Trump wants to make it tougher for people on the edge to buy groceries

Most Americans are of the opinion, we have no doubt, that every adult who can work should work, or at least make an honest effort to find a job.

Americans are fair-minded and compassionate, more than willing to help those in need. But we’re not big on freeloaders sitting at home on the public’s dime.

The Trump administration — those folks who once gave a big tax break to struggling billionaires — would have you believe that such freeloading is rampant in the federal Supplemental Nutrition and Assistance Program, which many still call food stamps. And the administration is determined to kick those deadbeats to the curb so that they can no longer cheat the rest of us out of a whopping $134 a month.

That’s the national average in SNAP benefits for a single person.

If there’s anything that says petty and mean, it’s stiffing poor people who need a little help buying a bag of groceries.

If the Trump administration had any evidence at all of rampant freeloading, we might see the justification for the new rule, which will make it harder for states to waive work requirements for nearly 700,000 SNAP recipients, including 140,000 in Illinois.

But the administration has produced no evidence at all. And if Illinois is representative of other states when it comes to the SNAP program, freeloading is anything but rampant.

The new rule, set to go into effect in April 2020, applies to “able bodied adults without dependents” — ABAWDs — who are 18 to 49 years old. To be eligible for more than three months of food stamps within a three-year period, these adults must work at least 80 hours a month. States can get a waiver from this requirement if their unemployment rate is high, which Illinois has done for years. But under the new rule, it will be considerably harder to get those waivers.

It’s all about “moving more Americans to self-sufficiency” during a booming economy in which jobs are plentiful, as Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said Wednesday. The Department of Agriculture, which administers SNAP, also estimates the new rule will save $5.5 billion over five years.

But who exactly is “able bodied”? In Illinois, “a good number” of SNAP recipients suffer from serious mental health issues or drug abuse problems that make holding down a job virtually impossible, as Meghan Powers, spokesperson for DHS, told us.

We can pretend otherwise. We can say “Get a job!” and turn away.

As if it’s all just a matter of a little tough love.

DHS is working to make sure that people with significant physical and mental limitations have adequate documentation so they continue to be exempt from work requirements.

Other ABAWDs who won’t qualify for exemptions typically have significant barriers to employment, such as a criminal record, and need help to find work, Powers said.

The agency has set up teams to help these hard-to-employ people find jobs, volunteer work or job training, but the cash-strapped state doesn’t have enough resources to do the job. And of course, as Powers said, “the federal resources for that didn’t increase with this new requirement.”

Dozens of senators, Democrats and Republicans alike, made that same point in a letter in March urging the Trump administration to withdraw the proposed rule. When they wrote the letter, Congress already had voted down a provision that would have made the rule part of the 2018 Farm Bill.

“The proposed changes would take food assistance away from

Americans struggling to find stable employment while doing nothing to help them to actually become permanently employed,” the letter from 47 senators stated.

As Rep. Marcia L. Fudge of Ohio wrote on Thursday in a Washington Post op-ed, the USDA utterly failed to prepare for the new rule.

“If it had, the USDA would discover many SNAP recipients are either attempting to find work or face hardships that prevent them from doing so,” Fudge wrote. “Instead, it demonized them as lazy and undeserving.”

The Trump administration is proposing other significant changes that will further tighten food stamp eligibility. If all the changes are carried out, some 3.7 million people and 2.1 million households will lose monthly SNAP benefits, according to a November report from the Urban Institute.

Trump and his band of bullies would have them eat cake.