Kipper Berven is a law student in the HLS Food Law & Policy Clinic and a guest contributor to this blog.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is a Farm Bill provision that profoundly impacts the health and wellness of millions of Americans. Today roughly 34 million Americans live in food-insecure households, and a recent survey by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service (ERS) found that over 10% of respondents struggled to access sufficient nutrition. In 2020, 14.8 percent of U.S. households with children experienced food insecurity, a significant increase from past years. SNAP is the primary source of nutrition assistance for many of these households struggling to afford enough food for a healthy, active lifestyle. Over 41 million Americans, or roughly one in every eight people in the country currently enroll in SNAP to help them afford a nutritious diet. While the average SNAP benefit was only a modest $4 per person per day on average in fiscal years 2019-2020, it forms a critical foundation for millions of low-income Americans’ health and well-being. SNAP has increasingly acted as a vital safety net as the COVID-19 pandemic and food supply chain disruptions the last few years have exacerbated many Americans’ struggle to put food on the table.
Despite SNAP’s critical support for food-insecure households across the country, federal lawmakers concerned with reducing government spending have made the program a primary target for legislative reform. SNAP is the largest program authorized by the Farm Bill, accounting for roughly three-quarters of total mandatory farm bill spending between 2019 and 2023. The Congressional Budget Office’s “USDA Farm Programs” ten-year baseline recently estimated that the proportion of mandatory Farm Bill expenditures dedicated to SNAP would increase, largely due to increased spending to ameliorate increased food insecurity during economic downturns and decreases in mandatory spending on commodity programs. This projected increase in spending has spurred a “showdown” over the future of federal nutrition spending in the ongoing Farm Bill negotiations as Republican legislators look to reduce SNAP spending overall.
Several proposed additions to the Farm Bill include worrying provisions that would inhibit many Americans’ ability to access crucial nutrition assistance through SNAP. The America Works Act of 2023 seeks to impose more expansive work requirements for SNAP recipients to qualify for hunger relief. Under current law, SNAP recipients risk losing their benefits if within a three-month period over the last 36 months, they do not work an average of 20 hours per week. The law exempts specified people, including those under the age of 18 or over 49, as well as households with dependents. The bill would expand the work requirement age bracket from 18 to 49 to 18 to 65, and would eliminate the exemption for households with dependents aged 7 years or older, veterans, people experiencing homelessness, and certain individuals who were in foster care. The bill would also limit states’ ability to use waivers to provide more flexible work requirements. A separate bill, H.R. 1550, would completely eliminate any state waiver mechanisms.
The justification for legislation creating obstacles to SNAP eligibility are based on faulty assumptions and false premises. In order to understand why these efforts are problematic, it is important to look at some of the most pervasive myths driving the push for heightened SNAP work requirements and the reasoning against.
Myth 1: “Work is the best pathway out of poverty.”
Dusty Johnson, the architect of these provisions, has repeatedly stated that “work is the best pathway out of poverty” to justify more stringent work requirements. In reality, expanding food assistance rather than reducing it is a key way to reduce poverty. Research has shown that the Thrifty Food Plan update and temporary SNAP emergency allotments reduced overall poverty by 14.1 percent, and child poverty by 21.8 percent. Most SNAP participants who can work already do so, and many Americans who deserve access to full and healthy diets are actively seeking employment or struggling to meet the work requirement due to disabilities, childcare requirements, or criminal history. Many advocates and research groups have rightfully noted that efforts to rollback SNAP benefits impose insurmountable barriers for many American families seeking to escape the cycle of poverty.
Myth 2: Reducing the pool of SNAP recipients will save taxpayers money.
A common argument is that taxpayer money is wasted by supporting hunger-relief programs like SNAP. The reality is that SNAP actually generates economic growth and reduces healthcare costs along with improving nutritional outcomes. Research focusing on economic downturns has shown that each $1 funding SNAP stimulates $1.50 to $1.80 of economic activity across the food supply chain, from farmers to grocers. According to ERS, a $1 billion increase in SNAP benefits would increase GDP by $1.54 billion and support over 13,500 jobs. Additionally, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has shown that SNAP reduces annual medical care costs for participating low-income adults by nearly 25 percent by mitigating adverse health outcomes associated with food insecurity such as hypertension and coronary heart disease. By reducing food insecurity, SNAP alleviates substantial burdens on society from lost productivity and avoidable medical costs, freeing up valuable resources within the healthcare system while also spurring economic growth.
Myth 3: SNAP funding is a wasteful program due to government error, fraud, and abuse as actors seek to take advantage of taxpayer funding.
Some of the more insidious arguments against SNAP frame program participants as fraudulent actors or lazy freeloaders trying to take advantage of a federally funded program that misallocates taxpayer funding. In reality, USDA aggressively pursues recipient fraud, combats misuse of SNAP benefits, conducts systematic review to correct errors and ensure good stewardship of tax dollars. SNAP’s quality control system is working well with payment errors cut in half over the last decade to achieve a historic high of 96.2% accuracy. Of the nearly 800,000 SNAP fraud investigations that states undertook in 2011, less than 6% led to disqualifications and those investigations recovered over $72 million from bad actors. Additionally, the vast majority of SNAP recipients—over 80 percent—are working within a year receiving program benefits, but struggle with undercompensation or transitioning between jobs in the modern labor market.
Conclusion
These myths have formed a misleading foundation that has motivated and supported much of the ongoing push to impose increasingly stringent barriers to SNAP for millions of Americans. Recently, the debate over SNAP work requirements moved from the Farm Bill discussion into negotiations over the federal debt ceiling. While there are many valuable conversations that legislators should engage in to ensure that Farm Bill spending is used as efficiently as possible, the focus on rolling back SNAP is counterproductive. Rather than targeting a vitally important anti-poverty program that generates immense economic and medical benefits for the country, legislators should focus on other Farm Bill provisions, such as crop insurance and commodity programs that currently benefit the largest and wealthiest agricultural producers.
The views and opinions expressed on the FBLE Blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of FBLE. While we review posts for accuracy, we cannot guarantee the reliability and completeness of any legal analysis presented; posts on this Blog do not constitute legal advice. If you discover an error, please reach out to contact@farmbilllaw.org.
