The Food Stamp Farce: State evasions show the need for new work requirements.

Wall Street Journal ^ | August 22, 2018

[reaganaut1]

The House and Senate are negotiating a farm bill, and for once the stakes are more important than subsidies for wealthy sugar farmers. Republicans are debating reforms to a food stamp program that is divorced from work and economic advancement. Allow us to illustrate how a current waiver process has corroded even minimal requirements.

The House farm bill includes a requirement that adults aged 18 and 59 work or train for 80 hours a month (20 hours a week, or part time). Seniors, the disabled, pregnant women and anyone caring for a child under 6 is exempt. The Senate’s bill doesn’t reform food stamps, which go to millions of prime-age adults even as businesses can’t find enough workers despite raising wages.

Some note that food stamps already have a work requirement, which is true on paper but not in practice. The 1996 Bill Clinton-Newt Gingrich welfare overhaul required 80 hours a month of work or training for able-bodied adults 18 to 49 without dependents. Those who refuse to comply are limited to three months of benefits over three years.

Then comes the magic asterisk. States can waive the time limit with an Agriculture Department dispensation. Congress intended these waivers for areas with high unemployment, defined in statute as 10%, or with insufficient job opportunities. Yet over time the USDA has expanded waiver eligibility.

The Foundation for Government Accountability has done yeoman’s work detailing the waiver misuse: Some 33 states have waived work rules for part or all of the state. An Illinois waiver exempts 101 of 102 counties, though none has a 10% unemployment rate.

The USDA also allows waivers in places with an unemployment rate 20% above the national average.

[Maverick68]

Food Stamp reform is as much about reforming the NEXT Generation of dependents as the current one.
We HAVE to stop making young people think it’s ok to get pregnant in your teens and spend your life on the dole.

[Pecos]

I believe the U.S. have a “final safety net” for those truly incapable of fending for themselves. But it should be a net, not a freaking trampoline! Divorcing benefits from the ability to get off welfare and an honest sense of pride in doing an honest day’s work is one of the most debilitating things the government can do to a human being.

[ClearCase_guy]

Box of rice.
Box of beans.
Box of cheese.
Box of powdered milk.

Once a month.

No Food Stamps.

[tbw2]

The problem with the ‘pregnant and caring for children” exemption is that many women choose to have children to avoid work, spacing kids out appropriately or simply choosing NOT to use contraception.
If you’re on welfare, you need to be on long term fool proof contraception. If we have to pay for the kids, you can’t be allowed to have more.

An IUD or Norplant as a requirement the moment you sign up for food stamps, utility help, SSDI. If pregnant at that time, we don’t force an abortion, but you get the contraception the moment you have the baby.
And the contraception can’t come out until you’re off welfare, though you can choose to keep it in. Whether it is because you marry the father who supports the children or get a job on your own is your decision.

This would cut short term welfare costs significantly, and it would reduce long term welfare incredibly. Far fewer single mothers having kids, much less multiple children, the rest of us pay for.

[null and void]

(2) if the average unemployment rate in the county over a given two-year period is 20 percent higher than the national unemployment rate in the same two-year period.

OK, if you're on SNAP, you don't work.
The fact that you are not working means you are counted as unemployed.
Your being counted as unemployed raises the county's unemployment rate.
The higher local unemployment rate qualifies you to collect SNAP.

Did I miss anything?

[null and void]

I believe the U.S. have a “final safety net” for those truly incapable of fending for themselves.

Why is this the responsibility of the All Powerful State?

This was done quite well and efficiently by private charities before the government muscled its way into the sector, shoved the charities motivated by kindness aside and displaced them in large part by heartless rules and Byzantine bureaucracy.

Money freely donated to help the unable is charity.

Money seized at the point of a gun backed by the full force of draconian IRS agents to support the unwilling is not charity.

Yet many people when asked to donate by a charity, shrug and say no under the grounds that they are already 'doing their part' because they pay taxes to pay for the welfare safety net hammock...

[goodnesswins]

You might throw in a couple pots and pans, at the beginning too...

[Pecos]

I agree with the sense of your question completely. The problem is that the all-powerful state will never give up taxing us to death. Therefore, in my next-to-ideal world, a safety net, not a hammock, tied directly to a person's efforts to remove themselves from it, would work.

I also agree with the remainder of your sentiments. My initial post was trying to address one small part of the overall problem.

[null and void]

The problem is that the all-powerful state will never give up taxing us to death.

Too true. Unless we stop them!

Thanks for your kind words, I was pretty sure we were on the same page, but wanted it to be explicitly said for the more casual reader...

[SharpRightTurn]

How many generations of gibmedats should the taxpayers be expected to raise?