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Nearly 3 million people could lose access to food stamps under the proposed rule, according to the Agriculture Department’s own estimates. A second analysis released this week estimated that nearly 1 million children would lose automatic eligibility for free or reduced-price school meals, double the agency’s initial estimate.

The second analysis became public only after Rep. Robert C. Scott, D-Va., chairman of the House Education Committee, pushed for the Agriculture Department to release information that USDA officials had privately told his staff. Their initial estimate of the number of children who could lose automatic eligibility for free school meals, 500,000, was almost half the newest figure.

“While I appreciate that the USDA finally released its analysis, which I requested several times over the last three months, this small step forward in transparency is overshadowed by a tremendous step backward in the fight against child hunger,” Scott said in a statement.

In a rare show of flexibility for an administration that has usually pressed forward with regulatory changes despite protests, the public comment period will be reopened for 14 days so the public can weigh in on the second analysis. Almost 130,000 public comments have already been received, most of them in strong opposition to the rule change.

“The additional analysis is woefully inadequate at addressing the concerns raised by tens of thousands of commenters and does nothing to mitigate the harm to low-income children from the underlying proposal,” said Zoe Neuberger, a senior policy analyst at the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

The Trump administration has tried three times now to reduce funding for or limit access to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or the food assistance program. But this is the first time the administration has accommodated opponents to a rule amid criticism.

The department aims to close what it calls a loophole that allows people with incomes up to 200% of the poverty level — about $50,000 for a family of four — to receive food stamps. It also wants to prevent households with more than $2,250 in assets, or $3,500 for a household with a disabled adult, from receiving food stamps. Republicans often point to a millionaire in Minnesota, Rob Undersander, who said he received food stamps for 19 months even though he had significant assets.

“While this is likely not common, it is emblematic of a larger problem in these programs,” Rep. James R. Comer, R-Ky., said during a recent hearing on the proposed change.

The change would also affect children’s access to school meals because children who live in households that receive food stamps are automatically eligible for free breakfast and lunch at school.

Neuberger said such automatic eligibility has helped simplify nutritional support for low-income children and their schools.

The department estimates that as many as 982,000 children would no longer be automatically eligible for free school meals, almost double the initial estimate. About 45% of those children would still be eligible for free meals but they would have to apply, said Jonathan Butcher, senior policy analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation.

States have relied on automatic eligibility because “they know too many eligible children fall through the cracks when parents have to fill out and submit a paper application,” Lisa Davis, vice president of No Kid Hungry, said.

“Parents may not understand it. The paperwork may not make it home or it may not make it back to school. Vulnerable families can fall through the cracks,” Davis said. “There is no guarantee that they will end up reenrolled.”

Butcher said such concerns are overstated.

“If this is a family where the choice is between handling paperwork and not eating during the day, I would think that the family would make it a priority to make sure that the child is taken care of. We’re talking about something that is the difference between going hungry or not,” he said.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, and Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., recently proposed legislation that would provide free breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a snack to all school children. It would also provide summer meals to all children.

“When our children have empty stomachs, they cannot learn,” Omar said. “They have more trouble concentrating. They are more likely to be absent or tardy.”

This article originally appeared in

Trump Administration Delays Cuts to Food Stamps and School Meals

WASHINGTON — Amid widespread condemnation, the Trump administration may be softening on a proposal to toughen access to food stamps and free school meals, reopening public comment on a regulatory change that would deprive food assistance to millions of Americans.

Tatum, who has used a wheelchair since he was stabbed at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, has had to prove he could make it on the outside. He graduated from a program to help people with disabilities learn to live alone and met with a case manager for three months before he received a Section 8 voucher from the Housing Authority of New Orleans.

But when he tried to cash in that voucher, Tatum, 58, found it had been suspended — because of his conviction.

Bipartisan efforts to overhaul the criminal justice system, backed by President Donald Trump, have so far focused on getting people out of prisons and thinning the largest population of incarcerated people in the world. Understandably so: In the toughest parts of New Orleans, some children are raised singing a nursery rhyme seemingly written to prepare them for incarceration at the penitentiary, better known as Angola.

But once released, some formerly incarcerated people struggle simply to find a place to live. Public housing authorities and private landlords refuse to rent to them, labeling them public safety risks, sending them to the streets, to homelessness — and often back to prison, for offenses like sleeping in public spaces and panhandling.

