Enrollment in food stamps reached 46.6 million in 2012 with total costs of $78.4 billion. New debate over 'working poor'

“Where are the jobs?” Speaker John Boehner likes to ask. But do his fellow House Republicans really want to kick the unemployed off food stamps if they can’t find the jobs either?

That’s the question behind a simmering farm bill battle over reimposing work requirements on millions of able-bodied adults enrolled in the nutrition program. Most have no reported earnings, and without added job training or workfare slots, the change could spell real hardship in today’s economy.


For this reason, House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) is resisting the move. But back home, the Oklahoma state Legislature recently took steps to reinstate work requirements. And the office of Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) has repeatedly raised the issue with Lucas as a way to win conservative votes for his farm bill, now slated for markup May 15.

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For the GOP, it’s a fight that echoes of the welfare reform debate of the 1990s — and a test of what the party learned, or didn’t, from its losses in the November elections.

Mitt Romney’s old-style “makers vs. takers” rhetoric is taboo. The new buzzwords are steering “limited resources” to those “truly in need” while “promoting employment and self-sufficiency.” Some even see the work requirement debate as a campaign theme for a remodeled GOP in the 2014 elections.

“We are looking to motivate people to get back to work and create a life of prosperity,” says Oklahoma House Speaker T.W. Shannon.

At the same time, the debate raises questions about just how enduring the GOP’s pledge is to help low-income, working-class Americans at the edge of the poverty line.

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Back during welfare reform, the “working poor” were the great Republican model for social advancement — helped along by the boom of the 1990s. But the same households are struggling to find work in today’s economy of low-wage, part-time jobs. As safety-net costs rise, there’s more conflict with the GOP’s budget-cutting agenda.

Much of the pressure comes from the right. The conservative Heritage Foundation, under former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and with close ties to Cantor’s office, is a big player. The Wisconsin-based Secretary’s Innovation Group and Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s administration are helping drive the train at the state level.

But this is not a simple right-left issue. Indeed, one of the most steadfast proponents of the food-stamp work requirement is New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, whose human resources commissioner, Robert Doar, is the son of no less than the famous civil rights figure John Doar.

“The mayor is a big believer in work,” the commissioner told POLITICO. “We believe work is the path out of poverty.”

Food stamps — officially known as SNAP or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — offers a prime testing ground for Republicans trying to put a new face on their approach to poverty.

Enrollment reached 46.6 million in 2012 with total costs of $78.4 billion. That’s double the spending level in 2008 and reflects not just the recession but also President Barack Obama’s decision to increase benefits as a way to stimulate the economy.

Even SNAP’s friends describe it as the little program asked to do too much. And critics contend that too often Congress has allowed states to simply waive SNAP rules, without going back and updating them in a more careful fashion.

Thoughtful people in both parties agree the program is ripe for some reform — if only some real thought could be given to the task. Instead, liberal food groups can be the most rigid of activists; conservatives lunge toward quick solutions.

During last summer’s farm bill debate, many Democratic senators turned a blind eye to genuine abuses by states to ratchet up benefit levels at Washington’s expense. Republicans continue to insist on converting the program to a block grant, something aides admit has little chance. A second favorite GOP “cost-savings” plan would reinstate a 1980s federal asset test for SNAP participants — a standard so outdated that even Republican Texas has rejected it.

The history behind the food stamp work requirement is telling.

The amendment was adopted on a highly partisan 239-184 House vote in July 1996 and sets a standard that requires 20 hours of work per week for able-bodied adults without children. It arose on the floor and from outside the House Agriculture Committee, infuriating then-Rep. Charles Stenholm, a conservative Texas Democrat who was a leader of the Agriculture panel which has jurisdiction over SNAP.

“This is the most mean-spirited amendment that I have ever seen on any bill that has come before this House,” said the late North Carolina Democrat, Rep. Bill Hefner. “It is degrading.”

The lead sponsors were two Ohio Republicans, former Reps. Bob Ney and John Kasich. Ney later served time in prison after pleading guilty to criminal charges in the Jack Abramhoff lobbying scandal. Kasich also left Congress and is now governor of Ohio, one of many states that has opted to waive the very work requirement he authored.

Robert Greenstein, president of the progressive Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, told POLITICO that the amendment prevailed on the false assumption, he said, that it would apply only if jobs or workfare slots — under welfare reform — were made available.

“It’s a real hardship for people who are willing to work but can’t find a job and are not offered a workfare slot,” Greenstein said. “I understand the politics on the right, but I don’t understand any policymaker denying poor people access to food.”

Kasich’s own remarks in the 1996 debate appear to support Greenstein. “If you cannot find a job, then you do workfare,” the Ohio Republican said then in explaining his amendment. “Or you can be in job training.”

This has been the model, in fact, for New York City under Bloomberg, who has stubbornly resisted any waivers while adding city and state dollars to make the program work. And Walker’s plan now in Wisconsin depends on his getting more than $35 million in state and federal funds to finance a new jobs-training initiative.

The numbers suggest the work reforms are more an investment in people than a big cost savings for Washington. Wisconsin is assuming a 50 percent participation rate in the training effort but at an added public cost of about $125-a-month per participant. All this, when the maximum food stamp benefit for many of these same individuals is about $200 a month.

Nonetheless, conservatives say the current situation is worse if able-bodied adults grow so detached from the workforce. And these so-called ABAWDs — Able-bodied Adults without Dependents — have increased with the waivers in place.

In 2008, an estimated 1.9 million individuals fell into this category under food stamps, just 6.9 percent of the total beneficiaries. The most recent data for 2011 showed more than 4 million, making up about 9 percent of the total enrollment.

One big question is how fast these numbers will decrease in the next few years with the recovery and phaseout of federal jobless benefits.

Right now, 43 states have opted for automatic waivers based on the fact that they qualify for this jobless aid. The Food and Nutrition Service told POLITICO that it expects 33 states might still qualify by 2015 based on the administration’s economic forecast. But Greenstein’s office is predicting a much larger drop-off of a million or more ABAWDs because Congress may simply drop the extended benefits, which trigger the state waivers.

Cantor’s office downplays the pressure it is putting on Lucas, but the affable Oklahoman has ample reason to feel squeezed.

The Club for Growth, a longtime political ally of DeMint’s, is sniping at Lucas at home. Heritage helped Shannon on his bill in Oklahoma. And a lead player on the work issue is Heritage research fellow Katherine Bradley, a former Bush administration welfare official whose husband, Neil Bradley, is Cantor’s top policy adviser and an important presence in the farm bill discussions.

Cantor and Lucas met again last Thursday, after which the chairman said he was resisting efforts by leadership to delay his markup and would proceed May 15. But he has agreed to participate in listening sessions with his fellow Republicans to be organized by the House whip operation.

“They suggested I take a little more time,” Lucas told POLITICO. “I said I wanted to go May 15 but would be happy to hold the listening sessions to hear what my colleagues think.”

The tug of war with Cantor is reminiscent of last year’s farm bill debacle when the leadership ultimately blocked House floor action on Lucas’s bill. Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), who took over the nutrition subcommittee this year, shares Lucas’s concerns that producers can’t wait another year for farm bill action.

Previously, King has taken a harder line on cutting SNAP than his predecessor, ex-Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio), who led the same subcommittee in the last Congress. For this reason, King is seen as a potential Heritage ally. But he’s also a man eyeing a potential statewide race for an open Senate seat in 2014.

“I want to get a farm bill through the committee and this Congress,” King told POLITICO. “It’s really the art of the possible.”