During Obama’s presidency, Americans using the government-run food assistance program SNAP increased by 36 percent. This caused some conservatives like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich to dub him the “food stamp president.”
Determined to roll back these numbers, states with Republican governors have started to enforce work requirement rules. As a result, it’s caused a dramatic drop in food stamp enrollment numbers, reported Fox News.
Since January, Alabama saw an 85 percent reduction in 13 counties that began to enforce a work requirement for able-bodied adults without children. Georgia also saw a dramatic 60 percent reduction in 24 counties that followed similar policies.
Back in 2014, Maine was one of the first states through Governor Paul LePage to enforce the work provision. They saw food stamp enrollments drop by 34,000 people or 14.5 percent. This saved taxpayers statewide more than $8 billion annually according to the Heritage Foundation.
Kansas also was an early backer and saw the number of SNAP enrollees drop by 75 percent. A study by the Foundation for Government Accountability found that 60 percent of former beneficiaries found jobs within a year of leaving the program.
Those work requirements were part of the 1996 Republican welfare bill that then-Speaker Gingrich worked with then-President Bill Clinton. Obama waived them in 2008, and the number of able-bodied adults without children on food stamps doubled over the next two years. About 4.2 million people nationwide are currently enrolled in SNAP benefits.
“We should be incentivizing work, not providing a disincentive to find a job, which is a good thing both for the taxpayer as well as for the beneficiary,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R- Ohio) said to Fox News.
Food stamps give people a floor of respectability when they fall on hard times, but too often they have become a crutch to disincentivize people to work. Now with Republicans in full control of most state governments, it looks like it’s starting to change.
