Making Food Stamps Part of Welfare Reform

Welfare reform has brought massive change to state-operated cash assistance programs but, on certain key points, the Food Stamp Program has hardly changed. As a result, the two programs often seem to operate at cross-purposes, making it more difficult for states to encourage self-sufficiency - while also providing a safety net for the truly needy. THE DIFFICULTY OF COORDINATION The rules for food stamps have always been different from those for welfare because, while almost all welfare recipients get food stamps, only about one-third of food stamp households also receive welfare. (The remainder are low-income adults with or without children, including those who are disabled or elderly.) With welfare reform, however, the need to coordinate the two programs has increased - but so have the difficulties of doing so. The welfare reform legislation ended the entitlement to cash assistance and seeks to discourage welfare dependency by increasing work and reducing family breakdown. The 1996 law established strict work requirements, a five-year limit on federally funded cash assistance (with a 20 percent exemption), tougher procedures to collect child support, rules that require teenage parents to attend school and live in an adult-supervised setting, incentives for pregnancy prevention, and expanded funding for child care. The Food Stamp Program, on the other hand, was continued as a federal entitlement, with national rules that allow for only limited state flexibility.(1) Why? The program maintains a safety net for people leaving welfare and prevents states from shifting costs from their capped Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) block grants to the Food Stamp Program. Yet, the only major accommodation to welfare reform was to allow states to conform selected food stamp rules - such as those about sanctions and work requirements - to their cash assistance programs. These conforming changes, however, can only relate to those on welfare. not those applying for it or those who have left. (Remember, about two-thirds of all food stamp households are not on cash welfare.) On some issues, such as waivers and neutrality, welfare reform and related decisions from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) have actually made conforming the two programs more difficult than before. As a result, most states have continued to operate their food stamp programs as if welfare reform had never happened, as if welfare caseloads had not declined by 43 percent since March 1994, and as if the dynamics between the two programs had not changed substantially. Encouraging Many readers assume that welfare rules are tougher on recipients, that food stamp rules are more liberal, and that conforming food stamp rules to welfare rules will further undermine the social safety net. Some new welfare rules - such as work-first approaches and sanctions for nonparticipation - are undeniably tougher than their food stamp counterparts, but others - such as diversion grants and asset rules - are more generous. Often, the major obstacle to conforming the two programs is financial. Conforming the rules could cost the federal government money, even while the states save it or vice versa. Let us explain. Work first. If anything characterizes the new world of welfare reform, it is the emphasis almost all states place on getting applicants to find jobs or to rely on family, friends, or others for support. Under the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program, most eligible applicants simply requested welfare benefits. Now they are told about time limits, work requirements, and other obligations linked to the receipt of welfare. Mandatory job search, personal responsibility agreements, offers of child care, and diversion grants often precede placing someone on welfare. This combination of jaw boning and concrete services, it is widely agreed, is a major reason for the stunning declines in welfare rolls. …