The White House has proposed a rule with the intent to increase work requirements for able-bodied recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), picking up where the farm bill had left off in failing to solidify the requirements in legislation.      

In a USA Today op-ed, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue wrote, “The President has directed me, as secretary of agriculture, to propose regulatory reforms to ensure that those who are able to work do so in exchange for their benefits. This restores the dignity of work to a sizeable segment of our population, while it is also respectful of the taxpayers who fund the program.”

The rule, proposed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, focuses on work-related program requirements for able-bodied adults without dependents (ABAWDs). The rule would apply to non-disabled people between the ages of 18 and 49 with no dependents. The rule would not apply to the elderly, the disabled or pregnant women.

Under current SNAP requirements, ABAWDs must work or participate in an employment program for at least 20 hours a week to continue to receive benefits for more than three months over a 36-month period. States may request to waive the time limit in areas with an unemployment rate above 10% or where there are "not sufficient jobs," which current regulations primarily define as an unemployment rate that's 20% above the national average.

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With today’s strong economy, that could include areas with unemployment rates of under 5% – a rate normally considered to be full employment. In 2016, there were 3.8 million individual ABAWDs on the SNAP rolls, with 2.8 million (or almost 74%) of them not working, USDA said.

The rule addresses the behavior of some states to “bank” exemptions to the waiver restrictions. Currently, states can exempt up to 15% of their ABAWDs from work each year, but if exemptions are not used, they can be kept for future years. Despite the law’s 15% exemption cap, current regulations have allowed for such banking, permitting states to build up large surpluses of exemptions, each one available for use to grant one ABAWD an additional month of benefits. Perdue explained in his op-ed that California, for example, has stockpiled some 800,000 exemptions over time, meaning it can exempt ABAWDs far into the future. “Our proposed rule ends this hoarding of exemptions and allows only a one-year lookback,” he said.

Perdue stated, “This is not a perfect solution. It would be preferable for Congress to permanently enact these important reforms to the SNAP program. However, these regulatory changes by USDA will reward more Americans with the virtue of work, save hardworking taxpayers $15 billion over 10 years and give President [Donald] Trump comfort enough to support a farm bill he might otherwise have opposed.”

House Agriculture Committee chairman Mike Conaway (R., Texas), who pushed for the SNAP work requirements in the farm bill discussions and successfully included similar provisions in the House version, said the final farm bill did create a roadmap for states to more effectively engage ABAWDs.

“Paired with the farm bill’s modernized E&T [Employment & Training] programming and increased investment, this proposed rule will allow ABAWDs to seek new opportunities and achieve their goals,” Conaway said.

The work requirements faced criticism in the Senate, which is why they ultimately were removed from the final farm bill version. Senate Agriculture Committee chairman Pat Roberts (R., Kan.) was complimentary of the proposal because it pairs nicely with the farm bill, “which included measures to engage the business community and to increase the accountability of SNAP employment and training so people can learn the skills needed in the workforce.”

However, committee ranking member Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D., Mich.) criticized the Executive Branch for going outside of its jurisdiction.

“Congress writes laws, and the Administration is required to write rules based on the law, not the other way around. Congress chose not to change the current SNAP work rules in the farm bill and instead focused on strengthening work programs that actually help people get jobs,” Stabenow said in a statement. “This regulation blatantly ignores the bipartisan farm bill that the President is signing today and disregards over 20 years of history giving states flexibility to request waivers based on local job conditions. I expect the rule will face significant opposition and legal challenges.”