At present, when a person in the United States is considered poor enough to qualify for certain welfare benefits, they’re automatically enrolled to receive food stamps in 43 states. Sometimes this means that families of four who make just above $33,000 a year but have high childcare costs, or seniors with enough money in the bank to pay for a single unexpected car repair, will end up receiving government assistance so they don’t have to go hungry. To the portion of the country that understands you don’t have to look like Oliver Twist to be living a precarious existence that often involves struggling to eat, this proposition is entirely reasonable. But for the Trump administration, it’s just another example of the conniving poor trying to take the federal government for a ride:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture proposed new rules Tuesday to limit access to food stamps for households with savings and other assets, a measure that officials said would cut benefits to about 3 million people.

In a telephone call with reporters, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue and Acting Deputy Under Secretary Brandon Lipps said the proposed new rules for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) were aimed at ending automatic eligibility for those who were already receiving federal and state assistance.

In a statement the administration characterized the auto-enrollment program as a “loophole” that must be closed, lest these crafty low-income families continue their scam. Perdue said that the proposal would “not only save money,” but, more importantly, “it preserves the integrity of the program.” Perdue’s boss, you may recall, famously bragged during the 2016 election about exploiting loopholes in the tax code that allowed him to pay nothing in federal income tax. That same boss also passed legislation that gave massive tax breaks to the country’s most profitable companies, because in this administration, the only type of welfare that’s acceptable is corporate welfare. But we digress.

Critics of the proposed change say that it would penalize low-income families who make just enough money from work—you know, that thing Republicans are always telling the lazy poor to do—but who also have housing and childcare expenses that leave them with insufficient funds to buy food. The program also automatically qualifies 265,000 school children for free lunches; under Team Trump’s proposal, those kids would have to separately apply, and possibly not qualify, for those meals. Senator Debbie Stabenow told the Washington Post that the rule was an obvious attempt to bypass Congress, which has previously blocked the administration’s attempts to cut food stamps. “This proposal is yet another attempt by this administration to circumvent Congress and make harmful changes to nutrition assistance that have been repeatedly rejected on a bipartisan basis,” Stabenow said. “This rule would take food away from families, prevent children from getting school meals, and make it harder for states to administer food assistance.” Stacy Dean, vice president of food-assistance policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said the move would predominantly hurt seniors, working families, and people with disabilities. “Instead of punishing working families if they work more hours, or penalizing seniors and people with disabilities who save for emergencies, the president should seek to assist them with policies that help them afford the basics and save for the future,” she said.

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