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The analysts at the Economic Policy Institute have hit on something here, in their new analysis on proposals to impose work requirements on programs like Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance (SNAP, or food stamps):
We find that the tests proposed are excessively rigid and seem designed to maximize failure rather than to help working-class people succeed.
That is, in fact, the likely impetus behind these programs. Republicans don't want them to succeed. They don't want any of those underserving people (usually people of color) getting any assistance whatsoever, not when that funding could be either going to corporate welfare and forgone in tax cuts for the rich. That's what's behind the new Trump administration effort.
But to the actual effects of the proposals, as EPI analyzes them. Because these proposals "ignore labor-market realities (such as the high churn in the low-wage labor market)," EPI finds they "will not meaningfully increase the employment rate of these workers, and will harm millions of Americans, including millions of workers in low-paying and volatile occupations." First and foremost, because the majority of people participating in them are already working.
The proposals EPI reviewed were designed to be punitive rather than helpful—instead of "helping recipients conduct effective job services," the proposals put people through bureaucratic hoops and create barriers to people seeking stable, long-term jobs. They don't account for labor market churn and for the nature of jobs that many of the working poor in these programs hold. They have erratic hours, don't have family and sick leave, and are often subject to last-minute scheduling where they are essentially on-call any time they are not working. But the strict work requirements these tests impose demand they meet requirements every month and revoke them after just one month of failure.
These "heavy-handed and punitive work tests for SNAP and Medicaid will do little to nothing to boost the employment possibilities for low-wage workers," says EPI. What they will do is what the Trump administration and the states imposing them want them to do—drive people out of these programs.