#snap basics

Present Law

Let’s start with the basics: SNAP provides an average of “about $1.40 per person per meal” in food assistance. That’s the massive amount of public assistance that conservative Republicans and Donald Trump begrudge the poorest of Americans who can’t find work.

SNAP generally requires “Able-Bodied Adults Without Dependents” (ABAWDs) to work at least 80 hours a month in order to receive food stamps. Looking for work doesn’t count, no matter how bad unemployment may be. For ABAWDs who cannot find enough work, SNAP limits benefits to a maximum of three months out of every three-year period. This hits minorities hardest, because minority unemployment rates are almost always higher:

“People of color would be at particular risk, given their much higher unemployment rates and continued racial discrimination in labor markets. As noted, the African-American unemployment rate has long been roughly double the non-Hispanic white unemployment rate. Studies have found that white job applicants are much likelier to receive callbacks after job applications or interviews than equally qualified Black applicants.”

Because this rule is rather harsh, SNAP also allows states administering the program to seek temporary “waivers of this three-month cut-off in areas where jobs for these individuals are lacking, such as when unemployment is elevated.” Waivers are available “in areas that have an unemployment rate of over 10 percent or a lack of sufficient jobs for ABAWDs to meet the work requirement.” Waivers are also available “in areas with unemployment rates that are at least 20 percent greater than the national rate”; for example, if the national average were 4%, a 4.8% local unemployment rate would be 20% higher.

“Since the 1996 welfare law took effect, every state but Delaware has sought a time-limit waiver at some point.” At present:

“36 states ... currently waive at least part of their SNAP populations from the existing three-month limit for able-bodied adults without dependents to receive benefits within a three-year period if they’re not working at least 80 hours a month.”

Republican Reaction

Conservative Republicans have decided that states are too lenient when it comes to securing waivers for the poorest Americans. They want to make work requirements stricter, and crack down on these waivers. Congress just refused to do that, but the Trump administration has never had a problem “pursuing through executive powers what it could not achieve in Congress”:

“Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue tipped his hand on how the administration plans to assuage House conservatives who wanted stricter SNAP work requirements in the final legislation: Once the bill passes, USDA will issue a proposed rule to crack down on work-requirement waivers. ... Perdue said the rule will appeal to conservative lawmakers who are frustrated that House Republicans came up short in their push for stronger work requirements for millions of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program recipients.”

And sure enough, the administration has done just that:

“The Department [of Agriculture] has determined that the standards for waivers must be strengthened so that the ABAWD work requirement is applied to ABAWDs more broadly. ... The Department proposes stricter criteria for ABAWD waiver approvals that would establish stronger, updated standards for determining when and where a lack of sufficient jobs justifies temporarily waiving the ABAWD time limit. ... Limiting waivers would make more ABAWDs subject to the time limit and thereby encourage more ABAWDs to engage in meaningful work activities if they wish to continue to receive SNAP benefits.”

Proposed Law

The proposed rule completely eliminates the most commonly used bases for waivers. The primary change is an across-the-board denial of waiver in any area where unemployment is below a certain floor. (Current law has no such minimum.) The floor would function as an absolute cutoff regardless of how much higher local unemployment is than the national average, or how hard it actually is to find work, or whether an ABAWD belongs to a group with a statistically higher-than-average unemployment rate, e.g., minorities or people without lower education. These are all valid considerations under current law, but not under the proposed changes.

The Trump administration is thinking a floor of 7%, but might decide to make it even higher based on the higher number of current participants that would now be completely barred from getting waivers no matter what:

“The Department requests feedback on which unemployment rate floor – 6 percent, 7 percent, or 10 percent – would be most effective at limiting waivers. ... Based on the Department’s analysis, nearly 90 percent of ABAWDs would live in areas without waivers and would be encouraged to take steps towards self-sufficiency if a floor of 7 percent was established. In comparison, a 6 percent floor would mean that 76 percent of ABAWDs would live in areas without waivers and a 10 percent floor would mean that 98 percent of ABAWDs would live in areas without waivers.”

The administration is also eliminating other criteria upon which waivers can be based under current law, including: “a low and declining employment-to-population ratio, a lack of jobs in declining occupations or industries, or an academic study or other publication(s) that describes an area’s lack of jobs,”  as well as factors like “a historical seasonal unemployment rate over 10 percent.” Now none of those will make any difference, and none can ever support a waiver request.

The new rule will also completely bar states from seeking statewide waivers, as they can under current law. There are various other changes as well, all adding up to the same thing: accomplishing the administration’s stated goal of denying SNAP assistance to as many people as possible:

“The Department has estimated the net reduction in federal spending associated with the proposed transfer rule to be approximately $1.1 billion in fiscal year (FY) 2020 and $7.9 billion over the five years 2020-2024. This is a reduction in federal transfers (SNAP benefit payments); the reduction in transfers represents a 2.5 percent decrease in projected SNAP benefit spending over this time period. ... Under current authority, the Department estimates that about 60 percent of ABAWDs live in areas that are not subject to a waiver and thus face the ABAWD time limit. Under the revised waiver criteria the Department estimates that nearly 90 percent of ABAWDs would live in such an area. Of those newly subject to the time limit, the Department estimates that approximately two-thirds (755,000 individuals in FY 2020) would not meet the requirements.”

Will It Work?

The $7.9 billion-dollar question: Will denying basic nutrition to these hundreds of thousands of ABAWDs help them find jobs, as conservative Republicans and the Trump administration claim?

Of course not. There is no evidence that kicking people off of food stamps ever helps them obtain jobs, and plenty of evidence and analyses to the contrary:

“This is not how the relationship between public assistance and private commerce actually works, as policy experts and economists and poor people and food bank managers and job training professionals have all been saying for years.”

Not that the Trump administration has ever cared about things like evidence.