Work Requirements—not Work Opportunities—in the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”
Work requirements are back in the news with the recent passage of the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”, which we refer to as H.R. 1. On the face of it, it may seem logical to require individuals who receive government-funded support, such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) or Medicaid, to demonstrate ‘responsibility’ through compulsory work or training placements. The idea being that the wage derived from work is, “the best form of welfare”. But the underlying reason behind work requirements for those in receipt of TANF, SNAP or Medicaid is actually much more complex.
Work requirements have emerged under a variety of labels: workfare, welfare-to-work, labor market activation and flexicurity which are considered supply-side labor market policies. No matter the moniker, modern workfare or welfare-to-work was designed to adapt labor to a changing labor market—one that increasingly required a source of cheap and flexibly motivated workers to provide ever increasing goods and services at lower labor costs to the employer. An example of this is the roll-out of the then new TANF program in New York City in the late 1990s and early 2000s under Mayor Giuliani’s administration. New York City used TANF beneficiaries, who were mostly African Americans, to perform cheap, non-union public sector work, like cleaning parks and subways, as their work requirement. In return the TANF beneficiaries received the cash benefit but not an hourly wage, employer-based benefits or the union membership of the public sector workforce who would normally perform this work. For Mayor Giuliani, having TANF beneficiaries perform public sector jobs as part of their work requirement for TANF meant that the City did not have to pay for their wage, which at that time, was a convenient way to save money during the early 2000’s budget crisis.
To justify work requirements for cash or in-kind benefits, however, the public-facing reasoning has been premised on a set of assumptions, racist in origin and nature, that benefit recipients are lazy and do not want to work. Public policy, the idea goes, needs to force beneficiaries of TANF, SNAP or Medicaid into work—any kind of work so long as the person is able-bodied. This goes as far back to the Mother’s Pension in the United States in the early 1900s. African American were excluded from the cash benefit made to widows with young children, unlike white women, under the premise the providing a cash benefit would deter African American women from work.
The Mother’s Pension was the precursor to the federal Aid to Dependent Children (ADC) program created by the Social Security Act of 1935. ADC was later modified and renamed Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and in 1997 replaced by Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). In each of these programs, assistance was withheld from African Americans as a way to force them into the labor market. For example, states enacted “farm policies” under the ADC to force African American families, but not white families, into the fields at harvest time.
By the 1960s influential reports were published, among them former New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moniyan’s The Negro Family: The Case For National Action, that argued government benefits were the source of African American single-motherhood and African American unemployment because such benefits fostered welfare dependency. For Moniyan, the only way to reverse what he perceived as a perverse disincentive was to imbed federal work incentives into Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFCD). By 1967 Congress established the first national work requirement (heretofore relegated to the states) requiring states to refer “appropriate” (i.e., African American) families participating in AFDC for work and training programs. By 1996 with the creation of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, all parents with children had to demonstrate they were searching for work or participating in a training in order to receive their cash assistance. If they did not, they lost a percentage of their cash benefits.
Today, applying these same justifications as outlined above, H.R. 1 mandates work requirements for low-income Americans to qualify for Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). By 2018, the first Trump Administration allowed states to request waivers to implement work requirements for those in receipt of Medicaid. Now, Medicaid beneficiaries, ages 19 to 64, will need to work or serve a minimum of 80 hours per month, approximately 20 hours per week, in any of the following capacities: workplace employment, community service, educational training, or workplace programs. Exemptions are made for pregnant women, parents or caregivers of a dependent child, and individuals with certain disabilities. SNAP, prior to the H.R.1, already required employment as a precondition for 15- to 60-year-olds to receive food assistance, with variation across the states. H.R. 1 moves the age range for SNAP’s work requirements upwards to 17- to 65-year-olds. Exemptions are made for parents or caregivers of a dependent child under the age of 7. H.R. 1 makes no changes to Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), which is the other primary social assistance program for low-income Americans and their families.
Research shows that work requirements tend to negatively impact beneficiaries’ well-being. This is not because they require “lazy” people to work, but rather because they often pose burdensome requirements to beneficiaries who are already working. Most low-income beneficiaries of social assistance already work: studies show over 80% of SNAP beneficiaries had part-time employment before they enrolled in the program. Beneficiaries are not unemployed on the whole, they are underemployed. When Arkansas experimented with work requirements for Medicaid in 2018, studies found that over 18,000 low-income Americans lost healthcare coverage over an 18-month period because they could not find stable enough work to meet the requirements, could not report their hours appropriately, or could not navigate government bureaucracy. Of these 18,000 people who lost Medicaid coverage, 56% delayed medical care, 64% delayed medicine due to costs, and 50% had problems paying medical debt. In other words, people lost healthcare because of unpredictable employment hours and dysfunctional government administration, not because they were not working. More generally, studies on TANF have consistently found that work requirements create additional mental-health hardships for low-income beneficiaries.
Low-income Americans will be especially impacted by the work requirements in H.R.1, but it will impact other Americans too. Firstly, H.R.1 adds to the growing divide in the United States between blue and red states in terms of the generosity of social protection and the quality of social services. 80 hours of work a month is a minimum requirement by the Federal government, not a cap, which means that states have discretion to require more hours. States also have some discretion over the various activities that could count as community service, which could take a narrow or wider definition. Historically, red states have erected higher and tougher barriers for people to access social assistance programs when the Federal government has granted states discretion. Where Americans live in the U.S. increasingly matters for the type, quality and generosity of social protections they can access. Secondly, H.R.1 burdens local governments by adding new workloads to process all of the newly required reporting and exemptions for Medicaid from beneficiaries. Local governments are already experiencing strain due to the withdrawn support from the Federal government. Low-income Americans are at risk of having crucial documents and reports being misplaced, delayed, and unprocessed, and losing healthcare to no fault of their own. Thirdly, H.R.1 will jeopardize the well-being of elderly Americans by tying their food security to these work requirements. If low-income elderly Americans do not have their 80 hours of work a month correctly processed by local governments, they will not qualify and will be denied food assistance in SNAP. Starting in 2027 with H.R.1, Americans can expect wider disparities across the states in social protection, people to lose healthcare coverage due to government errors, and for the elderly and children to be more food insecure.
Under Arkansas waiver program, when asked in September 2018 why—at that time—4,000 people had lost their health insurance as a result of Arkansas’ then new Medicaid work requirement, then Governor Asa Hutchinson’s response is illustrative of how pervasive stereotypes rooted in one’s behavior are at justifying work requirements. He said “some people simply don’t want to be part of the workforce. They’re able-bodied, but they…don’t desire to [work].” The evidence base shows us that is not the case. Indeed, if anything, it is the structure of the labor market as opposed to the behavior of individuals that is a barrier to finding permanent, well-paid jobs.
Research support provided by Tess O'Donoghue
Photo Credit: vicky_81
