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6 Takeaways From CBO Estimate of House Agriculture Committee SNAP Proposals

May 12, 2018

A new CBPP piece outlines six key takeways from the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) recent estimate of the House Agriculture Committee’s Farm bill, which reiterates that it would cut SNAP benefits for millions of low-income families by more than $17 billion over ten years.

  • Millions would lose SNAP benefits. Some 1.2 million adults would lose SNAP benefits in an average month in 2028 due to the proposed stricter work requirements, with about 740,000 of them in households with children, according to CBO estimates.
     
  • States would need more than two years to create new employment and training opportunities.
     
  • States will face increased costs for tracking SNAP beneficiaries’ work status or exemption from work requirements.
     
  • Even after states create work programs, they will serve a relatively small number of people. CBO estimates that only 2 percent of those newly subject to stricter work requirements would meet the requirement by participating in a training program. That amounts to only about 110,000 people in a typical month in 2028. By contrast, CBO assumes 24 percent of the group would lose SNAP that year in a typical month, totaling 1.2 million people.
     
  • The bill imposes unfunded mandates on states.
     
  • The provision to mandate cooperation with child support enforcement (CSE) costs almost 3 times more than it saves.

Read the full post on the Center on Policy and Budget website.

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