The administration estimates another 4.1 percent of beneficiaries live in households with more than $2,250 in eligible assets. The standard excludes some kinds of savings, like equity in a home or money in a retirement plan. But it is still draconian. A worker in a minimum-wage job who managed to save three months of salary for a rainy day would lose his or her eligibility for food stamps as a consequence. The threshold was set at $2,000 in the mid-1980s, but only indexed to inflation in 2008. As a result, it has become much more restrictive than the original intent.
A reasonable asset ceiling, set at a level that allows rainy-day savings, has obvious appeal. But the evidence suggests that it would exclude very few people, because those with low incomes tend to have scant savings, and would impose large costs. According to the Trump administration’s own estimates, states would have to employ the equivalent of 6,672 new workers solely devoted to asset verification. The government, in other words, probably saved a lot of money by allowing Mr. Undersander to collect some benefits.
In all, the administration says the government can save about $2 billion a year by denying benefits to 3.1 million people who would not meet the old standards. By the same logic, the government could save $60 billion a year by suspending the entire program. But those savings will not come from denying food stamps to millionaires. The vast majority of the government’s money is given to Americans who are hungry, so they may eat.
The proposal once again highlights the gap between Mr. Trump’s rhetorical promises to help lower-income American families, and the reality of his policies, which have systematically made life more difficult for those very families. The administration has slashed taxes on affluent Americans and significantly increased total federal spending — on Thursday, it announced plans to give another $16 billion to farmers hurt by Mr. Trump’s trade policies — even as it seeks to make a show of fiscal discipline at the expense of children.
Congress should move to codify the current food stamp rules, which have been embraced by red and blue states alike, to protect millions of Americans from this act of theatrical cruelty.
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