As some are making demands for welfare work in exchange for raising the debt limit, GOP Representative Dusty Johnson said he would just as much not take net budget cuts to get increased SNAP work demands through Congress.
“It’s an emotional issue. My motivation is almost no budgetary savings at all,” he told DailyMail.com during a sit-down interview at the House GOP issues retreat in Orlando, Florida.
“In fact, if the Democrats wanted to take the cuts from the job demand and reinvest them instead in higher benefits or in vocational training, I’d be happy to do so to get their support.”
After Johnson’s bill, the 45-member right-wing House Freedom Caucus published a one-page list of demands in exchange for lifting the debt ceiling, including “restoring Clinton-era job demands for welfare programs,” probably not just SNAP as well as Medicaid and housing assistance.
Johnson himself grew up in central South Dakota in a family dependent on SNAP aid. He was elected to Congress in 2018 after a stint with the Department of Agriculture and working for the governor’s office.
“I was that kid on food stamps — I know firsthand how government aid can both help and hurt,” he said.
GOP Representative Dusty Johnson said he’d just as much take no net budget cuts to get more SNAP work requirements through Congress
“It’s an emotional issue, my motivation is almost no budget saving at all,” he told DailyMail.com
But Democrats have already objected to the bill he introduced last week. Progressive think tank Center for Budget and Policy Priorities said in a new analysis that more than 10 million people — 1 in 4 current recipients — are at risk of losing their benefits under the new proposal.
“Approximately 6 million people who could potentially fall under the time limit again and risk losing their entitlement to SNAP, and approximately 4 million children living in families whose SNAP benefits may be reduced,” the group wrote.
According to pre-pandemic data from Johnson’s office, 1.36 million ABAWD households reported zero dollars in gross income — meaning they weren’t working at all.
Current law says able-bodied adults without dependents (ABAWDs) cannot go more than three months without working at least 20 hours a week and still receive SNAP benefits.
The Johnson bill would close a loophole that would allow states to waive that requirement under a “not enough jobs” provision. Eighteen states currently use the provision.
The bill would also expand the age for work from 18-49 under the current law to 18-65. “Now that I’m almost 49 years old, I know I have decades of work ahead of me,” Johnson said.
“My real motivation for job requirements is the fact that they’ve been proven to help lift people out of poverty,” the South Dakota Republican general member said.
“So that’s the primary and the secondary motivation is the fact that I think it will bolster American competitiveness in a really competitive world time.”
“As far as we save some money, I like it too, but it’s not the primary motivator,” Johnson added. SNAP is expected to cost $153.9 billion in fiscal year 2023.
But Democrats deny that forcing low-income people to work to get food aid drives them into the labor market — saying it instead only pushes them further into poverty.
Representatives Barbara Lee of California and Alma Adams of North Carolina reintroduced the Enhancement of Access to Nutrition Act earlier this month, with Lee calling the work requirement “punitive and arbitrary.”
“These guys talk about states’ rights all the time, except when it comes to poor people,” Representative Jim McGovern (D., Mass.) told Politico about the bill before it was announced.
“My real motivation for job requirements is the fact that they’re proven to help people get out of poverty,” said the South Dakota Republican general member.
Johnson, pictured above with his own family, grew up in a family that relied on food stamps
Under the current “robust flexibility” states are allowed to exempt recipients from work requirements, 12 percent of state caseloads are eligible to work by-pass in exchange for benefits.
The bill would eliminate the ability of states to transfer exemption waivers from year to year. Johnson’s office says this would help “reduce instances of stockpiling and obstruction of law abuse.”
The bill has caused quite a stir among Republicans in the Senate, though Democrats — who control the upper chamber — say it is dead on arrival.
At a hearing last week with Agriculture Sec. Tom Vilsack, Iowa GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley said he hopes to tie job requirements into the must-pass farm bill. Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark., expressed Vilsack on how the USDA determines if an area really doesn’t have enough work to allow a state to waive work requirements.
Vilsack weighed in last week at the Senate Ag Committee hearing on job requirements: “when people talk to me about job requirements, and how they want to reduce and limit and have fewer people on SNAP,” Vilsack asked. “My question is, if you’re really interested in that, do you also look at the [minimum] wage level?’
Asked if he was concerned the White House would be forced into work demands in exchange for a debt ceiling deal, Vilsack said, according to Politics: “No, because right now the White House says they aren’t — there’s no negotiation.”