NOTE: This document provides a range of proposals gleaned from written testimony to the House Agriculture Committee's Subcommitee on Department Operations, Nutrition, and Forestry in its June 27, 2001 hearing on the Food Stamp Program (as part of the formulation of the Farm Bill). (Some testimony was not available for download.)

Rep. Tony P. Hall, Ohio

1. Pass HR 2142, Nutrition Assistance for Working Families and Seniors Act in order to a) restore Food Stamp eligibility for needy legal immigrants, b) increase benefit allotments for families with children, c) raise minimum Food Stamp benefit to $25, d) treat child support income favorably, e) expand state option for transitional Food Stamp assistance, f) improve Food Stamp access, and g) bolster the TEFAP program.

1. Explore changes to make the Food Stamp program work better for working families, facilitating their access to the benefits they need while minimizing burdens for State agencies.
2. Simplify programs rules so as to reduce burdens on applicants and participatns, and to reduce administrative complexity for local administrators.
3. Ensure that food stamps are available to provide a steady base that serves the basic nutrition needs of low-income households wherever they live. Preserve the program's national structure, at the same time as states are allowed administrative flexibility.
4. Improve accountability; continue the fight against error, fraud, and abuse.

1. Continue the statutory requirement that all states must issue Food Stamp benefits using an Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) system.

1. Permit states to apply a different quality control program to workers than to the disabled and elderly populations. The Food Stamp statutes should set a minimal set of conditions that states must meet to establish a separate program form workers and the Food and Nutrition Service should have little discretion in granting the separate program.
2. Give states the option, in the separate system, to grant families leaving welfare for work with a Food Stamp benefit that is based on their starting salary and is fixed for at least six months. Income verification should thereafter be set at intervals of six-months, although recipients would have the right to apply for benefit recalculation at any time. Allow states to develop their own methods of obtaining earnings information.
3. Give states substantially more flexibility in determining the value of an automobile a family can have and still qualify for Food Stamps.
4. Pursue ways to ensure that states are fully informing low-income families (i.e., through outreach), especially those leaving welfare, of their right to continue receiving Food Stamps as long as they are income-eligibile.

1. Require all able-bodied, non-elderly adults to work as a condition of receiving food stamps. Those who cannot find work in the private sector should perform community service work or workfare or some other activities directed at self-sufficiency.
2. Continue to require all able-bodied, non-elderly adults without dependents (ABAWDS) to work as a condition of receiving food stamps, plus a) expand coverage by this requirement to ages 18-60 [currently coverage is 18-50], b) eliminate the work exemption for the first three months on the rolls, c) eliminate the state option to exempt 15 percent of the ABAWDS group from work, and d) eliminate the state option to suspend the work requirement in areas of high unemployment.
3. Unless the parent(s) in a household are employed for more than 30 hours per week, require parents of children over age three on Food Stamps to engage in workfare and give states the option to extend the requirement to parents with children under age three. In two parent families, require only one parent to work for the family's benefits.
4. Require individuals to engage in workfare continuously from the point of first enrollment, calculating the number of hours an individual is required to engage in workfare on the value of Food Stamps received divided by the minimum wage. Allow supervised job search or on-the-job training as an alternative.
5. Terminate the Food Stamp grant to the household if individuals have been given the opportunity to engage in required activities and failed to participate. Restore the grant as soon as individuals complete the required activities.
6. Permit states to retain one-third of the savings which would result from the implementaiton of the above work requirements and to use the savings to operate workfare programs or for other anti-poverty efforts designed by the state.

1. Pass H.R. 2142 and its companion bill, S. 583 to a) restore benefits to legal immigrants, b) improve the adequacy of food stamp benefits, c) ease the transition from welfare to work, and d) create pilot projects designed to improve access to the food stamp program.
2. Modify the three-month time limit on childless unemployed adults, e.g., by extending eligibility to six months and expanding the definition of an allowable work activity to include rigorous job search and job search training.
3. Increase and reindex the standard deduction.
4. Scale the standard deduction to household size.
5. Modify and simplify asset rules so that they support working families.
6. Improve and facilitate application for food stamp benefits to the poor elderly and disabled.
7. Ensure that primarily elderly and disabled food stamp recipients do not lose their benefits or think they have lost eligibility in EBT systems that take benefits off-line after three months.
8. Ease access barriers and facilitate the combined delivery of food stamps with other important work supports such as Medicaid and child care.
9. Overhaul the food stamp performance measurement system to a) avoid pressure that drives states to institute error reduction mechanisms that penalize, discourage, or make ineligible working families, b) reward states for strong customer service, such as providing benefits in a timely fashion, limiting the number of improper denials, and increasing the number of working households served by the food stamp program.
10. Simplify laws and rules, particularly regarding income, that overly complicate or deter participation by working families.
11. Simplify the deduction structure, but without working a negative impact on those who benefit from the deductions (testimony provides specific examples).
12. Align Medicaid and food stamps by a) using common definitions of gross income, b) providing that the Food Stamp program adopts Medicaid redetermination rules in lieu of food stamp recertification rules, and c) test allowing states to apply Medicaid or SCHIP verification procedures in determining food stamp eligibility for families seeking both benefits.
13. Test ways to facilitate enrollment outside of the welfare office, e.g., through a) co-location of food stamp eligibility workers with outstationed Medicaid and SCHIP eligibility workers at hospitals, clinics, and other health care providers serving large numbers of low-income people and b) allowing households that wish to to apply for food stamps over the Internet and be interviewed by telephone, rather than requiring all applicants to visit the welfare office.
14. Do not block grant the Food Stamp program (testimony provides extensive discussion).

