WASHINGTON — All year, Republicans have said they want President Joe Biden to agree to major spending cuts without saying what they want.
In recent years, Republicans have signaled that they want to eliminate federal programs that help low-income Americans buy food and go to the doctor.
Rep. Dusty Johnson (RS.D.) on Tuesday introduced legislation that would expand “work requirements” in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the federal policy often known as food stamps that helps more than 20 million households buy groceries.
The program has limited benefits to healthy adults without dependents who cannot work at least 20 hours per week, although there are various exceptions and states often waive the requirement. About 13% of households served by SNAP contain childless adults under the age of 50, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. About a quarter of those households earn money from work.
Johnson’s proposal would reduce state discretion over eligibility rules and expand the definition of able-bodied adults without dependents to include people in their 50s and early 60s; current cutoff is 49.
“Work is the best way out of poverty,” Johnson said in a press release. “With more than 11 million jobs open, there are many opportunities for SNAP recipients to escape poverty and build better lives.”
The proposal comes as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has been eyeing Biden on federal spending, with Republicans threatening to block an increase in the federal government’s debt limit if Biden doesn’t agree to cuts. If the government can’t borrow money, it can’t pay its bills. A federal debt default could trigger a financial crisis, and Republicans hope the threat forces Biden’s hand.
Johnson is a member of the House Agriculture Committee and aims to have the legislation incorporated into the farm bill that the committee will take up this year. Congress has a tradition of revising SNAP benefits every five years along with changes in farm subsidies. Republicans regularly call for stricter work requirements, but usually don’t get them.
McCarthy won the speakership in part by catering to members of the right-wing House Freedom Caucus, and last week the group laid out a demand for a debt limit war that included work requirements for an unspecified number of federal programs. The farm bill could get entangled with a broader spending war.
House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn Thompson (R-Pa.) told HuffPost last week that some of his colleagues may not realize that SNAP has a work requirement.
“There’s a small number of people, all of a sudden they come up with the idea of a work requirement for SNAP benefits,” Thompson said. “We’ve had it for decades.”
Thompson noted that many SNAP recipients are working, but he suggested expanding the definition of “healthy adult” to include people in their 50s — as Johnson has proposed.
Stricter eligibility for relatively small SNAP recipients would not have much impact on the federal budget, as the entire SNAP program accounts for about 2% of annual US spending. But Republicans have eliminated their biggest programs, Social Security and Medicare, so they will get symbolic changes.
Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), a leading member of the House Freedom Caucus, said the group also favored work requirements for Medicaid, a program that includes health care for low-income households and has historically denied benefits to the unemployed. Donald Trump’s administration has allowed states to impose work requirements, although most state initiatives have been blocked by federal courts.
Roy said he would defer to McCarthy and Thompson when explaining the details of the actual legislation changing the benefits program.
“We do not want to get in front of the committee and get in front of the leadership that I am quite simpatico with at least this,” he said.