Most Americans who buy food at the grocery store with benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, already work. Both House and Senate versions of the budget bill would require more of those recipients to work, with the likely outcome being fewer people receiving federal support for health-sustaining meals.
Conservative Republicans have targeted the program because the budget for what were once called food stamps has been growing. They mistake the reasons why people are in need of SNAP benefits when they hit a rough patch and are unable to get their finances together. They also don’t understand that many people need these benefits to become self-sufficient.
Working recipients often don’t move off SNAP because they have large families and/or don’t earn enough to keep food on the table for the whole month. If congressional Republicans were serious about trimming the SNAP rolls, they would do what they have long opposed and raise the federal minimum wage.
That wage has been stuck at $7.25 since 2009. That’s not enough to support a single individual living an independent life, not even in rural areas with a low cost of living — at least not with one job. By contrast, the state minimum in Massachusetts is $15, and workers struggle to make it on that wage in this high cost state.
Nearly identical provisions in the two versions of the bill would extend a requirement to work 20 hours a week to age 64, from the current 54, and narrow the definition of a dependent child to those under 10.
The Food Research and Action Council, which lobbies for anti-hunger legislation in Washington, had projected those provisions risk increasing food insecurity for older adults and households with children.
It’s not so much people who receive SNAP benefits don’t want to work. The problem is work doesn’t pay enough in too many places. We need to raise the federal minimum wage so that we are not crimping opportunities for those less prosperous seeking to live a healthy life.
Ronald Mitchell
Editor and Publisher, Bay State Banner
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