They That Do Not Work Will Not Receive Food Stamps

Years since the Great Recession was declared over, states are finally beginning to amend their food stamp programs. This year, 21 states reapplied the requirement that any food stamp recipient who isn’t caring for children or disabled must find a job and work 20 hours a week. It’s estimated that up to one million people will leave the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The rule stipulating Americans on food stamps must also work was dropped when the Great Recession hit and millions of Americans turned to the program. But now, with month after month of slow but steady job growth, it’s certainly time to reinstitute the rule.

When states such as Maine reinstituted the requirement, thousands of people dropped the assistance, saving the state money for the recipients who truly needed the aid. Currently, the job market is returning to normal (or at least the new underperforming normal), but one of the last holdouts of high unemployment is the long-term unemployed. At the beginning of 2016, more than 46 million Americans took SNAP, the same number of people on food stamps back inSeptember 2011. Leftists have a history of making people reliant on the government dole. The Obama administration dramatically increased the food stamp program. Now that fiscal conservatives want to scale back the growth of that program, the Left clamors with cries that the move is somehow immoral and heartless. But the whole point of the program is to get Americans back on their feet. Encouraging them to depend on the government is wrong.