Nearly 750,000 older adults could lose federal food assistance in new debt ceiling deal

[Celerity]

https://www.reckon.news/news/2023/06/nearly-750000-older-adults-could-lose-federal-food-assistance-in-new-debt-ceiling-deal.html

The latest legislation expands work requirements for childless older adults ages 50 to 54 receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. SNAP benefits, also known as food stamps, provide low-income individuals and families with monthly funds for food purchases. But research from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ (CBPP) shows that the “existing, failed SNAP work-reporting requirement” would do more harm than good. The think tank found that SNAP’s current work-reporting requirement does not increase employment chances or earnings. “Older adults are more likely to face age-related discrimination in the labor market, to no longer be able to perform the types of jobs they did when they were younger,” the report said.

Under current law, adults aged 18-49 with no dependents are eligible to receive SNAP benefits if they can prove existing employment or participation in a job training program for 20 hours per week. Some individuals are exempt from SNAP’s work-reporting requirement if they have a work-limiting disability like a pregnancy or a physical disability that prevents them from working. Otherwise, they would only qualify for three months’ worth of benefits over a span of three years. Additional research backs up CBPP’s findings. The American Economic Association Journal found the current work-reporting requirement cut SNAP participation by more than 50 percent among those who need it the most; individuals who “often have very low incomes, and the loss of SNAP benefits significantly harms their ability to meet their basic needs.”

Critics find the expansion of this work-requirement to childless older adults “upsetting.” “You’re not going to balance the budget, much less pay down the debt, through these kinds of changes,” said Ed Bolen, CBPP’s director of SNAP state strategies, to CNBC. “On the other hand, you’re going to affect up to 750,000 low-income older Americans who need food assistance.” SNAP’s expansion will be implemented 90 days following the enactment of the law, which was signed over the weekend. Fifty-year-olds will be the first subjected to the work-reporting requirement. On October 1, it will expand to include 51 and 52-year-olds. And beginning October 1, 2024, individuals aged 53 to 54 will also be subject to this requirement. The work-reporting requirement will remain effective until October 1, 2030.

Ellen Vollinger, the SNAP director for the Food Research and Action Center, thinks this will lead to further food hardship. “It doesn’t do anything to improve people’s employability,” Vollinger said to NPR. “It’s just going to take food away from people that are unable to meet the documented requirements.” These findings have precedent, too. Several investigations, assessments, and research in the past decade have shown many people whose SNAP benefits are taken away under existing food assistance policy, should have been exempt but were not properly screened for work-limiting health conditions or other exemptions.

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[Duncanpup]

1. Repig bastards.

[RandySF]

2. Let's fight like hell to regain the House next year if not sooner.

[betsuni]

3. No mention this was Republicans in the article. Photo of Biden, both sides. Whatever.

[yardwork]

8. This is why our democracy is dying. Deliberate lies paraded as truth.

[Celerity]

10. No. It used the words Republican & Democratic exactly once each, and it was in the same sentence,

it was in the caption:

President Joe Biden speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Sunday, May 28, 2023, in Washington. Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy reached a final agreement Sunday on a deal to raise the nation's debt ceiling while trying to ensure enough Republican and Democratic votes to pass the measure in the coming week. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta) (Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP)

As for your attempt to weaponise a both sides charge, well that is kind of hard, as the bill itself was bipartisan, and actually had more Democrats vote for it than Rethugs did. In the Senate, more Rethugs voted against it than Rethugs voted for it, but in the House, more Rethugs voted for it than there were Rethugs who voted against it. It literally had the support, on balance, from both sides of the aisle.


Here are the vote tallies for the House and the Senate:

The House:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/31/us/politics/debt-ceiling-house-vote.html

With both far-right and hard-left lawmakers in revolt over the deal, it fell to a bipartisan coalition powered by Democrats to push the bill over the finish line, throwing their support behind the compromise in an effort to break the fiscal stalemate that had gripped Washington for weeks. On the final vote, 149 Republicans and 165 Democrats backed the measure, while 71 Republicans and 46 Democrats opposed it.

That was a blow to the Republican speaker, whose hard-fought victory on the measure was dampened by the fact that more Democrats ultimately voted for the bill than members of his own party.

The Senate:

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/06/01/us/debt-ceiling-senate-vote

In this following OP, some tried to toss shade on the 46 House Dems who voted No:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217961317

and here is one on the Senate where some tried to do the same thing for the 4 Dem cauaucus members who voted No:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217964152

and finally, this OP shows why that is not an effectual takeaway:

Lawrence O'Donnell explains why the 46 House Democrats who voted No actually strengthen Biden's hand in future negotiations with McCarthy, and would have voted 'Yes' in enough numbers to pass it IF needed.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217962089

[mopinko]

4. i think a lot of those ppl will apply for disability.

which will tax the whole system even more. for peanuts.
trust the thugs to do just this kind of STUPID shit.

[NowISeetheLight]

5. No Hours

My husband had his hours cut at work because it's summer here in Palm Springs and business is down. Snowbirds go North in the summer. It's not because he's "lazy" or anything. Before we were married when we first moved to CA he was on Medi-Cal. He had no healthcare in SC and had to use a free clinic when we lived there.

He has had multiple foot surgery procedures and is in pain when he comes home after working five hours on his feet in hospitality. He has no other job experience and a GED and has never made good money. Hell his Social Security estimate at 62 is something like $615 a month.

It took him months to find a job here. Being in his late 50s no one wants to hire you.

[dalton99a]

6. Sheer wanton sadism

[modrepub]

7. Joke Is On The Farmers

SNAP is really a farmer price support program; feeding poor people is a side benefit. Less food bought via SNAP leads to lower agricultural product prices and less profits for the American farmer. Guess big ag will only get bigger as they snap up small-time farming operations.

[Martin Eden]

9. Republican political theater scapegoats the poor

While the billionaires who fund their political careers rake in ever larger piles of cash.

Why weren't the huge Trump tax cuts for billionaires and wealthy corporations part of the "bipartisan" budget deal to reduce federal deficits?

[Midnight Writer]

11. Meanwhile, Wall Street is celebrating a rise in unemployment, engineered by the Federal Reserve.

If people had the opportunity to find decent, secure, living wage jobs with benefits, they wouldn't need SNAP.

Instead, taxpayers are subsidizing low-paying jobs at some of the most profitable corporations in America.

The saving hope of the debt ceiling deal is that the Biden Administration has the power to regulate the details of a "work requirement".

[mike_c]

12. the cruelty is the point, as always