New Food Stamp Cuts on the Horizon Again

Another session of Congress. Another chapter in the perils to SNAP (the food stamp program), as Congress tries again to pass a new Farm Bill.

Last week, the Senate Agriculture Committee finished a bill that cuts the program by $4.1 billion over the next 10 years. This is slightly less than last year’s proposed cut, but only because the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate has changed.

The House Agriculture Committee boosted its food stamp cuts to approximately $21 billion* over the same 10-year period. This $4.5 billion increase over last year reflects substantive changes in the proposed legislation.

Senate Agriculture Committee’s Cut

The Senate Agriculture Committee decided again to impose a restriction on a provision commonly known as “heat and eat.”

As things stand now, states can give households the maximum allowance for household utility costs if they receive any benefit from the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program.

In some, but not all cases, this entitles them to a larger food stamp benefit because it reduces their adjusted income.

The Senate Agriculture Committee’s bill would restrict “heat and eat” to households that receive more than $10 a year from LIHEAP — directly or as a payment to their utility company.

CBO earlier estimated that this change would reduce benefits for nearly 500,000 households by an average of $90 a month.

Since then, sequestration has cut LIHEAP funding by nearly $270.8 million — this on top of cuts totaling $1.6 billion since Fiscal Year 2010.

So the 15 states and the District of Columbia that now use the “heat and eat” option will be hard put to protect all beneficiaries from benefits cuts, but not as hard put as under the House Agriculture Committee’s bill.

House Agriculture Committee’s Cuts

Last year, the House Agriculture Committee’s Farm Bill adopted the same “heat and eat” restriction as the Senate’s.

Its new bill raises the minimum LIHEAP benefit required to $20 in any given year. This would increase the number of households affected to about 850,000, according to CBO estimates reported by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Most of House Agriculture’s food stamp savings, however, come from a restriction it would again impose on an option known as categorical eligibility.

At this point, states can, in some cases, use the same gross income and asset limits for food stamp eligibility as they use for programs they fund out of their Temporary Assistance for Needy Families block grant or funds they spend to meet their maintenance-of-effort requirement.

The alternative cut-offs may be used for households that receive any TANF-funded benefit or service, as well as those that receive cash assistance from the Supplemental Security Income program or a state general assistance program.

They enable some low-income people — mainly working families and seniors — to receive food stamp benefits although the standard gross income and/or asset limit would disqualify them.

These are hardly people who don’t need food assistance, as CBPP explains.

A working family may have a gross income higher than 130% of the federal poverty line, but far less than the FPL after allowable costs are deducted.

A senior may have somewhat more than $3,250 in retirement savings to supplement a Social Security benefit that leaves him/her well below the FPL, as would be the case for a former minimum wage worker.

So-called broad-based categorical eligibility, i.e., eligibility based on receipt of any TANF benefit, enables people like these to receive food stamps.

All but 10 states use it to ease the standard, very restrictive asset maximum — $2,000, except for seniors. Fourteen states and the District use it to allow a somewhat higher gross income as well.

The House Agriculture Committee eliminates broad-based categorical eligibility by restricting cat-el to households that receive cash assistance from TANF or one of the other aforementioned programs.

CBO has estimated that 1.8 million fewer low-income people would receive food stamp benefits. The Office of Management and Budget put the figure at 3 million.

CBO also estimates that 210,000 children wouldn’t get free school meals any more because their eligibility depends on their family’s participation in the food stamp program.

So they’d be doubly deprived — as would their parents, who’d have to pay for all their kids meals, as well as their own.

The House Agriculture Committee’s bill also cuts funding for the nutrition education program that’s part of SNAP.

The $274 million cut would come on top of a $110 million cut Congress made in January — this to offset the costs of averting a milk price spike that would otherwise have resulted from its failure to pass a Farm Bill last year.

So families who don’t get dumped out of the food stamp program will get less help in learning how to make healthy food choices they can afford.

This is already a challenge. But it will soon get harder, even without any new “heat and eat” restriction, because earlier raids on the food stamp program will reduce benefits for all participants at the end of October.

To top off the savings, the House Agriculture Committee eliminates the bonuses USDA has been awarding states for outstanding performance and notable improvements in key aspects of program administration.

The bipartisan National Conference of State Legislatures told the Committee last year that the bonuses had proved effective, noting that the payment error rate was at a record low.

But the Committee’s bill would end them anyway, just as last year’s bill would have.

So we’ve got two very different bills — and an upcoming battle royal in the House.

What the end result of all this will be is anybody’s guess.

What’s clear, however, is that House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas is spinning his bill when he says that it “won’t take a calorie off the plate of anyone who needs help.”

Even the Senate Ag Committee’s Farm Bill would. And it’s not nearly so bad.

* The somewhat smaller figure you may have read elsewhere is the total for all the changes that have budgetary impacts in the Nutrition title of the Farm Bill . Modest increases for The Emergency Food Assistance Program and several other items account for the difference.

House Agriculture Committee’s Farm Bill Is That Bad

The draft Farm Bill the House Agriculture Committee co-chairs released last week makes the Senate’s $4.5 billion cut in the food stamp program look like a nick.

The bill would reduce food stamp spending by about $16 billion over the same 10-year period — more than 45% of the estimated total saved.

By far and away the biggest bite — about $11.5 billion — comes from a “common-sense” reform that was among the crippling amendments the Senate defeated.

This so-called reform does away with what’s called broad-based categorical eligibility — an option that 40 states and the District of Columbia have adopted to extend food stamp benefits to more people in need.

