These savings would contribute to efforts to reduce the budget at a time of intense negotiation over the need to raise the debt limit. Reinstating work requirements would reduce program costs as more of these recipients would go to work and thereby reduce their benefit amount, or drop off the program altogether. Their contribution to total food stamp spending today is likely much higher, since food stamp caseloads have risen and benefit amounts are higher. Working-age adults without disabilities or children drew $5.6 billion annually in food stamp benefits prior to the pandemic. To make matters worse, the Government Accountability Office found that the administration’s analysis supporting the increase was rushed, lacked transparency and failed to meet the usual standards for external review. In 2021, the Biden administration - for the first time in 45 years - increased the real value of food stamp benefits by executive fiat, increasing the cost of the food stamp program by $20 billion per year. The first problem is the cost of not enforcing work requirements. There are two additional problems with suspending work requirements that makes restoring them especially urgent now. It also means restricting generosity when jobs are easier to come by. But that doesn’t just mean expanding generosity when jobs are hard to find. Economists frequently highlight the importance of tying the generosity of government assistance programs to the state of the economy. The fact that work requirements are not being enforced when the national unemployment rate is the lowest in over a half a century defies economic logic. Among all states with work requirement waivers, Nevada is the only one with an unemployment rate above 5%. As a result, states with very low unemployment rates are currently covered by waivers, such as New Jersey (3.4%), Pennsylvania (3.9%), California (4.1%) and New York (4.3%). States qualify for waivers if their unemployment rates are just modestly higher than the national average - which has now reached a 54-year low - and they are calculated using out-of-date employment data. These waivers are intended to protect beneficiaries when jobs are hard to find in a particular area, but their implementation suffers from major loopholes. However, ending the public health emergency will not fully solve the problem. That’s because 18 states and territories containing 44% of the food stamp caseload have waivers in place that would prevent work requirements from taking effect even if the public health emergency ended today. At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Congress justifiably suspended these work requirements as economic activity was shut down and unemployment soared to 14.7%.īut because almost three years later the Biden administration has failed to end the public health emergency - keeping it in place until May 11 - work requirements are still not being enforced at a time when workers are needed more than ever. unemployment rate now stands at a half-century low of 3.4%. Despite the historically tight labor market, his administration’s actions have nullified work requirements for millions of food stamp recipients and boosted their incentive to remain on the sidelines.Īs Congress seeks to rein in federal spending during debt ceiling negotiations, restoring work requirements in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program should be at the top of the list.įederal law requires that nondisabled recipients between the ages of 18 and 49 - who do not have children - must work or volunteer at least 80 hours per month in order to maintain SNAP benefits. President Joe Biden has touted the fact that the U.S.
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