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Heritage
Foundation
The
Sneaky Way Three States Are Getting Around a New Food Stamp Reform
Rachel
Sheffield
March
7, 2014
Three
states are trying to get around a new minor reform Congress made to
the food stamp program.
In
the farm bill it passed earlier this month, Congress tightened a
loophole dubbed “Heat and Eat” that has made it possible for
states to artificially boost the amount of food stamp benefits a
household receives.
Here’s
how it works: Some food stamp households that receive Low-Income Home
Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) benefits are automatically
eligible for higher deductions on their utility bills. A higher
deduction means eligibility for more food stamps. So some states had
simply been mailing out LIHEAP checks for amounts as small as $1 to
trigger the higher food stamp benefits.
Even
liberal politicians, media outlets, and analysts agreed this loophole
was problematic. Congress tightened this loophole in the farm
bill—but didn’t close it—by requiring that a household receive
$20 or more in LIHEAP to be eligible for the larger utility deduction
and subsequently higher food stamp benefits.
But
now some state leaders are continuing to perpetuate—and even
celebrate—this loophole. For example, New York Governor Andrew
Cuomo (D) announced earlier this week that the state would fork out
$6 million in state LIHEAP benefits to 300,000 households so they
could continue to draw the hundreds of millions of federal food stamp
dollars through the loophole. Connecticut and Pennsylvania are
following suit.
Because
95 percent of food stamp funding is federal, states are not
accountable for most of the cost and thus have no problem with
spending more on food stamps. In fact, most of the welfare spending
on the government’s roughly 80 means-tested welfare programs is
federal. States have paid an increasingly smaller amount of welfare
over the decades.
The
LIHEAP loophole is just one problem with food stamps, but the program
is in need of much greater reform. Congress failed to take the
opportunity during the farm bill debate to reform food stamps. Even
the small step they took appears to be failing. Food stamps is in
major need of reform and Congress shouldn’t wait until the next
farm bill debate to get this program back on track.
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