The more things change, the more they seem to stay the same in our state.
One of the federal government reactions to the Great Recession in 2009 was to suspend work requirements for receiving federal welfare payments. That action was justified by the rapid evaporation of jobs and soaring unemployment rates among people who had been gainfully employed all of their working lives.
But when the recession was over, states began to reinstate work requirements for those who received food stamps. As of Jan. 1, 2016, some 22 states had transitioned from complete or partial waivers of the federal ABAWD (able bodied adults without dependents) requirements to eliminate or greatly decrease those waivers.
Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey and Tennessee completely eliminated the waivers on Jan. 1. Alabama, Georgia and 12 other states reduced the waivers on the same date.
The waivers were relief from a component of the 1996 federal welfare reforms which required that able bodied adults without dependents were limited to three months on food stamps or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP. The law stipulates that ABAWD recipients are limited to three months of SNAP benefits in any 36-month period when they aren’t employed or in a work or training program for at least 20 hours a week.
In 1996, then-President Bill Clinton angered fellow Democrats by compromising with Congressional Republicans in signing the so-called “Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996” that contained the work requirements – one of the cornerstones of the Republican “Contract with America.”
But the 1996 reforms came a year after then-Mississippi Gov. Kirk Fordice had implemented a six-county pilot program he called “Work First” that the state’s first GOP governor since Reconstruction claimed would “result in 50 percent of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) recipients getting off welfare and into jobs within three years.”
In 1995, The New York Times reported: “To eliminate what some call the financial incentives that encourage some recipients to remain on welfare, Mississippi is pinning great hopes on an experimental program known as Work First. The program enables Mississippi to seize welfare and food stamp benefits from recipients and offer them as subsidies to employers who hire the recipients.”
This exchange was a centerpiece of the newspaper’s story: “ ‘Fordice’s position is that the only job training that welfare recipients need is a good alarm clock,’ said Rims Barber, executive director of the Mississippi Human Services Agenda, an advocacy group based in Jackson.
“But Mr. Fordice, who faces re-election next month, responds that the notion that he cannot be trusted to care for the poor of his state is ‘a disgusting, elitist argument.’ ”
What later happened was that the AFDC program Fordice has targeted was replaced in the 1996 federal reforms by the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program – which was closer to Fordice’s “Work First” program.
According to the Pew Center’s current analysis of the elimination of the work requirement waivers: “About one in 10 food stamp recipients, or about 4.7 million, fall into the category of being able to work and having no dependent children, according to new data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees SNAP, better known as food stamps. On average (nationally), their households receive about $191 a month in food stamp benefits.
 As part of the federal government’s reaction to work requirements to receive SNAP, the 2014 federal farm bill provided funding for pilot welfare-to-work programs to a number of states, including Mississippi. In our state, the Mississippi Department of Human Services offered the Mississippi Works Career Assessment Program as a four-week course that claimed to prepare participants for future employment or postsecondary education.
So what’s the tale of the tape on SNAP or food stamps in Mississippi? In Fiscal Year 2013, the most recent data available from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service, food stamps are about a $1 billion annual expenditure in Mississippi serving a monthly average of some 668,624 Mississippians or around 22 percent of the population.
Mississippi’s dubious status as the poorest state in America makes this state ground zero for the SNAP program. In short, changes in food stamp eligibility requirements will be significant in the poorest state in the union.
(Sid Salter is a syndicated columnist. Contact him at sidsalter@sidsalter.com)