“It was a heartbreaking thing,” Tatum said.

Three years ago, the housing agency in New Orleans, acting on new guidance from the Obama administration, made a change. The Department of Housing and Urban Development had notified housing agencies and owners of federally assisted housing that they could not use arrest records in admissions decisions. The notice was part of the administration’s overall goal to provide second chances for formerly incarcerated people: “The opportunity to secure an affordable, decent place to live is part of an effective second chance,” said the HUD secretary at the time, Julián Castro, who is now a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.

So the Housing Authority of New Orleans shortened the length of an applicant’s past that would be subject to a criminal background check and created a process for interviewing applicants on a case-by-case basis. People with convictions would be reviewed by a three-person panel under guidance that would make clear distinctions between offenses.

Assault and battery and theft, for example, would prompt further review only if a person was applying within three years of conviction or one year of release from prison. Drug possession would demand further review only if the screening was coming within one year of conviction or release.

Multiple convictions within the previous 10 years would demand further review, but even then, an applicant would at least get a chance.

From August 2016 to March 2019, the Housing Authority of New Orleans received 52 panel review requests. Only one person has been denied.

“If you give people an opportunity to sit down and talk about the issues in a safe setting where you can really dig into ‘What was the issue? Is that still an issue?’ there’s really hardly anybody that you would say you wouldn’t move into public housing and Section 8,” said Maggie Merrill, the agency’s director of asset management.

But the vast majority of people on housing assistance are not given apartments in traditional public housing but instead vouchers to rent from private landlords. Even people who clear the housing authority’s review process might find themselves denied a roof over their heads after landlords conduct their own background checks.

“If you’re a landlord that’s on our voucher list as someone that accepts our vouchers, and we’ve issued a voucher, I don’t feel that the private landlords should be doing yet another background check,” said Dolfinette Martin, a resident representative who sits on the review panel and is the operations manager at Operation Restoration, a nonprofit that advocates for women who were formerly incarcerated.

Before Earl Hagans, 44, was released from prison after a five-year drug possession sentence, he dreamed about life on the outside.

“I go home, you know, looking good,” he said. “I’m going to get the nice job. The house. We get the girl. Man, I thought it was going to be smooth.”

It has not worked out that way. He moved into his sister’s spare bedroom until their father, who has Alzheimer’s, moved in, sending Hagans to the couch.

He tried to get help from Volunteers of America of Southeast Louisiana, which provides residential re-entry services. But “you had to be homeless in order to get a place there,” he said.

He recently did get his own place, but he bears the scars of his struggle. “The housing issue is so big for people coming home because we live under this reign of being dictated: ‘You can’t live here. You got to live where I tell you to live,’” he said.

In New Orleans, landlords are within their legal rights to conduct their own criminal background checks, but several other cities and locales — such as Seattle; Newark, New Jersey; and Cook County, Illinois — have ordinances that limit how private landlords can determine admission decisions based on criminal records.

The issue has reached the 2020 presidential race. Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., a White House hopeful, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., released the Fair Chance at Housing Act, which would require public housing authorities and owners to consider all mitigating circumstances when making screening determinations based on criminal activity.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who is also running for president, has proposed criminal justice measures that would help reduce the “collateral consequences that hamper re-entry to formerly incarcerated people who have served their time — from restrictions to occupational licensing to housing to the disenfranchisement of over 3 million returning citizens.”

Kiana Calloway, 41, a housing organizer for Voice of the Experienced, a nonprofit that advocates for formerly incarcerated people, is pressing for New Orleans to adopt an ordinance limiting the ability of private landlords to reject Section 8 voucher holders who were formerly incarcerated.

When Calloway was released after a 17-year prison sentence for two counts of first-degree murder — which he began serving when he was 16 — he applied to more than 10 apartment complexes in Jefferson and Orleans parishes. The landlords never replied. For four years, Calloway slept on his mother’s sofa.

“Why let me out of prison if I can’t live like a citizen?” Calloway said.

Roy Brumfield, 45, on probation and living in a transitional home for people with mental health issues, said he is hesitant even to apply for housing when he sees a question about an applicant’s criminal background.

“Why pay $25 for an application fee when you know you’re going to get turned down?” he said.

