President Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) annual meeting at National Harbor near Washington, D.C., March 2, 2019. (Yuri Gripas/Reuters)

One of the problems with our safety net is that it has too many different programs providing too many different benefits under too many different sets of rules. The food-stamp program’s “categorical eligibility” policy is an attempt to cut through some of that complexity: Under federal law, if a household “receives benefits” through TANF — Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the nation’s cash-welfare system — it’s typically eligible for food stamps as well without going through a separate process.


The problem is that states have taken shocking liberties with the word “benefits.” Many states just hand people TANF brochures or refer them to a telephone hotline for information — instantly making them eligible for federally funded food stamps even if they exceed the normal income and asset limits. (Generally you need an income below 130 percent of the poverty level to qualify for food stamps, but with categorical eligibility states can go up to 200 percent.) Sometimes states don’t bother making sure people take the brochures, meaning there isn’t even a pretext of complying with the letter of the law.

I am not making this up. This “broad based” categorical eligibility has been a well-documented problem for so long that I first wrote about it back in 2011. Today 43 states use some form of it.


A proposed rule from the Trump administration would put a stop to this, tightening up the relevant regulations. It would “define ‘benefits’ for categorical eligibility to mean ongoing and substantial benefits” — and “limit the types of non-cash TANF benefits conferring categorical eligibility to those that focus on subsidized employment, work supports and childcare.” This would reduce the number of households on food stamps by 9 percent, an enrollment decline of 3.1 million individuals. Yes, nearly one in ten households on food stamps don’t actually meet the program’s income and asset requirements.

The rule is a faithful, commonsensical implementation of the law on the books, a law that states have made a mockery of for too long. If states believe the food-stamp program isn’t generous enough, they can supplement federal funds with their own money, or at least lobby Congress to rewrite the law — rather than playing absurd games to win federal benefits for residents who don’t qualify for them.