Under the supposed "moderate" and "Christian" leadership of Republican Gov. John Kasich, Ohio is applying food assistance work requirements that are flat-out racist. It’s a policy that could extend to Ohio's Medicaid expansion population as well, if the state has its way.
Federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) rules require that people who are able-bodied and don't have dependents have to show that they've performed 80 hours of work a month to keep the benefit. But states have the ability to waive that requirement in areas that have unemployment rates higher than 120 percent of the national average over a recent 24-month period. But the way that Ohio has decided to apply those waivers means that low-income people in 26 of Ohio's counties are not required to work to receive food stamps. Those counties are 97 percent white.
Low-income people in all the other counties have to jump through the work requirement hoops to get assistance. Guess where 95 percent of African-Americans in Ohio live? Yep, outside of those 26 counties. In fact, the unemployment rate in Ohio's eight largest cities meets that waiver criteria, at about 12 percent. And seven of those cities have rates higher than almost every one of the 26 counties where work requirements for food stamps are waived.
The upshot is that rural, white Ohio is exempt from the work requirements. Urban people of color in Ohio are not. The takeaway from this study: "the exemption from work requirements is not reaching counties where African-American families are more likely to experience poverty." This matters not just for food assistance, but potentially for Medicaid as well, because the state's application for a waiver to implement work requirements for Medicaid would exempt the same 26 counties.
This is after current Republican Gov. John Kasich made a big deal about how his Christian values led him to be one of very few Republican governors to take Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act. Apparently his Christian charity isn't color blind.
It's time for that to change. Richard Cordray is the person to make it happen.
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