Sara Pratt, a civil rights lawyer and former fair housing official at HUD, said all landlords should “take the lead on being responsible on this and should take a second look at what reasonable criteria are.” But for all of the local efforts underway, she added, the answer was already on the books: the Fair Housing Act. It just needs to be enforced.

The Obama housing department issued a notice in 2016 telling both public and private landlords that the use of convictions in admissions decisions could be considered a violation of the law.

“African Americans and Hispanics are arrested, convicted and incarcerated at rates disproportionate to their share of the general population,” the notice said. “Consequently, criminal records-based barriers to housing are likely to have a disproportionate impact on minority home-seekers.”

The Trump administration is searching for a new course. “Being arrested should not be the sole basis to deny a person housing,” said Hunter Kurtz, HUD’s assistant secretary for public and Indian housing. He added that public housing authorities should “balance the critical housing needs of those with arrest records with the legitimate safety and security needs of their residents.”

“If HUD learns that public housing agencies are not striking this proper balance,” he said, “we will take the appropriate actions.”

Oliver Francis, 66, has just started the application process. While in prison, he taught self-help programs and coached people preparing for re-entry. But he is aware that landlords may reject his housing applications because of his 1978 conviction of first-degree murder, a crime for which he served nearly 42 years in Angola.

“I’m still paying for something that I already done paid for,” said Francis, who lives with his sister.

After getting released after 28 years in Angola, Tatum earned a degree in psychology from Southern University. He now works as a case manager at the Advocacy Center, which administered the program he graduated from, and he lives by himself in a unit his family owns.

“Once you come home, you paid your dues to society and you should be able to function or be able to at least have the opportunity to function like any other normal citizen,” he said.

After Years in Prison, a Struggle to Find a Place to Live

NEW ORLEANS — When Thad Tatum was released from a Louisiana prison after serving 28 years for armed robbery and the attempted murder of a police officer, he found his trials were far from over.

The proposal, first revealed by Politico, would force civil rights groups to jump over five hurdles, instead of three, to demonstrate that a policy has had a discriminatory effect that violates the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which protects against discrimination. The proposal also maps out how landlords and other defendants can successfully fight back against those claims and states that the Fair Housing Act does not override state laws that regulate the business of insurance.

Civil rights groups have long used analyses of the effect of practices and policies to show that those practices and policies have harmed minority groups protected by federal civil rights laws. Such disparate analyses have been used to uncover discrimination in an era when racial prejudice and bigotry can be more subtle than in the past.

And the changes would come at a delicate time. Though minority unemployment is at record lows, black homeownership levels have declined to rates not seen since the 1960s.

“This effort to turn back the clock on civil rights is coming at a most inopportune time, and the Trump administration is keenly aware of it,” Lisa Rice, the president of the National Fair Housing Alliance, said in a call with reporters.

Civil rights groups fear that the Trump administration’s new rule will make it far harder to challenge housing discrimination. Sherrilyn Ifill, the president and director counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, called the five-part requirement “an incredible and extraordinary burden” that makes it “virtually impossible to prevail.” On top of that, she said in a call with reporters, the defenses made available to the defendants are “astonishing.”

But stopping the change will be difficult. Congress has 15 days to review the proposal. Once it has been published on the Federal Register, there will be a 60-day comment period. And the HUD rule might set the standard for much of the federal government. Similar action is under consideration at the Education and Justice departments.

The proposed change dates to last summer, when Anna Maria Farías, HUD’s assistant secretary for fair housing and equal opportunity, announced that she would be amending the standards for discrimination that the Obama administration adopted in 2013. Farias cited a Supreme Court decision in 2015 on discrimination claims in fair housing.

The new rule, which has yet to be published in the Federal Register, would force those initiating lawsuits not only to show that a specific housing policy has a discriminatory effect, but also to show that the effect is “arbitrary, artificial and unnecessary” in achieving a “legitimate objective.” There must also be a “robust causal link” between the specific policy and the discriminatory effect.

Civil rights groups would also have to show that the policy has an adverse effect on many members of a protected class — not just one individual in a minority group protected by civil rights law — and that the adverse effect is significant.

The proposed rule also describes how a defendant can defeat claims that maintain that his or her use of computer models harms minority groups. And it would declare that the Fair Housing Act “is not intended to invalidate, impair or supersede” any state laws that regulate the business of insurance, which was a worry that came up last year after a rule approved in the last year of the Obama administration specified that discrimination claims could be made against insurance companies, too.

