WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is moving ahead with its plan to enact strict work requirements on people who use food stamps despite the coronavirus pandemic — a move that could result in hundreds of thousands of people losing their eligibility for the program.
People could soon be forced to work public-facing jobs when they should stay home or else risk losing access to the assistance they get to buy food.
The Department of Agriculture confirmed this week it is sticking to its timeline to tighten work requirements starting April 1. People without a disability or children must work 20 hours per week to qualify for SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program formerly known as food stamps.
The White House projects 700,000 people would lose SNAP eligibility. Brookings Institution fellow Lauren Bauer filed access to information requests for figures from all 50 states and projected the number of people losing assistance would be much higher, at 1.3 million to 1.5 million.
But those projections all came out before the novel coronavirus swept across the United States, causing a wave of self-quarantines and threatening economic downturn.
“That number is going to be much, much higher,” she said. “It’s going to cause harm both to the people who are eligible for SNAP, but it’s also going to cause harm for the economy.”