The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as Food Stamps) provides benefits to low-income households to help them purchase food. Recipients of SNAP benefits increased from 26 million in 2007 to over 40 million in 2010. The average number of recipients in 2014 exceeded 46.5 million people.
While a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report notes that “The primary reason for the increase in the number of participants was the deep recession from December 2007 to June 2009 and the subsequent slow recovery” other analyses conclude that the Obama Administration’s relaxing of the legal requirement that participants must be actively seeking or training for work played a large part.
The Foundation for Government Accountability’s (FGA) new study on the SNAP program concludes that restoring work requirements will resolve the fiscal challenge brought about by the program’s explosive growth.
The study notes that “the food stamp program is one of the largest and fastest-growing welfare entitlements in the federal budget. Total enrollment reached a whopping 48 million in 2013, one of many record highs plaguing the program. Skyrocketing enrollment has led federal spending on food stamps to more than quadruple since 2000, reaching another record-high of nearly $80 billion in 2013.”
According to the analysis, a key reason for the extraordinary growth “is the recent explosion of enrollment among able-bodied childless adults. Although federal law requires these adults to work in order to receive food stamps, the Obama administration has awarded an unprecedented number of waivers to states, allowing able bodied childless adults to receive taxpayer-funded food stamp benefits without working at all.” The report concludes that “Governors should just decline to renew the federal waivers that have eliminated work requirements for able-bodied childless adults on food stamps. Doing so would reduce welfare enrollment, save federal taxpayer dollars, lift more people out of poverty, increase self sufficiency, and spur economic growth.”
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“Under the guise of providing states greater “flexibility” in operating their welfare programs, the Obama Administration …claims the authority to weaken or waive the work requirements that are at the heart of welfare reform. But Congress intended that those requirements be absolutely mandatory in all instances and specifically withheld any authority to weaken or waive them…The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 stands as perhaps the most important entitlement reform in the nation’s history, chiefly because of its core requirement that able-bodied parents eligible for welfare assistance work, search for work, or train to work. Its centerpiece…is Section 407, ‘Mandatory Work Requirements,’ which sets out an absolute requirement that state welfare programs achieve specific work-participation rates or forfeit federal funding…Even after President Bill Clinton twice vetoed welfare reform legislation, Congress refused to budge on the core requirement of Section 407, insisting on strong work incentives to discourage abuses and to help lift recipients off of welfare and out of poverty. And it worked: Employment surged, caseloads dropped, and child poverty plummeted…[The Obama Administration] argues that Section 1115, which provides waiver authority for states to establish demonstration projects, authorizes it to approve state programs that ‘test approaches and methods other than those set forth in section 407,’including different ‘definitions of work activities and engagement.’ In this way, states could evade Section 407’s work-participation requirement without sacrificing federal funding. But the Obama Administration’s claim that it may weaken or waive work requirements is contrary to law. Section 407 establishes a stand-alone requirement for state welfare plans that brooks no exceptions, befitting its status as the core component of the 1996 reform. It is also absent from the list of requirements that may be waived under Section 1115. Indeed, to eliminate any possible ambiguity as to whether the work requirements could be waived immediately following passage of the 1996 reform, a separate provision specifically states that waivers ‘shall not affect the applicability of section [407].’”
The President’s rejection of the work requirement has been a bone of contention with Congress for some time. In 2013, The House voted to block the Obama administration’s ignoring of the requirement, but failed to get the Democrat-controlled Senate to go along with the legislation.
The Food Research and Action Center reports that “Snap participation increased by 14,869 from May to June in 2015, but decreased by 985,640 from the prior year.
One possible reason for the decrease may be the reinstatement of work requirements by several states. In Maine, a dramatic drop from about 12,000 to 2,500 in adults who aren’t disabled and don’t have children at home was reported this year after the state imposed a requirement to either work part-time for twenty hours each week, enroll in a vocational program, or volunteer for a minimum of twenty-four hours per month.