This year’s House Bill 1 is supposed to be legislation to “improve” our state’s help for the poor. Even though it has some good measures, overall it is misguided in the solutions it proposes, and in fact includes some provisions that are an outright attack on the poor. These are all in the name of “preventing fraud,” which certainly appears to be an election-year red herring, since the state’s own data shows a fraud rate of about 1%.
Here’s a bullet list of SOME of what is wrong with this bill.
- No cash for you. The bill prevents anyone on an assistance program from using an ATM to get cash out. That may sound great, until you realize that cash assistance is part of some programs, and many of these people are unbanked. Not being able to get their cash assistance when they need it is a real problem. Example: Your child just told you they need cash for a field trip. Where can you get that at 7 in the morning?
- Tries to monitor people buying energy drinks or sodas with their food stamps. Again, limiting the intake of sugary drinks SOUNDS good – until you realize what this means. The foods that qualify for food stamps are already known and built into the system, and are allowed or blocked at the point of sale. With this new plan, EVERY PURCHASE of EVERY ITEM will have to be sent to the state, the state will have to build a system to record and count those purchases, and then build software back to the stores to block a sale. You want to hazard a guess both as to how much that will cost and how well it will work? And oh by the way, the stores will have to adopt new software as well. (We thought Republicans didn’t like expanded government.)
- Lifetime bans for some violations of the rules. Did you catch that? We’re talking LIFETIME bans on ALL forms of assistance for ONE violation of ONE rule. So let’s suppose you are a 21-year-old on food stamps, and you have to make rent. You’ve got money on your food stamp card, but what good does that do you? So, you sell the card to get the cash for the rent. Is that illegal? Sure. But while there are certain punishments for that today, in this new bill that 21-year-old would be banned FOR LIFE from any form of assistance – including Medicaid, even when they are a senior adult. Can you say “draconian”?
- Adds work requirements (again) that have already been struck down in court. Once again, the sponsors of this bill think that if they just require people to work, those lazy-ass people will finally get a job. Well, guess what – pretty much all the people who would be subject to these work requirements are either already working (in a job that doesn’t pay enough to live on, thanks to our unwillingness to raise the minimum wage), or cannot find a job of any kind where they live. No matter – this bill assumes that everyone could have a great-paying job if they just tried hard enough.
- Makes healthcare even MORE expensive for some of the people it is trying to help. There’s a “benefits cliff” for people who earn just a little too much for Medicaid. This bill has some provisions to address that, but one bad thing is it makes people ineligible for cost-sharing provision on the ACA Exchange, thus taking their out-of-pocket costs from about 6-13% to about 30%. Not good!
- And, some of the requirements in the bill violate federal guidelines or have been struck down in court.
- Limiting SNAP benefits on certain kinds of food beyond current restrictions
- Cutting off recipients from withdrawing cash
- Bans for people with drug-related felony conviction
- Denying people coverage in one program because they have violated a rule in another
And guess what – this isn’t the entire list of bad ideas and poor implementation in this bill. Want to really dig into the details? Check out the resources at the end of this article.
Let’s be fair – there are SOME things in the bill that are helpful, and there are SOME things in the bill that can be fixed, if the sponsors are willing to listen. Numerous groups are talking to legislators, respectfully pointing out issues with the bill and suggesting solutions.
But if passed as is — or even if changed a little then passed — HB 1 will NOT be “public assistance reform.” It will be both an attack on “those people,” and a red-meat bill for election season.
–30–
Resources