Page 76 - Farm Bill Series_The 7 Things You Should Know

Despite the cuts, the welfare reform bill left food stamps as the foundational federal welfare
program. AFDC, unlike food stamps, was converted to block grants and renamed Temporary
Assistance to Needy Families.

Roberts also argues that the reforms shored up public support for food stamps. “We did it in a
way that it did not look like we were trying to be unfair to the people on food stamps,” Roberts
said. “We were in fact saving them on a federal level (by killing the block-grant proposal) … but
at the same time achieving reform.”

Rolling back the reforms

After passage of the 1996 reforms, political pressure mounted quickly to roll them back, and the
next farm bills, enacted in 2002 and 2008, became key vehicles to do that.

In 2002, George W. Bush was in the White House with a “compassionate conservative” agenda
and looking to broaden the GOP base among Hispanic voters. A budget surplus meant there was
new money for the farm bill. The result: The farm bill that passed in May 2002 included $51.7
billion in additional spending over six years, about $3 billion of which was put toward increasing
nutrition assistance.

The bill restored eligibility for food stamps to legal immigrants who had been in the country for
at least five years and also for children and disabled adult immigrants, regardless of how long
they had been in the United States. The measure also increased and indexed for inflation the
standard deduction used to determine eligibly for payments. And states were offered increased
funding if they cut error rates.

Six years later, with Democrats in control of both chambers of Congress, and Bush in his final
year in office, the program was expanded again. Democrats were eager to shore up their rural
support by boosting funding for the farm bill, and food stamps benefited from that. In the 2008
farm bill, spending on nutrition programs was increased by $10 billion over 10 years. To reduce
the stigma associated with food stamps, the program’s name was changed to the Supplemental
Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

Monthly SNAP benefits were increased in several ways. The minimum benefit and the standard
deduction were both raised and a cap on the deduction for child care benefits was eliminated.

The asset limit for SNAP recipients was indexed to inflation.

By the time the 2008 bill became law, participation had already risen rapidly from the 1990s,
both because of the liberalized rules as well as efforts by the Bush administration to promote the
program. In 2008, more than 28.2 million people were enrolled in the program, exceeding the
peak before the 1996 reform bill, at a cost of $34.6 billion.
Starting in 2009, the program’s participation and cost would explode, reflecting not just the
Great Recession and a temporary boost in benefits provided by the 2009 stimulus bill, but also
because of the 2008 farm bill provisions and new outreach efforts by the new Obama
administration.

By 2012, as Congress was in the midst of writing a new farm bill, monthly average participation
would hit 46.6 million and the program’s cost would skyrocket to more than $74 billion.
74 www.Agri-Pulse.com