Maine has turned some of conservatives’ boldest ideas about welfare into reality, and the state is ready to proclaim it a success for the rest of the country to emulate.
The state’s governor, the outspoken conservative Paul LePage, ran on a promise to reform welfare in 2010 and 2014, targeting abuse of and dependency on government programs.
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| The state is trying to push food stamp reform further, first by instituting an asset test. |
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In fall 2014, LePage followed through by instituting new work rules for food-stamp recipients. Able-bodied adults without children would be required to work at least part time, participate in job-training programs or volunteer to receive food stamp benefits.
The result has been dramatic: The number of healthy adults without dependents receiving food stamps fell by more than 90 percent over the last year, from 13,589 to 1,206 through mid-November.
In the eyes of Maine’s conservative reformers, that drop constitutes a success.
“We have to make sure that our focus is on food stamps and other welfare programs being a last resort, not a way of life, and that we’re promoting employment,” said Mary Mayhew, the commissioner of Maine’s Department of Health and Human Services.
Most former beneficiaries got jobs or determined that it wasn’t worth meeting the requirements for food stamps, Mayhew suggested, although she said the state isn’t yet able to monitor those outcomes closely.
The point was to promote the self-sufficiency that comes with work and to change the culture of the department and state, she said.
Maine is “an example of how a work requirement promotes work and self-sufficiency over welfare,” said Rachel Sheffield, a poverty analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank. “You don’t want to cut anybody off,” Sheffield said, noting that assistance is available for people who want to work.
A large part of what conservatives would like to see is simply a reversal of the loosening of work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, as food stamps are known, included in President Obama’s 2009 stimulus bill.
Congressional Republicans are concerned that the stimulus provisions helped changed SNAP from a program to alleviate malnutrition and poverty to an income-support program. The program has 45 million beneficiaries, a number that has not dropped even as unemployment has.
From the Obama administration’s perspective, the program’s explosion in size was expected and welcome. Last week, the president’s Council of Economic Advisers touted research showing that food stamps help lift families out of poverty and in the long run improve health and even education.
Whether the food stamp reforms have increased hunger in Maine is not clear.
Judy Katzel, a representative for Catholic Charities of Maine, said “what we have seen is a definite increase in the number of people being served” through the 24 food pantries they operate in Aroostook County, a part of Maine afflicted with a high level of poverty. Katzel couldn’t tie that increase to the change in food stamp availability, however, as demand has grown steadily year-by-year.
The view from Maine’s conservative government, however, is that the effort has been a success.
“When you speak to someone whose life has been transformed through employment, it is so incredibly powerful to understand that getting a cash benefit or a handout is not going to change, ultimately, their future,” Mayhew said.
The state is trying to push food stamp reform further, first by instituting an asset test, Mayhew said. That will stress that the program is a last resort — no more claiming benefits if you have a snowmobile or all-terrain vehicle that could be sold off.
Next, the state is seeking permission from the federal government to ban food stamps for buying candy or sugary soft drinks, a use that Mayhew sees as absurd when the government is stressed by the pressure of obesity on its Medicaid program’s finances.
Lastly, the state wants to put photo IDs on food stamp cards. That would prevent the use of benefits as currency in drug trafficking, a crisis in New England, said Matthew Gagnon, head of the Maine Heritage Policy Center, a conservative think tank that has pushed for welfare reform in the state.
Such reforms that cut down on abuse are political winners, said Mayhew, explaining that “the public is absolutely angry and frustrated by the abuse that they’ve seen in the system.”
And it is a matter of simply redoing the kinds of measures that the federal government passed in the 1996 welfare reform, Gagnon said.
“Now that they’re going to those simple reforms that were done 20 years ago, it’s really important to note how effective they’ve been, and how little we had to innovate in order to have an effect on the welfare culture here,” he said.