Ifill said that rather than comply with the Supreme Court’s ruling, the proposed rule advanced restrictive regulations far beyond the court’s prescriptions.

“It is important to see the development and promulgation of these rules for what they are. This is what those who have stood in opposition to the Fair Housing Act were not able to accomplish in the United States Supreme Court,” she said.

She pointed to the department’s defenses against the use of computers models. Under the new rule, defendants could defeat claims that target their computer models by showing that the model is a standard in the industry.

“This means that if an entire industry is engaged in discrimination, it essentially insulates the discriminatory conduct of an individual actor,” Ifill said.

But Roger Clegg, the general counsel of the conservative Center for Equal Opportunity, applauded the changes and said they were in line with the Supreme Court ruling. But at the same time, he suggested that the court had made a mistake in its ruling.

Current policies force people to take race into account in setting housing policies, he said, “which is exactly what the civil rights laws are supposed to discourage people from doing.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/02/us/politics/trump-housing-discrimination.html" id="d7b9baab-53b9-32de-a351-6250e8414df4">The New York Times</a>.

Trump Proposal Would Raise Bar for Proving Housing Discrimination

WASHINGTON — The Department of Housing and Urban Development is proposing to significantly raise the bar for civil rights groups seeking to prove that a landlord, insurance company or lender is guilty of housing discrimination.

The effect on school meals, revealed by Rep. Robert C. Scott, D-Va., chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor, was not disclosed when the proposed food stamp rule was published last week. Agriculture officials said the new rule would close a loophole they said allowed people with high incomes and accumulated assets to receive food stamps. The Agriculture Department said the proposal would cut off an estimated 3 million people from food stamps, a figure critics said would include tens of thousands of working poor families.

But the department said nothing about children from those same households who would automatically lose eligibility for free meals at school.

“It would very much be a double whammy for those children,” said Lisa Davis, senior vice president of the No Kid Hungry campaign.

Scott said his staff were made aware that students would lose their automatic eligibility for free school meals in a phone call July 22 with staff members from the Agriculture Department. In a letter, he implored Sonny Perdue, the agriculture secretary, to disclose the figures as part of the department’s regulatory impact analysis and restart the 60-day comment period.

“The effect on school meal eligibility represents an important technical finding that must be made public so that stakeholders have the opportunity to comment on all aspects of the rule’s impact,” Scott wrote.

The Agriculture Department has not revealed the number of children who could be affected by the proposal.

The department has said that the proposed rule for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps, “ensures SNAP benefits go to those who meet the eligibility criteria as outlined by Congress, not millionaires or those who simply received a referral to a nonworking 800 number.”

Jonathan Butcher, a senior policy analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said the rule would ensure the government was “providing resources to the children who are in need and not providing resources to those who are not in need.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/30/us/politics/free-school-meals-children-trump.html" id="cfaa5c8c-f988-3deb-a9d9-77f2360028e4">The New York Times</a>.

WASHINGTON — More than 500,000 children would lose automatic eligibility for free school meals under a rule proposed last week by the Agriculture Department intended to tighten access to food stamps.

500,000 Children Could Lose Free School Meals Under Trump Administration Proposal

The effect on school meals, revealed by Rep. Robert C. Scott, D-Va., chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor, was not disclosed when the proposed food stamp rule was published last week. Agriculture officials said the new rule would close a loophole that they said allowed people with high incomes and accumulated assets to receive food stamps. The Agriculture Department said the proposal would cut off an estimated 3 million people from food stamps, a figure that critics said would include tens of thousands of working poor families.

To justify the rule, conservatives point to a millionaire from Minnesota, Rob Undersander, who said he received food stamps for 19 months even though he had significant assets.

Jonathan Butcher, a senior policy analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said that the rule would ensure that the government was “providing resources to the children who are in need and not providing resources to those who are not in need.”

Right now, households that receive benefits or services from another federal welfare program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, are automatically eligible for food stamps in 39 states, the District of Columbia, Guam and the Virgin Islands. In some of those states, households with gross incomes up to 200% of the poverty line — which would be about $50,000 for a family of four — are automatically eligible for food stamps. Children in those households are automatically eligible for free school meals, too; over 8 million children were directly certified for free school meals in this way in the 2016-17 school year. Not all of those who automatically qualify for food stamps or free school meals necessarily receive them, though.

