Pulling assistance from people who are struggling to find jobs is ‘not the Oregon way,’ Sen. Wyden says
Food stamp recipients and their advocates crowded into a small corner grocer Dec. 13 to hear their congressional delegation pledge to fight against new policies that threaten the food security of tens of thousands of low-income Oregonians.
Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley and Reps. Earl Blumenauer and Suzanne Bonamici, all Democrats, spoke at the Village Market in North Portland about the cuts unveiled by the administration Dec. 4. The changes are expected to cut food assistance for nearly 700,000 Americans, including nearly 20,000 Oregonians, prompting threats of lawsuits from jurisdictions across the country.
JAN. 16 UPDATE: Oregon joins 13 other states in lawsuit
“We strongly believe that the Trump administration is doing an end run around the Congress,” said Wyden, who described a partnership forming among food banks, the religious community, civil rights groups and affected states who are ready to “go to the mat and fight” for SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps.
“We don’t believe that the Trump administration acted lawfully,” Wyden said during the press conference. “We will challenge this in court.”
Currently, able-bodied adults, ages 18 to 49, without children are limited to three months of SNAP benefits every three years unless they work 80 hours a month. Waivers are granted for areas with significant unemployment, but Trump’s new rule will raise the unemployment threshold and tighten the requirements states use to issue waivers. That’s not realistic, say lawmakers and advocates.
This new work rule does not apply to children and their parents, people over 50 years old, people with a disability or pregnant women. The changes are slated to go into effect in April.
In addition to limiting waiver options, Trump has proposed a uniform standard utility allowance. Utility costs are applied as an income deduction for SNAP recipients, and the changes could mean colder states, such as Oregon, where heating costs are higher would receive smaller deductions and see less assistance as a result.
A third change to categorical eligibility criteria is expected to cut families from the program, reduce benefits, and cause nearly 1 million students to lose their automatic eligibility for free meals through the school lunch programs, although some could re-qualify after applying separately based on their income, according to an analysis by the Urban Institute .
Altogether, advocates say the impact will be devastating to the poorest Oregonians.
“The combined impact would be that about half of Oregonians who are currently on SNAP would see a reduction in food assistance and almost 20% of households in Oregon would actually lose SNAP under these rules,” said Matt Newell-Ching, public affairs director for Partners for a Hunger-Free Oregon . Based on U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics, his organization estimates there are more than 480,000 Oregonians who are food insecure.
Southern and Eastern Oregon, where poverty rates are highest and employment less stable, will be hardest hit by these cuts, Wyden said.
A request by Street Roots for comment from Rep. Greg Walden (R-Hood River), whose district covers nearly all of Eastern Oregon and most of Southern Oregon, was not answered.
“To say, when an Oregonian is out there pounding the pavement trying to get a job and get ahead in the private economy, we’re going to pull back on your ability to get good nutrition and a healthy diet – folks, that is not the Oregon way,” Wyden told the audience.
Merkley told the audience that these and other changes were rejected by Congress last year when drafting the 2018 Farm Bill.
In March, a bipartisan group of 47 senators wrote a letter to Trump urging him to withdraw his proposal to changes to SNAP.
“The proposed changes would take food assistance away from Americans struggling to find stable employment while doing nothing to help them to actually become permanently employed,” the senators wrote. “This is contrary to congressional intent, evidenced by the passage of the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018, which rejected similar harmful changes to SNAP and passed Congress by a historic vote of 87-13 in the Senate and by 369-47 in the House of Representatives.”
“We understand that when children are hungry, they don’t have the ability to study well,” Merkley said. “We understand that when families are hungry, every aspect of life is diminished. Taking away food is wrong,” he said, echoing the signs raised in the crowd.
Bonamici said the changes ignore recipients who can’t fulfill the new work requirements, such as people with caregiver responsibilities.
“They make this assumption that if only people weren’t getting SNAP benefits, they would be working and contributing to the economy,” Bonamici said. “Many Oregonians, many Americans, can’t work outside the home. They’re taking care of family members who need them. We should be providing more, not less, assistance.”
People who work but whose jobs are seasonal or low-wage or who have unpredictable schedules or no benefits could also be affected by the rule change.
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Susannah Morgan, CEO at Oregon Food Bank , responded to the notion suggested by the USDA, which administers SNAP, that pulling back on food assistance will push people to find work.
“It is a myth that taking food away from people makes them stronger,” Morgan said. “It is a myth that Oregon Food Bank and our network can step up and fill the gap from SNAP. For every meal that Oregon Food Bank provides, SNAP provides 12 in our community. And it is a myth that people who receive SNAP benefits are people other than us.”
The Oregon Food Bank operates 17 regional food banks and stocks 1,200 food distribution sites across the state, serving 260,000 Oregonians who are food insecure every month, according to the organization’s figures.
More than 90% of SNAP’s $60 billion budget goes toward food costs.
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Lynn Murphy receives $194 a month in SNAP benefits, which she applied for in 2017 after being diagnosed with brain cancer. She is unable to work, and SNAP is among the few benefits she receives to take care of herself and her two children. She said she is afraid the cuts will take food out of her 16-year-old son’s mouth.
“It strikes a little terror in my heart,” she told the audience. “How am I going to make that money up? I’ve got a 16-year-old going to bed hungry because he’s concerned about our financial situation. Food banks are wonderful, but you can’t get everything. It’s important to have that $194 to have spinach, apples, oranges.”
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The USDA singles out the nation’s unemployment rate to justify the policy changes. The agency states that in 2000, the nation’s unemployment rate was 4% and more than 17 million people were receiving SNAP. Today, the unemployment rate is 3.6%, and more than 36 million people receive SNAP, it says.
However, that doesn’t factor in other economic changes during that time, including declines in other assistance and increases in housing costs. More than 38 million Americans currently live below the poverty level, according to Census data, including about 530,000 Oregonians.
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, the federal program to help families in poverty, reaches only 1 in 4 qualifying families in need, according to analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. That’s a significant decline from the program’s initial days in the late 1990s when nearly 70% received assistance.
Likewise, fewer than 1 in 4 eligible households receive housing assistance, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition . Rent increases have significantly outpaced income growth and price increases for necessities such as food and transportation, writes NLIHC president and CEO Diane Yentel in their 2019 housing report. Despite a significant increase in wealth for higher-income households, affordable housing for low-income people remains even further out of reach than in 1989, with wage inequality worsening between black and white workers at all wage levels, she wrote.
Under federal standards, people paying more than 30% of their household income on housing costs are considered rent burdened, where housing costs begin to chip away at a family’s ability to afford necessities such as food, clothing, transportation and medical care.
In Oregon, half of all renter households pay more than 30% of their income on rent. Low-income families are rent-burdened at a much higher rate than those in higher incomes.
According to research released this year by Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, rents across the country are rising at twice the rate of overall inflation, and the U.S. is altogether losing rental units affordable at lower incomes. According to the center’s 2019 State of the Nation’s Housing , the number of units renting for under $800 fell by 1 million in 2017, bringing the total loss from 2011 to 2017 nationwide to 4 million. In that time period, the Portland-Vancouver metro area lost 60% of its rental units available for under $800, according to the report.
“As a mom and a policymaker, it’s infuriating to see the administration making communities hungrier when food insecurity is a challenge we should all be working to address and eliminate,” Bonamici said. “Hunger is a problem we can solve. This is the United States of America. There is no reason why anyone in this country should be hungry.”
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