State and federal welfare policies are trapping millions of families in dependency. The law that requires able-bodied adults to work, train, or volunteer in order to receive welfare has a gaping hole: able-bodied parents and middle-age adults, ages 50-64, are exempt. Fortunately, Congress and the Trump administration can move these able-bodied adults from welfare to work with one simple move — ending the exemption.
Decades of experience and proven results have taught us that these exemptions, however well-intentioned they may have initially been, trap people in dependency and limit their chances at better lives. And it’s not just a temporary trap. Two in five able-bodied parents on food stamps have spent eight or more years on the program.
We are not helping parents, their children, or middle-aged adults with these exemptions. Rather, we’re making them far more likely to remain trapped in dependency. Work, not welfare, is the best path out of poverty, dependency, and despair. But with no work requirements in place for so many able-bodied adults, few of these parents and middle-aged adults work. According to data from the Department of Agriculture, just 18 percent of these able-bodied adults work full-time. A whopping 58 percent do not work at all.
This is why Congress and the Trump administration should eliminate these work exemptions in the next farm bill. By creating incentives for all able-bodied adults on welfare to work, train, or volunteer, policymakers can break the cycle of dependency and preserve resources for the truly needy.
Now is the perfect time to act. The nation’s unemployment rate is near record lows. Employers are desperately scrambling to find workers to fill nearly six million open jobs across the country. In fact, there are more job openings today than at almost any point since the Department of Labor began tracking them.
Meanwhile, welfare dependency is still near record-highs. The number of able-bodied adults on food stamps has more than tripled since 2000, while spending has increased five-fold. With three-quarters of able-bodied adults exempt from work requirements because they have children or are middle-aged, it’s not hard to see why.
There is no defense for policies that create incentives for people not to work when there is good, well-paying work to be done. Commonsense work requirements can move millions of people from welfare to work, helping to fill the millions of open jobs across the country and freeing up billions of dollars for other critical public services and the truly needy.
We know this will work. We’ve seen it succeed at the state level. States that adopted work requirements for parents on cash welfare and childless adults on food stamps have witnessed amazing results. Able-bodied adults left welfare in record numbers. They found work in more than 600 diverse industries, including nursing, manufacturing, and IT. Their incomes more than doubled within just a year and continued to rise year after year. And best of all, those higher wages more than offset the welfare benefits they lost, leaving individuals and families far better off than they were before.
The economy also benefited as more able-bodied adults left welfare and returned to work. Employers soon found the workers needed to fill open positions. Higher wages and greater growth pumped more money through the economy. And as the amount of time these able-bodied adults spent on welfare was gradually cut in half, states were able to refocus their welfare programs on those who truly needed help.
The bipartisan welfare reforms of the mid-1990s helped millions of people escape the dependency trap and find independence and dignity through the power of work. But after 20 years, there is still more work to be done. Loopholes have been exploited, dependency has skyrocketed, and work hasn’t been prioritized for all. Exempting able-bodied parents and middle-age adults from commonsense work requirements have left millions of families behind, trapped in dependency with no sign of a better future.
But Congress and the Trump administration can change that. They can provide these families with hope and opportunity for generations to come. Expanding commonsense work requirements to all able-bodied adults, including parents and middle-age adults, would do just that.
Kristina Rasmussen is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is vice president of federal affairs for the Foundation for Government Accountability.