Under the proposal, fewer families would automatically qualify for food stamps, and in turn, fewer children would get free school meals. Children in households with gross incomes between 185% and 200% of the poverty line would no longer be automatically eligible for any food assistance at school. And children in households with gross incomes between 130% and 185% of the poverty line would be eligible for only reduced-price meals. Families would be charged a maximum of 30 cents for breakfast and 40 cents for lunch.

“Even that reduced price fee is very, very burdensome on families that are struggling to make ends meet,” Davis said.

The Agriculture Department estimates that schools serve about 34 million free and reduced-priced breakfast and lunch meals a day. Critics of the change worry that losing free school meals would negatively affect the children’s academic performance and health.

Healthy school meals “are proven to support academic success, obesity prevention and overall student health,” said Gay Anderson, president of the School Nutrition Association.

Critics also worry that the proposal would worsen the debts already being accrued by families who have a hard time paying their school lunch fees. Episodes of “lunch shaming” — in which children are publicly reprimanded for being unable to pay a school lunch bill, including by having their food thrown away — have occurred and have received news media coverage. This month, a Pennsylvania school district sent 1,000 letters to parents with outstanding lunch debt, threatening to take them to court and warning that their children could end up in foster care.

A cafeteria worker in New Hampshire said she was fired this year after she said she fed a student who could not pay. Other school districts have been criticized for serving students alternative meals, like cold cheese sandwiches, or for not feeding students at all if they are behind in their lunch payments.

Agriculture officials say they are fixing a loophole that currently allows some states to give food stamps to people who have a certain amount of savings and other assets. Critics say the rule will punish the working poor and stymie their ability to accumulate assets.

More than 38 million low-income Americans receive food stamps.

Under the current law, 39 states, the District of Columbia, Guam and the Virgin Islands make it easier for people to be eligible for food stamps if they already qualify for another federal aid program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. The new rule would greatly reduce the ability of those jurisdictions to do so.

Many Republicans say the new rule would limit abuse of food stamps by people who do not need them. Critics like to cite a Minnesota man, Rob Undersander, who claimed he received food stamps for 19 months even though he had significant assets.

“As a member who personally met with a millionaire that took advantage of the food stamp program to prove a point, I can tell you: Reform is certainly needed,” Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., said in statement.

Robert Rector, a research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said the proposed rule “removes an obvious abuse of the system by state governments and it basically would restore confidence in the food stamp program.”

Democrats were outraged. “The administration’s latest act of staggering callousness would steal food off the table of working families and hungry children, and dismantle proven pathways out of poverty for millions,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement. “The administration’s proposal is both cruel and counterproductive.’’

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the Senate minority leader, called the proposed rule “cruel, ideological and inhumane,” and told reporters at a news conference that Democrats would work to “beat back” the effort to restrict food stamps, as they had in the past.

To qualify for food stamps, a family’s assets and income must fall below certain limits. Households with an elderly or disabled family member must have assets of $3,500 or less. Incomes should be at or below 130% of the federal poverty level.

But those requirements are often waived by states because states see assets as a buffer against food insecurity. Some states allow food stamps for people with incomes as high as 200% of the poverty line.

The new rule would make it much harder for people above those asset limits and income levels to qualify.

Under the proposed rule, families with assets or income above the limits would be eligible for food stamps only if they had been receiving any kind of help under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program for more than six months. The new rule would restrict the kind of noncash assistance received under the program that qualifies families for food stamps: They would be eligible if they were receiving aid like job training and child care help. The idea behind the requirement, agriculture officials said, was that it would help demonstrate which families were truly in need of help and weed out fraud.

Experts countered that the new rule would cut off families most in need of support. “It’s exactly the kinds of households that the administration is interested in supporting,” said Elaine Waxman, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute.

Democrats view the proposed rule as another attempt to dismantle the food stamp program. In 2018, the House tried and failed, despite support from President Donald Trump, to impose work requirements on able-bodied adults seeking food stamps. Conservatives had also hoped to close a loophole that allows states to waive the requirements in areas with high unemployment.

“This proposal is yet another attempt by this administration to circumvent Congress and make harmful changes to nutrition assistance that have been repeatedly rejected on a bipartisan basis,” Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, said in a statement.

