligibility and possibly leave the program altogether because of the increased costs,” according to a preliminary CBO analysis of the House bill. The provision would lead states to reduce or eliminate food stamp benefits for about 1.3 million people in an average month over the decade, CBO estimates.