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Gov. Corbett backtracks on food stamp crackdown amidst outcry
Gov. Tom Corbett's administration today announced that he will limit the proposed exclusion of people from Pennsylvania's food stamp program after weathering harsh criticism.
Gov. Corbett backtracks on food stamp crackdown amidst outcry
Gov. Tom Corbett's administration today announced that he will limit the proposed exclusion of people from Pennsylvania's food stamp program after weathering harsh criticism from anti-hunger advocates, business owners, and local and federal officials.
Under new rules, people with assets in excess of $5,500 (and $9,000 for the disabled and elderly) will be excluded from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)―up from the initial proposed asset limit of $2,000 ($3,250 for the elderly). This excludes homes and first cars, but includes most savings.
While fewer recipients will be kicked off food stamps under the new proposal, advocates still question why the Corbett administration is spending the manpower to review nearly one million cases at a time when they have severely cut funding to the Department of Public Welfare (DPW)―and when its caseload has increased by more than 40 percent thanks to the recession.
“We suspect DPW would end up disqualifying a very small number of people at great cost to the state. Those costs entail reviewing bank statements for 880,000 families, plus putting a value on second cars and life insurance policies (needed to pay for burial or a funeral),” says Louise Hayes, an attorney with Community Legal Services. “DPW already lacks the staff to administer the SNAP program effectively. This additional workload will make things dramatically worse, resulting in eligible seniors and families losing their benefits due to welfare office snafus.”
What's most puzzling is this: the federal government pays for the overwhelming majority of Pennsylvania's food stamp program.
“It's still a bad idea,” says Mark McDonald, a spokesman for Mayor Michael Nutter. “Asset testing isn't going to save the Commonwealth any money. In short, you can't put lipstick on a pig.”
Corbett's conservative supporters have cheered the asset test as an important tool in the fight against welfare fraud ― a problem that City Paper has discovered they greatly exaggerate. Indeed, the issue has more to do with ideology and religious dogma then with any fiscal sensibility: senior DPW adviser Robert Patterson resigned his post last month after the Inquirer revealed that he edited a Christian fundamentalist journal in which he argued that welfare and contraception were the primary causes of poverty ― oh, that and the fact that women weren't ingesting enough semen.
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