Though President Trump spoke in his inaugural address about replacing welfare with work, his efforts in pursuing that goal have been mixed at best. The administration has relied far more on the strength of the job-producing economy to increase employment and reduce poverty than on any changes to benefit programs themselves. But the economy can only do so much — especially after an extended period of benefits-first policy, in which increased enrollment was the only goal.
This week, the Trump team tried to restart their efforts with an executive order directing federal benefit programs to make it a priority to help non-working recipients become employed. It remains to be seen whether this will do the trick. The question is whether the resulting reforms will address the underlying problem of welfare enrollment leading to too little work and too much poverty.
What, specifically, needs to be addressed? Too many healthy, working-age American adults are not working but receiving significant government-funded help. The programs providing that assistance have done little to help these individuals spring out of poverty, and their funding is often structured to create incentives to add more people to their rolls. In such situations, antipoverty programs wind up inadvertently inhibiting work and upward mobility.
For example, in Medicaid and SNAP (food stamps), the number of working-age adults receiving benefits but reporting zero earnings is at least 9.5 million each. That’s a minority of the total number of recipients on these programs — which include seniors, children, and the disabled — but a large number nonetheless.
Labor force participation tells the same troubling story. Our country is nine years into an economic recovery, with unemployment at 4.1 percent, yet we are still well below the pre-recession rate of working-age Americans in the workforce. Availability of financial assistance from government programs that do not care about work — principally SNAP, Medicaid, and housing assistance — has made it easier for non-workers to remain on the sideline.
The gulf between today’s welfare policy and work was starkly visible when I crisscrossed the country as a member of the Congressionally appointed National Commission on Hunger. At one point, a food stamp recipient, a healthy man in his thirties, blurted out: “That program [SNAP] is great at getting me an EBT [food stamp] card to buy food, but it does nothing to get me a job.” If welfare programs are not actively helping the poor gain employment, they cannot truly fulfill their mission to end poverty.
Helping people on Medicaid, SNAP, and housing assistance get to work is the best way to help them attain incomes above the poverty level. It will also help such people improve their health and gain a sense of dignity, ultimately making their communities stronger. Asking large and omnipresent government programs to reiterate that work is expected for non-disabled working-age adults is a good step toward bringing about such a change.
Until Tuesday’s announcement of the executive order, the most significant Trump administration effort has been the approval of three waivers from state Medicaid programs seeking to make work a focus of their programs. Seema Verma, the CMS administrator responsible for this effort, has bravely pushed the notion that states should have the option to enact activity requirements, in spite of the usual howls of protest from those who oppose introducing any component of personal responsibility into a benefit program. Unfortunately, her guidance has elicited change in only a few states so far.
A major disappointment has been over at the Department of Agriculture (USDA), which runs SNAP. It seems as though this administration has been unable to recruit anyone for the important job of running the program. Meanwhile, those managing the shop have been reluctant to assert their leadership on the state officials who implement food stamp programs on the ground. (The Housing and Urban Development (HUD) low-income housing programs are equally far behind.)
The order the president signed yesterday is a reasonable and productive place to start. Critically, it directs federal departments such as Agriculture and Housing to review the guidance documents that relate to work, and to follow the CMS administrator’s lead in using whatever authority they have to fight poverty more effectively through work requirements. The document is focused on outcomes, though it provides flexibility for states. It also ensures that program administrators around the country are accountable for achieving desired goals by requiring them to report results to overseeing agencies.
In announcing the executive order, White House officials said they believed there was a lot the federal agencies could do to promote work through administrative actions. Moreover, they signaled their hope that the order would lead to greater acceptance of the idea that employment and increased earnings are the best measures of success for benefit programs. The administration’s rhetoric is right, and it should help, especially given how plentiful jobs are. The large federal departments that oversee these programs — USDA in the case of SNAP, Health and Human Services for Medicaid, and HUD for housing — must now do their part to help more Americans replace welfare with work.
Robert Doar is the Morgridge Fellow in Poverty Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. From 2007 to 2013, he was the commissioner of the New York City Human Resources Administration.
