New SNAP rules encourage productivity instead of poverty: Sonny Perdue

More than 20 years ago, Democrats and Republicans came together to reform our welfare programs to restore the system to what it was meant to be: “a second chance, not a way of life,” in the words of then-President Bill Clinton. Over time, without any changes in the underlying welfare reform legislation of 1996, that ideal has been watered down by out-of-control administrative flexibility in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Today, at the direction of President Donald J. Trump, we are taking steps to restore integrity to SNAP and move people toward self-sufficiency.

As we approach the mid-point of President Trump’s first term, we are seeing substantial economic gains for our nation, including generationally-low unemployment rates. At a time when the jobless rate has hit 3.7 percent — the lowest since 1969 — and available jobs outnumber those seeking employment, we expect that able-bodied people who are not working, or seeking work, enter or reenter the labor force.

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Instead, because of a permissive regulation that allows states to grant waivers to wide swaths of their populations, millions of people who could work are continuing to receive SNAP benefits. The president has directed me, as Secretary of Agriculture, to propose regulatory reforms to ensure that those who are able to work do so in exchange for their benefits. This restores the dignity of work to a sizeable segment of our population, while it is also respectful of the taxpayers who fund the program.

Americans are generous people who believe it is their responsibility to help their fellow citizens when they encounter a difficult stretch. That is the commitment behind SNAP. But like other Federal welfare programs, it was never intended to be a way of life. A central theme of the Trump administration has been to expand prosperity for all Americans, which includes helping people lift themselves out of pervasive poverty. Assisting people toward lives of independence and self-sufficiency is a worthy pursuit along that path.

For Able-Bodied Adults Without Dependents (ABAWDs) — those non-disabled people between the ages of 18 and 49 — there is a reasonable expectation for them to work or look for a job. Under current SNAP requirements, ABAWDs must work or participate in an employment program for at least 20 hours a week to continue to receive benefits for more than three months over a 36-month period.

Some able-bodied adults skip work, still get SNAP benefits

States may request to waive the time limit in areas with an unemployment rate above 10 percent or where there are “not sufficient jobs,” which current regulations primarily define as an unemployment rate 20 percent above the national average. With today’s strong economy that could include areas with unemployment rates of under 5 percent — a rate normally considered to be full employment. In 2016, there were 3.8 million individual ABAWDs on the SNAP rolls, with 2.8 million (or almost 74 percent) of them not working. This is unacceptable to most Americans and belies common sense, particularly when employment opportunities are as plentiful as they currently are.

The recently-enacted Farm Bill was a missed opportunity to improve work engagement for ABAWDs. In the end, I recommended that President Trump sign the legislation despite this omission, because farmers need and deserve the certainty of the farm programs contained within the bill. The president knew that at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which administers the SNAP program, we could fix the loopholes in the current waiver process using the federal rule-making process.

Our proposed rule limits the availability of waivers for states and promotes work and self-sufficiency in the SNAP program. The proposal restricts waivers to areas where the unemployment rate exceeds 7 percent, which is when jobs are truly hard to find. It also eliminates the practice of some states which “gerrymander” multiple counties together that are not otherwise connected economically in order to maximize the reach of waiver requests. This practice leads to counties receiving waivers that would not independently qualify. For instance, Oregon’s Wheeler County had an unemployment rate of 4.65 percent in their 2018 waiver.

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Further, and importantly, the rule addresses the behavior of some states to “bank” exemptions to the waiver restrictions. Currently, states can exempt up to 15 percent of their ABAWDs from work each year, but if exemptions are not used, they can be kept for future years. Despite the law’s 15 percent exemption cap, current regulations have allowed for “banking,” permitting states to build up large surpluses of exemptions, each one available for use to grant one ABAWD an additional month of benefits. California, for example, has stockpiled some 800,000 exemptions over time, meaning it can exempt ABAWDs far into the future. Our proposed rule ends this hoarding of exemptions and allows only a one-year lookback.

This is not a perfect solution. It would be preferable for Congress to permanently enact these important reforms to the SNAP program. However, these regulatory changes by USDA will reward more Americans with the virtue of work, save hardworking taxpayers $15 billion over ten years, and give President Trump comfort enough to support a Farm Bill he might otherwise have opposed.

At USDA, our informal motto is “Do Right and Feed Everyone.” With these proposed improvements, we will “do right” by the taxpayers and restore the dignity of work to the able-bodied who receive SNAP benefits. And, we will “feed everyone” by ensuring the health and stability of SNAP for those who truly need it.

Sonny Perdue is the United States Secretary of Agriculture. Follow him on Twitter: @SecretarySonny

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: New SNAP rules encourage productivity instead of poverty: Sonny Perdue