There will be a 60-day public comment period before the Agriculture Department can move forward with the rule.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/23/us/politics/trump-food-stamps.html" id="7e124dce-4e76-3559-a21f-a0ecb6f4d824">The New York Times</a>.

WASHINGTON — More than 3 million people would lose their food stamps under a new rule proposed Tuesday by the Agriculture Department to change the program’s eligibility requirements.

New Regulation Would Limit Access to Food Stamps

The latest plan would cut benefits for 19% of households on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly called food stamps, while increasing benefits for 16%. Almost 8,000 households would lose benefits entirely. Those cuts would be concentrated in cold northern states that would be most affected by a change in the way heating costs are calculated.

The number of families losing benefits is a tiny percentage of the nearly 40 million people who receive benefits, and even $4.5 billion over five years is a trim for a program that cost $68 billion in 2018 alone.

But the latest move is the third time the Trump administration has moved to cut food stamps. In December, the Agriculture Department said it sought to place more stringent work requirements on the program. In July, the administration proposed a rule that would strip more than 3 million people of their benefits. The public comment periods for both those proposals have ended, and final rules are expected soon.

The public comment period for the most recent rule change will end Dec. 2, after which the department is supposed to consider each comment before issuing a final rule.

“If the three proposals become final and are implemented, millions of SNAP participants will have their benefits reduced or cut altogether — particularly seniors, people with disabilities and working families — and 500,000 children will lose access to school meals,” Kate Leone, chief government relations officer at the advocacy group Feeding America, said in a statement.

The food stamp program kept over 3 million people out of poverty in 2018.

The program has become a perennial target for congressional Republicans, eager to cut some government spending and leery of the growth of a program that they see as fostering dependence on the government. In Congress, past efforts to make cuts to the program have been beaten back by a coalition of urban liberal lawmakers, eager to protect constituent benefits, and rural-state senators, protective of a program that reliably buys crops grown by their farmers.

But the Trump administration, unable to win changes in Congress, is cutting through executive action.

This time, the administration aims to change how people’s income and expenses are calculated when benefit awards are decided. The rule would change the way the department calculates housing and utility costs while considering the cost of gaining access to the internet for the first time.

Since the 1970s, states have provided estimates for how much people spend on heating and cooling each month to reduce the burden on beneficiaries of having to track down bills for heating and cooling, electricity, trash collection and other monthly utilities that can fluctuate throughout the year.

Under the new rule, the Agriculture Department would set a fixed allowance for heating and cooling costs based on average utility costs in each state — because “the degree of flexibility in current regulations causes inequities from state to state.”

The department pointed to a study it conducted in 2017 that found that, in some states, overestimates of utility costs were giving some people too many food stamps, while in others, people were getting too few.

The proposed rule aims to “better reflect what low-income households are actually paying for utilities so that eligible households receive SNAP benefit amounts which more accurately reflect their circumstances, no matter the state in which they reside,” the administration said.

But anti-poverty groups said the standards vary for good reason. The changes “will have the harshest impact in Northern states where families pay a lot more in utilities during the winter months,” said Stacy Dean, vice president for food assistance policy at the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

The average loss in benefits would be $31 a month, and the average gain would be $13 a month. Households could lose as much as $75 each month or gain up to $33.

“This latest proposal would take 568 million meals per year from the tables of families who need food assistance, forcing families struggling with hunger to choose between heating or cooling their homes and putting food on the table,” Leone said.

Dean praised the department’s recognition of internet access as essential for job-seekers and students as well as for participating in modern life, but she said, “There was no need to cut food assistance in order to offer those improvements.”

Rep. Marcia Fudge, D-Ohio, chairwoman of the House Agriculture Committee’s subcommittee on nutrition, said in a statement that the rule was “only the latest in a long list of planned cuts to critical assistance working families count on to provide for their basic necessities and put food on the table.”

“Instead of declaring a war on poverty, this president has declared war on our most vulnerable citizens,” she said.

Trump Administration Unveils More Cuts to Food Stamp Program

WASHINGTON — The Agriculture Department moved again this week to cut spending on food stamps, this time proposing changes that would slice $4.5 billion from the program over five years, trimming monthly benefits by as much as $75 for 1 in 5 struggling families on nutrition assistance.

The rule change’s public comment period ended Monday, with more than 75,000 comments logged, 70 from mayors and 17 from governors. Congressional delegations from Vermont, Maryland and Maine also voiced opposition to changing eligibility rules for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps.

