Moves within Congress, heartily supported by the Trump administration, to impose new restrictions on aid to the poor would target “welfare families” while ignoring – or even boosting – the generous corporate welfare payments to corporations.

Perhaps the best example of this topsy-turvy phenomenon lies within the $100 billion farm bill pending in Congress that would establish questionable new work requirements on families receiving food stamps under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). At the same time, the Agriculture Department budget bill provides several nefarious loopholes designed to quietly increase income for agribusiness, rather than for traditional family farms.

To be clear, under SNAP’s current rules, children, the elderly and disabled, and adults with dependent children, are exempt from work requirements. Those families receive an average monthly food stamp benefit of $134 a month – or a daily subsidy of about $4.50.

Meanwhile, many farms receive more than $1 million in subsidies annually, and the share of subsidies the largest farms receive has increased from 11 percent in 1991 to 34 percent as recently as 2015.

As for the claim that food stamp recipients are “taking advantage of the system,” research shows that among SNAP families with children, more than 60 percent of households have at least one adult who works, and almost 90 percent worked in the year prior to, or subsequent to, receiving food benefits.

In addition, SNAP already requires work rules: individuals without children age 18 to 50 are limited to three months of benefits out of every three years unless they work or participate in a job-training program.

With the overall national economy in good shape, the policy changes advocated by the Trump White House also would remove state officials’ ability to decide which struggling areas within their state should be exempt from those SNAP work requirements. A proposal in Congress would expand the work requirement for low-income SNAP beneficiaries to those age 59 or less.

The president’s push to dramatically alter the federal government’s safety net by expanding work requirements for those receiving food stamps, welfare cash payments, Medicaid, or subsidized housing fails to acknowledge that families living “on the dole” typically engage in a temporary, dependent existence as they weather an economic setback.

The SNAP restrictions proposed offer no exemptions for military families, recent retirees or low-income people who serve as a caretaker for the elderly or sick or young children. The provisions also fail to acknowledge that some major corporations paying low wages, such as Walmart or Amazon, rely on the federal government to subsidize their corporate profits by distributing SNAP food stamps to their lowest-paid employees.

The proposals also fail to acknowledge the federal government’s longstanding failure to establish an integrated, modern job-training program for the poor and the unemployed.

According to the most dire predictions laid out by Democratic critics of the new SNAP work plan, the farm bill would cut or reduce the food program for more than two million Americans, particularly impacting low-income working families with children.

Meanwhile, a publication geared toward family farmers, the AgMag, has aggressively criticized the pending farm bill, which would haphazardly dole out more than $20 billion in subsidies.

AgMag maintains that the farm “safety net” already contains so many loopholes that the top 3 percent of U.S. farms – or about 60,000 agricultural sites – receive roughly 40 percent of all federal farm subsidies. Yet, the farm bill under consideration on Capitol Hill would “create new loopholes that would further tilt the playing field in favor of the largest farms,” the publication predicted.

Here is AgMag’s eye-opening list of the top farm subsidy loopholes in the House farm bill:

  • Eliminates Income Tests – Under current law, farm operations with adjusted gross incomes of more than $900,000, or $1.8 million for couples, are ineligible for subsidies. The House bill would eliminate the means test for “pass-through entities,” like partnerships and joint ventures, allowing millionaires and billionaires to pocket subsidies.
  • Adds Cousins, Nieces and Nephews – Currently, family members such as siblings and adult children, are eligible for subsidies – regardless of whether they live or work on the farm that benefits. The House bill would also make cousins, nieces and nephews eligible for subsidies.
  • Creates New Corporate Loopholes – Under current law, a corporation is treated as a single person for the purposes of determining eligibility for subsidies. But the House bill would allow each member of certain pass-through entities, like S Corporations, to receive subsidies, just like farm partnerships.
  • Does Not Limit Manager Subsidies – The House bill does not reduce the number of so-called farm managers who can receive subsidies. Under current law, certain farms could continue to designate up to three managers to be eligible for subsidies – even if those individuals don’t work on the farm or provide little or no management.
  • Increases Price Guarantees – The House bill also increases price guarantees for crops by up to 15 percent. The bill fails to substantially reduce crop insurance premium subsidies, as President Trump proposed.
  • Extends Insurance Company Subsidies – The House bill continues to provide $1.5 billion in annual subsidies to crop insurance agents and continues to guarantee crop insurance companies a 14 percent annual rate of return.

 

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