More than 2 million low-income individuals in Illinois rely on the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)
for food aid, but the program could face a big setback under U.S. House
Budget Committee Chairman U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R, WI-1) proposed budget released last week.
Ryan’s plan aims to block grant the flexible SNAP program, which has about 47 million participants.
Under
the plan, the federal government would give pots of cash to states to
run the program, leaving them to customize it to their recipients’ needs
and determine eligibility requirements.
“Like Medicaid,
SNAP suffers from a flawed structure,” the budget plan says. “States
receive more money if they enroll more people in the program — so their
incentive is to get people onto the rolls. They have little incentive to
help people get off the rolls and find work. In fact, these programs
make it harder to become independent.”
That’s not the right approach, said Beverly Henry, associate professor of nutrition and dietetics at Northern Illinois University’s College of Health and Human Sciences.
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As lawmakers continue to make little progress in their negotiations
over the federal budget, local senior rights advocates warn that
proposed cuts in spending to the country’s social safety net would
negatively affect many of the state’s elderly and most vulnerable
residents.