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Post 30 Mar 2016, 11:33 am

http://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/more-than-500000-adults-will-lose-snap-benefits-in-2016-as-waivers-expire

Under the 1996 welfare law, adults aged 18-49 who are not physically or mentally unfit for work or caring for a minor child are ineligible for SNAP if they have received three months of SNAP benefits while unemployed during the previous 36 months.

This law (signed by President Clinton) is coming back into play because the recession is over, and people have so many more job opportunities.
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Post 30 Mar 2016, 11:54 am

Well, if there are actually jobs available for them then ok. It's very harsh if they can't get jobs, however. The U-6 number is still around 10%
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Post 30 Mar 2016, 2:24 pm

freeman3
Well, if there are actually jobs available for them then ok. It's very harsh if they can't get jobs, however. The U-6 number is still around 10%

Kasich's theory, when he wrote this law, was that by eliminating benefits it would push people to look for work. Or at least get into a training program or workfare...
Does the description below seem to indicate that the people affected are living high off the public purse or that they are fit to compete in the job market?

Unemployed, nondisabled childless adults on SNAP tend to be very poor. USDA data show that while these individuals participate in SNAP their gross income averages 17 percent of the poverty line — about $2,000 per year for a household of one in 2015 — compared to gross income of 57.8 percent of the poverty line for the average SNAP household overall. Over 80 percent of the people subject to the three-month limit live in households with incomes below half of the poverty line (see Figure 3). Some 97 percent live in households below 100 percent of the poverty line.[15]

Over 40 percent of this vulnerable population are women. Close to one-third are over age 40. Among those who report their race, about half are white, a third are African American, and a tenth are Hispanic. Half have only a high school diploma or GED, and one-quarter have not completed high school. They live in all areas of the country; among those for whom data on metropolitan status are available, close to 40 percent live in urban areas, 40 percent in suburban areas, and over 20 percent in rural areas.


Why do the laws around subsistence welfare have to be so complicated?
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Post 03 Apr 2016, 9:04 pm

Ditto for disability laws.
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Post 04 Apr 2016, 3:56 am

Why do laws get complicated?

Because lawmakers and others keep thinking of ways that the simple law is unfair or work out a way to unfairly benefit through unclosed loopholes.

The desire to prevent all "fraud" adds more hurdles to jump for the "genuine", and more ways that they could fail.

Here in the UK there has been over the past 5-10 years a mandatory reassessment programme for many benefits that are for the disabled. That is ostensibly to cut down on people taking advantage and inflating the seriousness of their conditions.

However, there have been a lot of cases where the decisions to withdraw benefits appear to have been unfair - the assessors ignoring the statements from medical sources dealing with the person I'm favour of a one-size-fits all. People with variable conditions judged on what they can do on a "good day". People with permanent disabilities having to be reassessed even though they will never regain a lost limb or damaged organ. People with fatal conditions losing income and dying before their appeals are heard.
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Post 04 Apr 2016, 6:20 am

danivon
The desire to prevent all "fraud" adds more hurdles to jump for the "genuine", and more ways that they could fail.


The same people who seem hell bent on 100% compliance ....also seem to be the people who say that government should be run more like a business.
I know of no business that seeks 100% loss from theft if the cost of preventing the loss is greater than the actual loss.
For instance some retailers often accept that they will lose a small amount of merchandise from theft because when they have put in place means to 100% stop the theft sales per store went down significantly Apparently the stores became less welcoming to customers...

I think the same happens with a lot of welfare programs.... Here's an example:

The Florida chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union recently showed that drug testing actually cost the state money. The $30 spent per test ended up costing an aggregate of $45,000 more than the state saved in welfare payments.


http://www.governing.com/topics/health- ... money.html
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Post 04 Apr 2016, 8:54 am

And I guarantee you that any drug testing law involving welfare that gets passed will be struck down by the courts. Addiction is a federally-recognized disability.