How a food stamp fight could kill the farm bill

The Trump administration and House Republicans are pushing a crackdown on food stamps, but their effort to shrink a safety net program that boomed during the Obama era might come at a great cost — derailing a massive farm bill that’s heavily supported in Trump country. Talks between House Democrats and Republicans on the farm bill broke down two weeks ago over proposed changes to the nutrition program that Democrats say would cut off an estimated 1 million participants — a bad sign for the historically bipartisan legislation. The details of the SNAP proposal remain very much under wraps, but Democratic staff members told reporters Tuesday that the bill would impose stricter work requirements on about 3 million to 5 million of the 42 million Americans who rely on the program — a number that would mostly target able-bodied adults without children, as well as millions of school-age parents who are currently exempt in many states. There are already work requirements in place for SNAP, but the vast majority of recipients are exempt because they are children, elderly or disabled.Able-bodied adults without children or other dependents are already required to participate in a training program for 20 hours per week or to work to keep their SNAP benefits longer than three months over a three-year period. However, states largely exempted this population from those time limits during the Great Recession. The waivers have been slowly lapsing as the economy recovered. But about 36 percent of the U.S. population lives in an area where that rule is still waived, and the House bill is expected to rein in that flexibility.