President Trump’s first official budget proposal relies on a lot more people working—whether they want to or not.

The $4.1 trillion federal budget Trump is sending to Capitol Hill aims to raise economic growth from the current weak level of around 2% to 3% or more. That will require more people working and generating economic output. “We need people to go back to work,” Trump’s budget director, Mick Mulvaney, told reporters on Monday. “If you’re on food stamps and you’re able-bodied, we need you to go back to work.”

President Trump’s budget director, Mick Mulvaney More

Trump wants to start with people who want to work more, even if they don’t have a job. In addition to the 7 million Americans who are unemployed and looking for work, another 6.8 million are working part-time because they can’t find full-time work, or staying home because they don’t think there are any jobs to be had. “We want those folks to work, and we need those folks to work,” Mulvaney said. Since most of those people would welcome a decent-paying job, it’s not terribly controversial to try coaxing them back into the work force.

But Trump also wants to toughen the rules for some people getting federal benefits, as an incentive to force more people to get jobs. Mulvaney, for instance, pointed out that when President Obama took office in 2009, about 32 million Americans got federal food benefits known as SNAP. That rose to nearly 48 million in the aftermath of the recession, when unemployment was high. The unemployment rate is now lower than it was before the recession, yet the number of people receiving food stamps is still more than 42 million. “It raises a very valid question,” Mulvaney said. “Are there folks on SNAP who shouldn’t be?”

A work requirement

Trump’s budget would address that question by adding a work requirement to the SNAP program, requiring “able-bodied” recipients without children to prove they’re looking for a job. There would be similar efforts to force people receiving Social Security disability payments to look for work, if they’re able to. “We are no longer going to measure compassion by the number of people on those programs,” Mulvaney said. “We will measure it by the number of people we help get off of those programs and regain control of their own lives.”