The department will next have to sift through the public comments and “consider potential changes from the proposal in crafting the final rule,” the USDA said in a statement, adding, “We do not currently have a projected completion date.”

It could well move forward with the change. Other proposed regulations from the Trump administration have gone into force despite torrents of negative comments. The Agriculture Department pushed through changes to the nutritional standards of school meals over the objections of more than 85,000 public commenters. The “public charge” rule, which could deny visas or green cards to immigrants who access public assistance, received more than 266,000 comments in opposition but was finalized anyway. And 800,000 comments opposing a loosening of the Endangered Species Act did not stop it from going into effect in August.

In this case, the Agriculture Department says it is merely moving to close a loophole that has allowed people with higher incomes and assets to receive unneeded food assistance.

The department was changing the rules to prevent “abuse of a critical safety net system, so those who need food assistance the most are the only ones who receive it,” Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said in a statement in July when the proposal was released.

The Agriculture Department’s own analysis estimated that more than 3 million people would lose their benefits and 500,000 children would lose access to free school meals if the government moved forward with tightening a rule that now offers families on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families automatic eligibility for food stamps, even if they have higher incomes and asset accumulation. The rule the department seeks to change allows people with incomes up to 200% of the poverty level — about $50,000 for a family of four — and more than $3,500 in assets to receive food stamps.

Nearly 40 million people participated in food stamps in 2018. The Census Bureau noted recently in its annual report on income and poverty that food stamps kept 3.1 million people, including 1.3 million children, out of poverty in 2018.

Lisa Davis, the senior vice president of No Kid Hungry, an advocacy group, said the current rule “helps working poor families accumulate modest assets for a rainy day” and encourages them to take on more hours or higher wages without worrying about losing assistance. She was not surprised by the negative response.

“I think this proposal has really struck a chord with people, and the outcry against it has been swift and loud,” Davis said.

Although most of the comments opposed the rule change, some spoke up for it. “As a taxpayer, I would like to see stronger eligibility requirements,” Heidi Geschwill wrote in a public comment, identifying herself as a citizen. “It is outrageous to read that a millionaire is somehow eligible!”

But social service professionals expressed clear concern about a ripple effect as families are pushed off the food-stamp rolls. Children who live in households that receive food assistance are automatically eligible for free school meals. If the proposed rule is finalized, many children would lose meals at home and at school.

And that could effect other school services. School nutrition directors expressed concern that if the number of children who are automatically eligible for free school meals decreased, their schools would, on paper, appear richer because the number of students deemed to be poor in the school would decrease. That would jeopardize school access to other social welfare programs, not only free school meals but also educational resources that are tied to the number of children receiving those meals.

“It upsets me to no end, especially when you’re talking about my kids,” said Robert Lewis, director of nutrition services at El Monte School District, in California, which serves 9,000 students. “I hate to even imagine even a portion of those kids not being able to have food.”

The Urban Institute, using data from another Washington research firm, Mathematica, estimated that the rule change would purge 3.6 million people from the food stamps program. About 1 million people in households with children would have incomes considered too high for eligibility. Another 1 million would have too many assets.

Richard Besser, president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, said in a statement submitted to the Agriculture Department that the proposed rule “would cause serious harm to millions of low-income families who would have an even harder time making ends meet and putting food on the table.”

Expansive food stamp rolls have been an issue before. Conservatives have long held that the program has become too large and too open to abuse, and that lax eligibility rules were leading to government dependency.

But on several occasions, Congress has decided against limiting eligibility, the last time in the 2018 Farm Bill. House Republicans had moved to strip nearly 2 million Americans of food stamps benefits, but a coalition of urban Democrats and farm-state Republicans prevailed, as they had other times.

Ellen Vollinger, the food stamp director at the Food Research and Action Center, an anti-hunger group, accused the Trump administration of trying to “do through rule-making what Congress had already said no to.”

“We don’t think that they have a very good basis to be doing this given the legislative history,” she said.

Agriculture Department Flooded With Appeals to Stop Food Stamp Purge

WASHINGTON — Governors, mayors, attorneys general, state delegations, teachers and pediatricians have flooded the Agriculture Department with comments that overwhelmingly oppose the Trump administration’s proposed rule to limit eligibility for food stamps — and cut millions from the nation’s preeminent food assistance program.