With this option, households automatically qualify for food stamps if they receive a benefit funded by the state’s Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program — so long as their gross income is at or below a threshold the state chooses.

Federal law says it can’t be higher than 200% of the federal poverty line — currently $3,182 a month for a family of three. Most states, however, set the threshold lower.

The option doesn’t only allow households with somewhat higher incomes to participate. It also exempts them from the program’s regular assets test — if states decide to go this route. Not all states with categorical eligibility have.

The assets test is a separate part of the standard eligibility assessment. It disqualifies households if they have more than $2,000 in liquid assets, e.g., money in the bank — or $3,250 if a member is elderly or disabled.

The test also screens out households that have a car worth more than $4,650, even if they owe some port of it to the finance company. An exception if the car is used to earn income, e.g., as a taxi, but not if the breadwinner needs it to get to work.

The co-chairs draft wouldn’t just wipe out broad-based categorical eligibility. It would also nullify a modified form some states have adopted.

Households would automatically qualify for food stamps only if they receive cash assistance from TANF, the federal Supplemental Social Security Income program or a state’s general assistance program.

These are, by and large, households with incomes way below the poverty line.

As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities observes, households with gross incomes above the regular 130% food stamp cut-off often have disposable incomes, i.e., money they can spend on things like food, that fall below the line after deductions for costs they must pay in order to work — notably child care.

No matter. The co-chairs see a “loophole” to close — or maybe just a way to get to their savings target while still preserving generous farm subsidies.

This shouldn’t surprise us. The Committee earlier offered the same savings as part of its contribution to the House budget reconciliation bill, i.e., the Republican majority’s alternative to the across-the-board cuts that are still on the horizon.

What’s noteworthy, however, is that Committee Chairman Frank Lucas (R-OK) reportedly wanted to replace categorical eligibility with a higher income cut-off and asset maximum than the current law establishes, plus an exclusion for one car.

But his Tea Party-type colleagues would have none of it. So the Committee will instead vote on — and almost surely pass — a measure that excludes even more people from the food stamp program than the Lucas proposal would have.

We don’t yet have a fix on how many people would lose their benefits.

When the Committee proposed the same provision for the budget reconciliation bill, the Congressional Budget Office estimated an average of 1.8 million a year.

The Office of Management and Budget put the figure at more than 3 million in 2013 — about two-thirds of them in households where at least one adult works.

We have a window of opportunity to save these folks from having to choose between eating and earning — or in  the case of the elderly, between eating and spending down money they’ve put aside for expected costs like medical co-pays.

Some are saying the House may not vote on a Farm Bill at all — at least not before the current law expires at the end of September.

If it does, the Senate’s Democratic majority will almost surely balk at the food stamp cut, as well as some other provisions, e.g., its extraneous attack on environmental regulations.

So like as not, we’ll have one of those kick-the-can-down-the-road extensions.

But that may be a short-term reprieve for low-income families who’ve had the prudence to save for a rainy day — or a car that’s not a 10 year old clunker.

Senate Farm Bill Not All That Bad

I said last week that anti-hunger advocates were unhappy with the Senate’s Farm Bill because it cut food stamp benefits for some half a million households.

Truth, but not the whole truth.

The Food Research and Action Center, for example, expresses disappointment in the benefits cut, but also commends the Senate for preserving the structure of the food stamp program and rejecting amendments “that would have crippled” it.

Feeding America’s CEO strikes a similar note, referring to amendments that would have imposed “deeper cuts and harmful structural changes.”

These are good reminders that the Farm Bill could have been a whole lot worse for the millions of low-income people who’d go hungry if they didn’t have food stamps.

The absolute worst amendment, offered by Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), would have converted the food stamp program to a block grant funded at just over half the projected costs for the upcoming fiscal year.

Not only that. Unlike the block grant proposal in the House budget plan, it would have frozen federal funding at the initial level. No adjustment whatever for the inevitable rise in food prices — let alone any caseload increase.

And just to make sure that some folks went hungry, the Rand amendment would also have eliminated two programs that supply free food commodities for needy populations — TEFAP (the Emergency Food Assistance Program) and a food distribution program specifically for Indian reservations.

An amendment by Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) would have denied food stamp benefits to households unless every member produced one of a limited number of documents proving citizenship or legal residency.

One might think, at first glance, that the amendment would keep undocumented immigrants out of the food stamp program. Not so. They’re already ineligible.

The amendment instead would have tossed out of the program children who were born in this country, but live in households where some member — not necessarily related to them in any way — is unauthorized to be here.

Also tossed out citizens, mostly elderly, who don’t have birth certificates — or do but can’t present a copy that’s legally valid.

Another Sessions amendment would have drastically restricted what’s known as categorical eligibility — a streamlined process that automatically qualifies households for food stamps if they receive benefits from their state’s Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program.

Low-income families that receive non-cash benefits, e.g., child care subsidies, would have had to go through a whole separate applications process, with all the paperwork, calculations and waiting time that entails.

At least a million people — maybe as many as three million — in 42 states and the District of Columbia would have lost their food stamp benefits.

And 280,000 children wouldn’t have gotten free school meals any more because they’re automatically eligible only so long as their families receive food stamp benefits.

Bipartisan majorities — some a lot more bipartisan than others — kept the food stamp program safe from these measures.

Now action shifts to the House.

Some doubt it will produce a Farm Bill this year because the Republican leadership will have a hard time rounding up a majority for such a big, complex bill. Recall the debt ceiling cliffhanger last summer?

We’ll nevertheless probably see what the House Agriculture Committee majority has in mind quite soon. Don’t be surprised to see some of those defeated Senate amendments resurface.