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Tightening SNAP’s eligibility rules is one of the Republicans’ central goals. President Trump offered his support, as did the White House, for stricter work requirements in the farm bill, and the House Agriculture Committee chairman, Michael Conaway, predicted that the new work requirements would make it into the final version of the bill.
Analysts estimate that the new rules would impose large administrative costs on states and lead to more than one million people losing their food stamps. On average, each of those people would lose $1,816 in SNAP benefits annually. And because a majority of the people at risk are in households with children, the result would be more hungry kids.
The United States has held on to a tenuous agreement over recent decades that children deserve to have enough to eat, no matter what their parents do. The House proposal puts us in jeopardy of losing even this modicum of decency. Although the new rule technically targets adults, children will suffer as a result of it.
