5/7/23, 2:08 PM What Republican Work Requirements in Debt Ceiling Bill Do | Time

What Republican Work Requirements in the Debt

Ceiling Bill Would Do

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) speaks during a news conference with House Republicans outside the
U.S. Capitol on March 11, 2021 in Washington, DC. Drew Angerer—Getty Images

BY NIK POPLI
MAY 1, 2023 6:32 PM EDT

H ouse Republicans passed a debt ceiling bill last week with a provision to
enact new work requirements for those seeking federal assistance,
claiming the measure would help cut federal spending.

Although the bill is unlikely to become law, it would require millions of low-
income Americans who receive food stamps and health insurance from the

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federal government to work longer hours in order to qualify for benefits. The
proposed provision is among several demands Republicans are making in
exchange for raising the nation’s borrowing limit for about one year.

House Republicans say that the work requirements would reduce government
spending and increase employment, but some economists are skeptical that
they will result in significant savings for the federal government. “It’s going to
cost a ton of money to implement these work requirements,” says Lily Roberts,
acting vice president for inclusive economy at the Center for American
Progress, a left-leaning policy institute. “They are going to have to hire
hundreds of bureaucrats to manage the process of documenting all of those
work requirements now.”

Republicans have not budged in their refusal to raise the debt limit
unconditionally. Pressure is mounting on President Joe Biden and lawmakers to
reach an agreement to raise or suspend the debt limit, with the Treasury
Department warning on Monday that the U.S. could run out of money to pay its
bills as early as June 1, a few weeks earlier than expected. Soon after the
Treasury’s announcement, the President extended an offer to meet House
Speaker Kevin McCarthy, reversing his previous stance to not negotiate with
Republicans.

Read More: Previous Debt Ceiling Fights Offer Clues to How This One Will End

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), a nonpartisan agency, said last week
that the stricter work requirements proposed by the House GOP would reduce
federal spending by $120 billion over the next decade, a small portion of the
roughly $4.8 trillion in savings the bill would generate. About 600,000
Americans would lose health insurance, while about 275,000 Americans a
month would lose access to food stamps, the CBO said.

Under the GOP package, childless, able-bodied adults ages 18 to 55 could get
food stamps for only three months out of every three years unless they are
employed at least 20 hours a week or meet other criteria. Currently, that
mandate applies to those ages 18 to 49, though it has been suspended during
the COVID-19 public health emergency.

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The Republican debt ceiling package would also require certain adult Medicaid
recipients to work, perform community service, or participate in an
employment program for at least 80 hours per month or earn a certain
minimum monthly income. It would apply to those ages 19 to 55, but not those
who are pregnant, parents of dependent children, those who are physically or
mentally unfit for employment or enrolled in education or in substance abuse
programs, among other exceptions.

For many Americans, the new work requirements “could make the situation
worse,” says Claudia Sahm, an economist and senior fellow at the Jain Family
Institute. “The people who would lose their benefits because of a work
requirement are some of the most vulnerable adults,” she says. “It’s often
homeless people who weren’t working before, or people who’ve faced serious
barriers to work that are the ones that will lose their benefits.”

Rep. Matt Gaetz, a member of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, is one of
the lawmakers who called publicly for tougher, longer work requirements for
the recipients of food stamps and Medicaid. “I don’t think hard-working
Americans should be paying for all the social services for people who could
make a broader contribution and instead are couch potatoes,” he said at a news
conference last month.

Despite these claims, economists warn that the government can incur
additional costs when low-income people lose access to federal benefits,
particularly access to health care. “If folks lose Medicaid, it becomes an issue of
uncompensated care,” Roberts says. “The government will pick up those costs
often in another way.”

Economists who oppose the work requirements often point to past examples as
evidence that work requirements for welfare are ineffective. When Arkansas
introduced a work requirement for Medicaid in 2018, about 18,000 people—
nearly a quarter of those subject to the mandate—lost coverage over about 10
months before it was struck down in court. Some beneficiaries who had jobs
were dropped because they were unaware of the requirement or were not able
to report their hours to the state agency.

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Still, a handful of GOP-led states have been quietly advancing their own work
requirements. Kansas lawmakers on Thursday voted largely along party lines to
override Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of a bill that puts new limits on
state residents enrolled in the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance
Program, commonly known as SNAP. The new law, set to take effect in July,
tightens work requirements for older Kansans to keep or qualify for SNAP
benefits, extending the age limit of those legally considered to be able-bodied
adults without dependents from 18-49 to 18-59. As a result, most food
assistance recipients ages 50-59 will soon need to work at least 30 hours per
week or attend mandatory job training to qualify.

Even if work requirements for federal aid do not make it in the final debt limit
bill, Republicans are likely to keep pushing the issue, says Matt Weidinger, a
senior fellow at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute. “I have no
doubt this will come up again in future debt limit bills or reauthorization bills,”
he says. “The federal government is going to be searching for ways to come up
with policies that cut the costs of some of these programs.”

WRITE TO NIK POPLI AT NIK.POPLI@TIME.COM.

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