Trump planning to take food away from low income Americans

Guardian -The Trump administration is setting out to do what this year’s farm bill did not: tighten work requirements for millions of Americans who receive federal food assistance.

The agriculture department on Thursday proposed a rule that would restrict the ability of states to exempt work-eligible adults from having to obtain steady employment to receive food stamps.

The move comes just weeks after lawmakers passed a $400bn farm bill that reauthorized agriculture and conservation programs while leaving the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as Snap or food stamps, which serves roughly 40 million Americans, virtually untouched.

Currently, able-bodied adults aged 18-49 without children are required to work 20 hours a week to maintain their Snap benefits. The House bill would have raised the age of recipients subject to work requirements from 49 to 59 and required parents with children older than six to work or participate in job training. The House measure also sought to limit circumstances under which families that qualify for other poverty programs can automatically be eligible for Snap.

None of those measures made it into the final farm bill despite being endorsed by Donald Trump. Now the administration is using regulatory rule-making to try to scale back the Snap program.

Slate - Democrats have said that the administration was overstepping its executive power, particularly as Congress had already eliminated a similar provision in the farm bill set to be signed Thursday. Just as the administration has been chastised in recent court rulings for its attempts to unilaterally rewrite immigration law through executive power, critics have taken issue with the administration’s efforts to impose work requirements in government assistance programs without going through Congress. In January, the administration announced it would allow states to impose work requirements for Medicaid, causing Democrats to argue that it was going against congressional intent—a complaint a federal judge later found valid, concluding that the work requirement plans contradicted the objectives of the Medicaid program. The administration has continued to pursue the effort.