Dems frustrated with food aid restrictions
WASHINGTON — Democrats are deeply conflicted about the food aid requirements that President Joe Biden negotiated as part of the debt ceiling deal, fearing damage has been done to safety net programs that will be difficult to unravel in the years ahead as Republicans demand further cuts.
Bargaining over toughening work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps, became the focal point for the White House and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., up until the end. Negotiators from both sides made clear, publicly and privately, it was the biggest area of disagreement and almost led to the talks breaking down several times.
In the end, Democrats warily accepted new requirements for some able-bodied recipients in exchange for food aid. Republicans agreed to drop some work requirements for veterans, homeless people and others.
The result of the tense backand-forth was a deal that played
to both sides, but one many Democrats agonized over as they weighed whether to vote for the package that Biden signed Saturday. Many struggled to square cutting access to food for marginalized communities with an outcome that allowed the United States to avoid defaulting on its debt.
“In order for this country to not default on its bills, we then turned
and made our most vulnerable communities default,” said Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo. Years before she came to Congress, Bush lived in a car with her then-husband and two young children after the family had been evicted from their rental home.
The federal aid program provides monthly funds — sometimes as little as $6 a day — to allow low-income individuals and families to buy groceries.
It is the largest program in the country focused on fighting hunger, with 41 million people using benefits last year alone to purchase food, according to the Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service, which administers the program.
By 2025, new requirements will apply to able-bodied adults from age 49 to 54 without dependents — an increase of five years. Those individuals will be required to work or attend training programs for at least 80 hours a month if they want to receive more than three months of SNAP benefits within a three-year period.
Republicans have tried for decades to expand work requirements for these government assistance programs, arguing they result in more people returning to the workforce, despite several studies that have found they have little impact on employment.
“We’re going to return these programs to being a life vest, not a lifestyle. A hand up, not a handout, and that has always been the American way,” Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana, the vice chairman of the House Republican conference, told reporters.
The White House countered that Republican proposition by getting GOP lawmakers to waive the work requirements for new groups — veterans, individuals who are homeless or facing housing instability and youth aging out of foster care — to balance out the number of people who would now be facing these new restrictions.
The end result could be more people receiving SNAP benefits overall. An estimate from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released Tuesday said the changes in the debt ceiling package would add almost 80,000 people to the rolls of SNAP in an average month.
But the trade-off of seemingly helping some groups while hurting others still left the left flank of the Democratic Party — lawmakers who have supported Biden and helped pass his agenda for the first two years of his term — frustrated by the outcome.
“What we should not be playing is oppression Olympics,” Bush said. “Like which one gets to hurt today? Which one gets to get to that finish line to hurt today? That’s not where we should be as a society.”