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Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Regardless of what Congress decides, some states are already cutting food stamp program

While Congress struggles to come up with a new Farm bBill, with the House and Senate proposing drastically different cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, "Some states are already embracing deep cuts to the food stamp program similar to those passed by House Republicans in Washington, ending the food subsidy for tens of thousands of low-income Americans regardless of what Congress does," Jake Grovum reports for Stateline. The House voted last week to cut $39 billion over 10 years from the program, while the Senate bill would cut less than $4 billion over 10 years.

States with large rural and minority populations lead the way in having the greatest share of residents on food stamps, with Mississippi at 22.5 percent (Washington, D.C., leads overall at 24 percent). New Mexico is at 21.6 percent, followed by Tennessee and Oregon at 21.3 percent, Kentucky and Louisiana at 20.2, Georgia at 20.1, Alabama at 19.1 and Florida at 19 percent.

Six states — Delaware, Kansas, New Hampshire, Utah, Vermont and Wyoming — have already reduced SNAP funding, or soon will, Grovum writes. Kansas "is the latest to embrace the cuts, ending a federal waiver on Oct. 1 that allows unemployed, non-elderly and able-bodied adults without children to remain on food stamps despite failing to meet certain work requirements. The change is expected to affect 20,000 Kansans" out of the 304,000 in the program, Wisconsin, which has 835,312 people on food stamps, will let a similar waiver expire in July 2014, and Oklahoma, which has 614,947, will also let its waiver end at the end of this month; in those states, "71,000 and 47,000 people, respectively, received benefits through the waiver in 2011, the latest year for which data is available," Grovum notes.

"The waivers, part of the 1996 welfare reform, were designed to give states flexibility in times of high unemployment," Grovum writes. "It suspends a requirement that limits benefits to three months unless recipients work 20 hours a week or spend a certain amount of time on work-related activities, such as job training. Until this year, 45 states took advantage of the waiver during the recession, and two that did not – Vermont and New Hampshire – weren’t eligible for statewide coverage, which is based on unemployment and job market data. Delaware and Utah chose not to request a waiver, while Wyoming wasn’t eligible." (Read more)

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