Lawmakers are poised this month to wage a major battle over the House version of the Farm Bill, which will call for work requirements in the federal food stamp program that serves the poor.
The heated partisan fight has stalled the legislation before it has even been introduced.
The normally routine sign-off on the bill by House Agriculture Committee Chairman Mike Conaway, R-Texas, and ranking member Collin Peterson, D-Minn., hasn’t happened because Democrats are staunchly opposed to Conaway’s plan to add a 20-hour work or job training requirement for some able-bodied recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the formal name for the food stamp program.
“Our side is not going to go for it,” Peterson told a group of reporters recently, describing Democratic opposition to what would essentially amount to welfare reform.
Conaway, however, told the Washington Examiner that Republicans will forge ahead without Democrats if necessary.
Legislation will be introduced when Congress returns from its two-week Easter recess, Conaway said. “I’ve got a window in April, and I want to try to meet that window.”
The Farm Bill includes tens of billions of dollars in spending on crop insurance, conservation programs, and commodity price and income support programs for the agriculture industry.
But the vast majority of spending is on food stamps.
In the 2014 legislation, SNAP’s 10-year cost was $756 billion, or 80 percent of the entire $956 billion bill.
Conaway has authored changes to the program in the 2018 bill that he said are aimed at getting able-bodied recipients to return to the workforce.
The federal government requires 20 hours of work for able-bodied food stamp recipients, but most states are able to waive the requirement.
The next Farm Bill would end the waiver allowances.
“Most folks on SNAP, we believe, want off the program,” Conaway said. “We are going to say, what is it that they need to get off it? Most of the time, it’s job training and skills.”
Conaway said the legislation would provide states with federal funding to run training programs for eligible recipients. States would have two years to develop the work and training programs.
Those who could meet the able-bodied requirement would lose their benefits if they did not participate in the required hours for work or training.
Conaway said the legislation also would target states that allow people to use food stamps who should not qualify.
“We will deal with areas where states have gamed the system in a sense, who allow people on the program who have too much money or assets and who shouldn’t be on the program,” Conaway said.
The income cap to qualify would remain at 130 percent of the poverty level, but asset allowances for cars would increase to more accurately reflect the cost of owning a vehicle, Conaway said.
He believes the bill will pass the House.
“Once we are able to lay those details out to folks, they’ll say wait, this kind of makes sense,” Conaway said.
But Democrats are having none of it.
Peterson argues against the need to spend more federal money on job training, arguing states already have those programs in place.
“Don’t spend this money on job training,” he said. “It’s fictitious. Why do you want to create another bureaucracy?”
Peterson also disputes Conaway’s belief that many people on food stamps are able to work.
“That’s not true,” Peterson said, calling the claim “a perception, not a reality.”
At least two studies have found that the work requirement in Kansas and Maine lead to more employment, higher wages, and fewer people on food stamps.
Peterson, meanwhile, said at one point he was open to negotiating with Conaway on a compromise on the work requirement. But he argued Conaway won’t negotiate, and besides, Agriculture Committee Democrats, who say they have been shut out of the crafting of the bill, aren’t interested.
“Our side is so poisoned to this, if I came to them and said I wanted to do something, they’d hand me my head,” he said.