Almost three-quarters of rich Americans who were in their 50s and 60s in 1992 were still alive in 2014. Just over half of poor Americans in their 50s and 60s in 1992 made it to 2014.

“It’s not only that rich people are living longer but some people’s life expectancy is actually shrinking compared to their parents, for some groups of people,” said Kathleen Romig, a senior policy analyst at the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Income inequality has roiled American society and politics for years, animating the rise of Barack Obama out of the collapse of the financial system in 2008, energizing right-wing populism and the emergence of nationalist leaders like Donald Trump, and pushing the Democratic Party leftward. Sen. Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, commissioned the report from the Government Accountability Office, Congress’ independent watchdog, and seized on its findings.

“Poverty is a life-threatening issue for millions of people in this country, and this report confirms it,” Sanders said in a statement.

The Census Bureau reported Tuesday that the poverty rate declined last year to 11.8%, the lowest level since 2001. But median household income was $63,200 in 2018, essentially unchanged from a year earlier, and income gains slowed last year from the increases posted in 2015 and 2016.

The accountability office’s study looked more broadly at the relationship between income, wealth and longevity — and how wealth and income are distributed among older Americans over time. It found that while more older Americans were living into their 70s and 80s, not everyone was living longer. Greater levels of income and wealth were associated with greater longevity.

The report looked at the population of Americans born between 1931 and 1941. Just 52% of that group who had incomes in the bottom 20% of midcareer earnings were alive in 2014, compared with nearly 75% of people in the top 20%. The study found similar results when zeroing in on accumulated wealth instead of annual income.

The accountability office found that demographic characteristics were also associated with longevity. Women in the group tended to live longer than men: Almost 70% of women were living in 2014, compared with almost 60% of men.

But, Romig noted, “the poorest 40% of women actually have lower life expectancies than their mothers did.”

Non-Hispanic whites and Hispanics tended to live longer than blacks: 68% of Hispanics and 65% of non-Hispanic whites lived to at least 2014, compared with 52% of non-Hispanic blacks.

Advocates have long pointed to racism in the health care system, for example, as a culprit for the high black maternal mortality rate.

Of the group born between 1931 and 1941, 75% who graduated from college were alive in 2014, compared with 65% of those who graduated from high school and 50% of those who had less than a high school diploma or an equivalency diploma.

This is in part because people with a college education generally have higher incomes and wealth accumulation than those who did not attend college.

“We don’t want groups of people moving backward,” Romig said, adding: “We don’t just want some people to be healthier and longer lived; we want everyone to equally share in these gains.”

The study notes that a significant portion of the original group was alive in 2014. “Taken all together,” it said, “individuals may live a long time, even individuals with factors associated with lower longevity, such as low income or education.”

But even though Americans may live a long time, they are struggling. The portion of Americans aged 55 or older who are still working increased from 30% in 1989 to 40% in 2018, in part because stagnating wages are hindering savings and wealth accumulation.

When older Americans do finally retire, most are depending on Social Security and other safety-net programs. This is alarming because Social Security is “facing financial difficulties that, if not addressed, will affect its long-term stability,” the study said.

“If no changes are made, current projections indicate that by 2034, the retirement program trust fund will only be sufficient to pay 77% of scheduled benefits,” the study said.

That finding could help conservatives resurrect efforts to overhaul Social Security — and cut the growth of benefits for some. Rachel Greszler, a research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said Social Security needed “immediate reforms.” She suggested that policymakers “bring benefits up and maintain them for lower-income individuals” while “reducing benefits for upper-income earners who don’t need it as much and have retirement accounts they can rely on.”

Presidential candidates, including Sanders, are not likely to embrace that conclusion, but they will press the issue of growing inequality.

“We must put an end to the obscene income and wealth inequality in our country, and ensure living wages, quality health care and retirement security for our seniors as human rights,” Sanders said.

“If we do not urgently act to solve the economic distress of millions of Americans,” he added, “a whole generation will be condemned to early death.”

Study Shows Income Gap Between Rich and Poor Keeps Growing, With Deadly Effects

WASHINGTON — The expanding gap between rich and poor is not only widening the gulf in incomes and wealth in America. It is helping the rich lead longer lives, while cutting short the lives of those who are struggling, according to a study released this week by the Government Accountability Office.

Lola Fadulu

Articles written by the author

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