Trump administration finalizes plan to kick more than 750,000 people off food stamps

The Trump administration will reportedly move forward with a plan to cut hundreds of thousands of Americans off of food stamps.

According to HuffPost, the Department of Agriculture is set to finalize a “work requirement” rule change that will eliminate states’ flexibility to waive the three-month limit for beneficiaries of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly known as food stamps.

About 7% of the recipients — those who aren’t elderly, disabled, or parents — will be kicked off the program. About 755,000 Americans will simply no longer receive benefits.

This move is one of several big Trump administration pushes to take food benefits from 3 million low-income Americans, as part of an effort to “save money,” according to Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue. The $2.5 billion in savings these efforts could achieve is a fraction of the more than $1 trillion in tax cuts the administration pushed through in 2017 that mostly benefited the very wealthy.

Trump resorted to an administrative approach after Congress did not embrace his legislative proposals to kick a million people off of food stamps through the Farm Bill.

The move will likely hurt many of the very people who elected him. A CNN report in 2017 found that “of the top 10 places with the largest percentage of residents who use SNAP, seven voted for Trump in the 2016 elections.”

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.