New Trump rule could eliminate food stamps for almost 200,000 Californians
https://www.elkgrovenews.net/2019/12/new-trump-rule-could-eliminate-food.html
By Manuela Tobias, Calmatters.org, The
Fresno Bee |
The Trump administration
finalized a rule Wednesday that will cut off food stamps to roughly 688,000
American adults by requiring states to enforce work requirements.
The U.S. Agriculture
Department said the move will save about $5.5 billion over five years. The rule
takes effect in April 2020.
“This is about restoring
the original intent of food stamps,” said Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue on
a call to reporters. “Moving more able-bodied Americans to self-sufficiency.”
About 198,000 Californians
stand to lose their assistance in buying food, according to a 2018 estimates by
the Urban Institute.
Under current law,
able-bodied adults without dependents working fewer than 80 hours a month or in
certain training or volunteering activities qualify for three months of food
stamps every three years. States and counties can waive those three-month
limits if, for example, unemployment rates are high.
Currently, all but six
California counties - Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, Santa Clara
and San Mateo - have received waivers through August 31, 2020. Fresno has waived
the limits for the past two decades.
The new rule will make it
significantly harder for counties to drop the requirement. A city or county
will need an unemployment rate of 6% or more, as well as approval from the
governor, to qualify for a year-long exemption. Fresno had an unemployment rate
of 5.8 percent in October.
“It will require almost
every county to enforce the harsh time limit on providing nutrition assistance
for adults who are working less than 20 hours each week, no matter how hard
they are looking for a job, have irregular schedules, or are employed but
unable to document their hours,” said Jessica Bartholow, policy advocate at the
Western Center on Law and Poverty.
Fresno Department of Social
Services Deputy Director Linda Du’Chene said the rule will harm the Central
Valley’s farmworkers.
“We are a rural agricultural
county, and we are very concerned about our clients who are working seasonal
jobs. For example, it’s raining (Wednesday), so our farmworkers who may need
those hours to qualify are not working,” Du’Chene said.
The county’s workload also
will increase. Fresno will have to check monthly whether CalFresh recipients
are meeting their eligibility requirements.
According to Bartholow,
this will affect all able-bodied adults without dependents. The California
Association of Food Banks estimates that could be as many as 700,000
Californians.
“Just because you don’t
lose benefits doesn’t mean you’re not impacted. It means you now have to tell
your boss you need a pay (stub) because you’re on food stamps. You have to
spend the extra time and work to get your pay stub and send it in to the
county,” Bartholow said.
The rule is the first of
three Trump-era food stamp cuts to be finalized. Under all three rules, the
Urban Institute estimates that roughly 3.7 million Americans would lose food
stamps, including 625,700 Californians.
Congressman Jim Costa, a
Democrat from Fresno, said the decision would harm thousands of residents in
the San Joaquin Valley.
“I fought to maintain SNAP
(Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) eligibility for those who need it
most in negotiations for the 2018 Farm Bill, which the president agreed to and
signed into law. Now the president is going back on his word,” he wrote in a
press release.
State Senate President Pro
Tempore Toni G. Atkins said in a news release the decision would “make it
harder for adults on the brink of homelessness to get the food they need.”
Manuela Tobias is a
journalist at The Fresno Bee. This article is part of The California Divide, a
collaboration among newsrooms examining income inequity and economic survival in
California.
CalMatters reporter Jackie
Botts contributed to this story.
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