How a House Republican raised SNAP work requirements with Joe Biden

WASHINGTON — Republicans have said for months they want stricter “work requirements” for federal benefits as a way to save government money and push slackers into getting jobs.

But Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-Pa.) pitched the job requirements as a more compassionate policy in a meeting with President Joe Biden at the White House last week.

“I tried to explain to the president when I met with him that these are job opportunity requirements,” Thompson told HuffPost, adding that the requirements could link people with professional and technical education.

Over the weekend, Biden suggested he was open to new job requirements as part of an ongoing negotiation with Republicans over federal spending and the government’s ability to continue to borrow money to finance operations.

Progressives have gone backwards and Biden has said he will fight changes that impoverish people, though he has not definitively ruled out including job requirements in a final deal.

“Maybe I had an impact, who knows,” Thompson said.

Thompson chairs the House Agriculture Committee, which oversees farm subsidies and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the federal government’s main anti-hunger policy. He and the other top members of the House and Senate farm committees met with Biden at the White House last week to discuss an upcoming “farm bill” that would reauthorize farm subsidies and SNAP.

However, before Congress gets to the farm bill, Republicans have demanded changes to SNAP and other programs in exchange for raising the debt limit and allowing the federal government to pay their bills. If Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) can’t reach a deal, the government could default on its debts next month, potentially triggering a bank turmoil and widespread loss. of jobs.

The work requirements are limits on benefits for people who are out of work, and SNAP no longer allows more than three months of payments for able-bodied, childless adults ages 18 to 49, although states can waive the limit in response to the high unemployment. Republicans have proposed reducing the state’s waiver authority and applying the work requirement to people up to age 55.

On Monday, biden said the proposal “would put a million older adults at risk of losing their food assistance and going hungry.” (The Congressional Budget Office has said the change would reduce enrollment by 275,000.)

Thompson, 63, suggested that people in their 50s should not be counted as “older” Americans.

“I think most people between the ages of 49 and 55 would resent being called old. I am much older than that,” she said.

He has also emphasized that states provide free employment and training programs to SNAP recipients that are subject to work requirements. Although each state has its own program, they usually link recipients to case management through local nonprofit organizations that, in turn, try to connect recipients with jobs and training. according to a US Department of Agriculture surveyOversees SNAP, case managers help SNAP recipients make individualized plans and also help pay for transportation or interview clothing.

“There are some great (employment and training) programs out there, but they are small and waste resources to really get to know people where they are,” said Ed Bolen, nutrition policy expert at the Center for Budget Priorities and Policies. Some states, on the other hand, run mandatory programs and terminate people’s SNAP benefits for not participating.

However, the basic idea of ​​a work requirement is that cutting assistance should force people to try to find employment, since they don’t want to starve or become homeless for lack of income. But as far as we know, it doesn’t always work that way. In a review of economic analysis on the subject, the Congressional Budget Office found that the existing SNAP work requirement boosted employment for some recipients, but mostly impoverished people.

“Incomes increased among recipients who worked harder, but many more adults stopped receiving SNAP benefits due to the work requirement,” said the CBO reported last year. “Most of the adults who had their SNAP benefits terminated for not meeting the work requirement have very low incomes because few of them have income or receive cash payments.”

Thompson’s main point for Biden was that most SNAP recipients would not be affected by the proposed changes, as the elderly, disabled and people with minor children would remain exempt.

“So, it’s like, who are we talking about here?” Thompson said.