Just When You Need It The Most

Tea Party congressman Paul Ryan (R) who is chair of the House Budget Committee has proposed a 20% cut in SNAP (Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program), formally known as Food Stamps. If his cuts were passed it would have forced tens of thousands off of SNAP.

The struggle to eat
As Congress wrangles over spending cuts, surging numbers of Americans are relying on the government just to put food on the table
The Economist
Jul 14th 2011

Take food stamps, a programme designed to ensure that poor Americans have enough to eat, which is seen by many Republicans as unsustainable and by many Democrats as untouchable. Participation has soared since the recession began (see chart). By April it had reached almost 45m, or one in seven Americans. The cost, naturally, has soared too, from $35 billion in 2008 to $65 billion last year. And the Department of Agriculture, which administers the scheme, reckons only two-thirds of those who are eligible have signed up.

Republican leaders in the House of Representatives want to rein in the programme’s runaway growth. In their budget outline for next year they proposed cutting the amount of money to be spent on food stamps by roughly a fifth from 2015. Moreover, instead of being a federal entitlement, available to all Americans who meet the eligibility criteria irrespective of the cost, the programme would become a “block grant” to the states, which would receive a fixed amount to spend each year, irrespective of demand. The House has also voted to cut a separate health-and-nutrition scheme for poor pregnant women, infants and children, known as WIC, by 11%. (The Senate, controlled by the Democrats, is unlikely to approve either measure.)

One of the great fallacies is that somehow all these undeserving people or non-documented aliens are just live off the welfare system, so what are the requirements to be eligible,

Resources:
Households may have $2,000 in countable resources, such as a bank account, or $3000 in countable resources if at least one person is age 60 or older, or is disabled. However, certain resources are NOT counted, such as a home and lot, the resources of people who receive Supplemental Security Income (SSI), the resources of people who receive Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF, formerly AFDC), and most retirement (pension) plans.

Income
Households have to meet income tests unless all members are receiving TANF, SSI, or in some places general assistance. Most households must meet both the gross and net income tests, but a household with an elderly person or a person who is receiving certain types of disability payments only has to meet the net income test. Households, except those noted, that have income over the amounts listed below cannot get SNAP benefits.

Household size = 1 Gross monthly income (130 percent of poverty) = $1,174 Net monthly income (100 percent of poverty) = $ 903. So if a person has a take home income of $903 or less a month then they are eligible for federal assistance.

Benefits:
The amount of benefits the household gets is called an allotment. The net monthly income of the household is multiplied by .3, and the result is subtracted from the maximum allotment for the household size to find the household's allotment. This is because SNAP households are expected to spend about 30 percent of their resources on food.

So a single person would able to receive $200 in food assistance.

Employment Requirements
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) eliminated the time limit for able-bodied adults without dependents (ABAWDs) during the period from April 1, 2009 through September 30, 2010, unless a State chooses to offer a qualifying work activity.

Generally ABAWDS between 18 and 50 who do not have any dependent children can get SNAP benefits only for 3 months in a 36-month period if they do not work or participate in a workfare or employment and training program other than job search. This requirement is waived in some locations.

With some exceptions, able-bodied adults between 16 and 60 must register for work, accept suitable employment, and take part in an employment and training program to which they are referred by the local office. Failure to comply with these requirements can result in disqualification from the Program.

So that means that they need to get a job or they are only eligible for “food stamps” for 3 months. In a single parent family, the parent needs to have a job to get food assistance.

Immigrant Eligibility Requirements
The 2002 Farm Bill restores SNAP eligibility to most legal immigrants that:

• Have lived in the country for 5 years; or
• Are receiving disability-related assistance or benefits, regardless of entry date; or
• Starting 10-1-03, are children regardless of entry date.

Certain non-citizens such as those admitted for humanitarian reasons and those admitted for permanent residence are also eligible for the program. Eligible household members can get SNAP benefits even if there are other members of the household that are not eligible.

The welfare myth that the Tea Party and the Republicans disseminate is not true, non-documented aliens are not eligible for federal assistance and employable legal aliens can only receive assistance after they are here five years.

What about assistance for families, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), well the federal requirements are the same as for SNAP. In Connecticut the requirements are,

Jobs First Temporary Family Assistance (TFA) provides cash assistance to families. For families with an employable adult, there is a 21-month lifetime limit for the receipt of TFA. Families in which there is no employable adult have no limit to the duration of the benefits. Eligibility is based on income being lower than a set standard and assets being below limits. Earned income of recipients of TFA that are working are not counted until they are equal to the federal poverty level. They are thus allowed to keep all earnings up to the federal poverty level as well as the cash assistance benefit. Families are allowed to have up to $3,000 in a bank account, and life insurance policies and pension plans are excluded. The equity value of an automobile in excess of $9,500 counts towards the asset limit. The amount of assistance varies depending on which of three regions of the state they live in. The assistance for a family of three in the most populous region is $500 per month if in subsidized housing, $543 if not. Adults in the family are subject to digital imaging of their fingerprints to prevent receipt of duplicate assistance.

Families subject to the time limit may qualify for six-month extensions to the limit if they have good cause for being unemployed or underemployed (earning less than the TFA benefit) at the end of the 21-month period, or any extension.

Once again, there is an employment requirement and a time limit for state assistance, 21 months.

The Economist article goes on to say,

Stacy Dean of the Centre for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), a think-tank, argues that the rapid growth of food stamps in recent years is a sign that they are working as intended, responding promptly to hard economic times. In contrast, she points out, block-grant programmes grow much more slowly when times are tough, since funding for them does not increase in line with demand. Food-stamp participation rose by 45% between December 2007 and December 2009, CBPP calculates, while the number of families receiving cash grants under TANF, a block-grant scheme, rose by just 13%.

As more and more unemployed workers unemployment insurance runs out and they need to turn to federal programs, the Tea Party and the Republicans are trying to gut the programs, while they defend the tax cuts to billionaires and millionaires. I guess the compassion has run out of Bush’s “Compassionate Conservatives”.