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The SNAP watch in welfare reform
Story Date: 12/12/2017
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Source: POLITICO'S MORNING AGRICULTURE, 12/11/17
With buzz around the potential for welfare changes intensifying in Washington, many insiders are on SNAP watch, trying to predict how one of the country's largest anti-poverty programs will fare as lawmakers seek to rein in federal spending after their deficit-busting tax bill is wrapped up.
Here's the latest on what's cooking, courtesy of POLITICO's Andrew Restuccia, Sarah Ferris and Helena Bottemiller Evich: The White House is quietly preparing a sweeping executive order that would mandate a top-to-bottom review of the federal programs on which millions of poor Americans rely. This is happening while GOP lawmakers are in the early stages of crafting legislation that could make it more difficult to qualify for those programs. And House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady recently confirmed to a small group of D.C. conservatives that welfare reform would be the focus of the 2019 budget.
Go big: "They're thinking about welfare reform in a large, all-encompassing way, not a program way," said Jason Turner, executive director of the Secretaries' Innovation Group, a group of conservative officials who run state-level social programs and met with Ways and Means Committee Republicans last week. Turner said he expects Republican leaders will seek to combine their ideas with House Speaker Paul Ryan's vision in his "A Better Way" plan, to create a "mega-idea" for reform with a focus on work.
How much local control, exactly? USDA's signal last week that it will soon give states more flexibility and "local control" over how they run the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is being seen as an early sign of the direction the Trump administration is likely to go. But where and how the department draws the line remain big questions.
What's for lunch: Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue is headed to the White House this afternoon, where he'll lunch with President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence. (h/t Playbook). With Trump looking to sign the executive order on welfare reform next month, it's hard to imagine SNAP not coming up in some context over lunch, as the administration tries to figure out how it will implement changes to SNAP and adapt to the political costs of such a move.
Arizona gets thumbs up on anti-fraud test: Late Friday, USDA announced it granted a two-year waiver that allows Arizona to require direct contact with a SNAP beneficiary who requests more than two replacement cards during a one-year period. Currently, states can make such contact after four requests in a one-year period.
Pushback: MA hasn't seen much response from anti-hunger groups on USDA's announcement last week, but the Union of Concerned Scientists said the program is functioning as it should: "The facts show that SNAP works," said Ricardo Salvador, director of the Food and Environment Program at UCS. "The number of people in the program increased after the Great Recession, but it has dropped to 42 million since then because the economy has improved. That's how the program was designed to operate."
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