Senate GOP aims to pare back proposed food stamp work requirements for parents in Trump megabill
CNN
The Senate Agriculture Committee is proposing some notable changes to the controversial food stamp provisions in the House-approved version of Republicans’ megabill.
The Senate Agriculture Committee is proposing some notable changes to the controversial food stamp provisions in the House-approved version of Republicans’ megabill. The committee, which unveiled its proposal on Wednesday, would dial back the introduction of work requirements for parents of dependent children in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, the formal name for food stamps. The Senate version would mandate that parents of children ages 10 and older work to maintain their benefits, while the House package would impose that requirement on parents of children ages 7 and older. Currently, parents of dependent children are exempt from the program’s work mandate. (A summary released by the committee said that the work requirement would apply to parents of children over age 10, which conflicts with the text of the proposal. A committee spokeswoman confirmed to CNN that the provision would apply to parents of 10-year-olds and older children.) The Senate committee also drops the exemptions for veterans, people experiencing homelessness and young adults who have aged out of foster care, according to Katie Bergh, a senior policy analyst at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.The House version includes the exemptions but ends them in 2030. Like the House version, the Senate would expand the food stamp program’s existing work requirements to able-bodied adults ages 55 through 64 and would curtail states’ ability to receive work requirement waivers in difficult economic times, limiting them only to areas with unemployment rates above 10%. Both versions would also bar refugees, those granted asylum and certain survivors of domestic violence or labor or sex trafficking, among other immigrants with legal status, from receiving food stamps. Currently, adults ages 18 to 54 without dependent children can only receive food stamps for three months over a 36-month period unless they work 20 hours a week or are eligible for an exemption.
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