REPUBLICANS WANT TO TURN SNAP OVER TO STATES

The House and Senate Republicans unveiled their budget plans this week. Both address the wishes of fiscal conservatives to: slash federal spending by trillions to balance the budget within a decade, repeal Obamacare, reform the Tax Code and overhaul popular entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid — all while boosting Pentagon funding. Both plans call for saving more than $1 trillion by cutting entitlement programs like SNAP. House Republicans intend to turn SNAP into a block grant called a “State Flexibility Fund” and turn it over to state control starting in 2021. Block grants give states the “flexibility” to increase eligibility requirements, reduce the number of recipients, and free up those federal dollars for other uses. They also allow the federal government to give states a fixed amount and hope they will cover the increased cost when demand rises. The Congressional Budget Office this week issued a report that said that if the SNAP program were converted into a block grant, with a 15% cut in funding, “average benefits would almost surely decline significantly unless state or private funding made up some or all of the difference.”

Sources: Politico, 3/18/15, Budget Plan; Campaign for America’s Future, 3/17/15, GOP Budget; Think Progress, 3/17/15, SNAP Attack