It’s a great time to be a worker in the United States. Jobs data released on Friday showed the economy continues to set records, with the number of jobs available outpacing the number of workers to fill them. Importantly, the number of people filing for unemployment benefits rested at 203,000 — the lowest number reported since 1969. Plus, on Wednesday, the Census Bureau reported that median household incomes rose to new record highs in 2017.
The availability of work is a phenomenon that is expected to contribute to better compensation for workers, either in fringe benefits used to retain employees or in the form of higher wages as the labor supply tightens.
Despite objectively good circumstances for workers, some partisans have falsified the wage picture to make it appear dimmer than it actually is, and market watchers have opined that this dose of economic optimism will be short-lived. But even at a time of low unemployment and consistent economic growth, public policy makers must admit there is still much work to be done: The country cannot afford to await a downturn to repair the institutions intended to support workers when the economy slows.
This is what’s at stake as the debate over the Farm Bill wages on. Facing a Sept. 30 deadline for renewal, House and Senate negotiators have spent the August break debating the controversial package of farm subsidies and nutrition spending. Packaging agriculture policy with Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program spending has always been a Beltway gimmick that ensures funding for these programs continues, but has prevented earnest reforms to the nation’s nutrition safety net.
The result is a patchwork program that undermines work and obscures the tools workers need to rejoin the labor force when they have fallen away from it. Little exists to ensure transparency in these programs, meaning taxpayer dollars flow without any accounting of outcomes or objectives.
In fact, federal data show that of the 3.5 million households subject to work requirements under current law, only 30 percent of those individuals are working. Unfortunately, USDA currently uses survey data that covers only a quarter of one percent of households participating in SNAP, so it is impossible to assess how long those individuals are enrolled in SNAP and what resources they require to find long-term stability.
Worse yet, despite being a program designed to aid the needy, few protocols are in place to ensure scarce resources go to those who need them most. The House, when it passed its bill in June, included a host of measures that would require states to report more accurately on their use of funds and better tailor availability of resources for populations in need.
Recall that some of the skepticisms related to the strength of the economy are rooted in concerns about the cost of what it took to get here: Without realigning spending priorities with reality, U.S. debt will continue to exert downward pressure on growth. Policymakers cannot ignore the reality of an environment where resources are limited.
Fortunately, what was passed in the House bill proposes to stretch tax dollars further, streamlining qualifications for beneficiaries while providing necessary exemptions for people with dependents, disabilities, or other qualifying circumstances. Importantly, it expands work definitions and employment and training services to volunteer opportunities, apprenticeships, and subsidized employment, capitalizing in the diverse environment of support programs to maximize SNAP participants’ choices and opportunities for success.
The excuses to resist repairing our nutrition programs have been manifold, buttressed by years of economic malaise that made refining assistance programs untenable. Last week’s jobs report showed the best nominal wage growth in a single month in nine years, meaning workers are starting to see economic enthusiasm show up in their own paychecks. With the employment picture continuing to improve, it is imperative that lawmakers reform the safety net to ensure workers are not ensnared by preventable policy shortcomings should this enthusiasm begin to dim.
At a time when nearly every economic indicator points upward, passing a Farm Bill without any measures to increase the integrity of our nutrition programs would be the ultimate dismissal of responsibility. While the tongue-in-cheek saying may conclude that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste, so too is the absence of one. Waiting to reform SNAP until people need it most is the kind of feckless governing Americans have indicated they are no longer willing to tolerate.
As the deadline for the Farm Bill draws closer, how will Washington respond?
Mattie Duppler (@MDuppler) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is the senior fellow for fiscal policy at the National Taxpayers Union. She’s also a visiting fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum, and the president of Forward Strategies, a strategic consulting firm.