1. Require fewer face-to-face recertification interviews, especially for working parents.
2. Modify vehicle limitations to enable working parents to have reliable transportation.

1. Increase Food Stamp program authorization levels, recipient benefits, and outreach efforts to ensure nutritional adequacy for all of the nation's vulnerable poor.
2. Increase flexibility in the implementation of electronic benefit transfer systems to accommodate the special circumstances of benefiiciaries who are elderly, have disabilities, or live in rural or inner-city areas that are served by participating institutions.
3. Revise the Thrifty Food Plan to account more accurately for the actual food costs of low-income households.
4. Increase the minimum Food Stamp benefit and restore indexing of the minimum benefit to inflation.

1. Simplify Food Stamp eligibility by a) basing the allotment calucation on a gross income test, and b) replacing current deductions with a single, standardized deduction that recognizes areas with high living costs.
2. Simplify application processing, change reporting, and recertification.
3. Enhance benefits and program access for senior and disabled individuals. Make eligibility for those populations automatic, with their food stamp eligibility being determined at the Social Security office without an additional application process.
4. Increase the minimum allotment to at least $25 for one- and two-person households, with automatic adjustments for inflation.
5. Provide transitional food stamp benefits for six months at the level authorized prior to cash assistance closure under most circumstances.
6. Exempt one vehicle and simplify asset tests. Limits should be higher and there should be additional resource exlcusions.
7. Enhance employment and training programs and encourage work. Specifically, provide sufficient employment and training funding to serve all those subject to work requirements. Give states the option to implement alignments that support working families through training and earnings progression in private sector jobs, and that eliminate unnecessary and repetitive recertification requirements. Eliminate setasides restricting expenditures of employment and training funding to ABAWDS.
8. Restore eligibility for legal noncitizens.
9. Create a new outcome-based measurement system to replace the current quality control system. The system should measure recipient advancement and provide incentive payments to states with the best performance records. Outcomes could include increased family income and increased attachment to the work force, increased numbers of former TANF recipients who remain on food stamps, and increased numbers of the elderly and disabled receiving benefits.
10. Enhance program flexibility by expanding waiver authority and implementing ease of approval.
11. Increase the 50-50 administrative match to help states--now having higher and more costly responsibilities--to administer Electronic Benefit Transfer systems.
12. Simplify household composition rules
13. Simplify benefits for person in group-living arrangements.
14. Restore the historic 50 percent match rate for normal administrative expenditures.

1. Destigmatize use of the Food Stamp Program, for example by characterizing it as "food security" or a "work support" to increase participation of needy household, including working families.
2. Streamline the eligibility and benefit determination process to reduce the administrative complexity that acts as a barrier to participation and increases the potential of payment errors.
3. Increase flexibility so that states can tailor a food security program to the needs of their low-income families.
4. Expand federal waiver authority and encourage states to develop innovative approaches to administering the Food Stamp Program. Evaluate waivers on the basis of what works, and if an idea works, allow all states to take advantage without a lengthy, tedious approval process.
5. Allow conformity with other programs to streamline adminstration and help families, particularly those who are working.
6. Modify quality control processes to ensure that they do not deter families with the greatest need and to include outcome measures that indicate the effectiveness of the program in serving low-income families.
7. Ensure that food stamp benefits are a major part of transitional services that assist families who leave cash aid due to employment by a) raising the minimum benefit levels for working families and b) instituting an automatic transitional period of eligibility, e.g., three to six months.
8. Modify the earned income deduction or allow states to design earned income deductions to recongize and promote an increase in earnings.
9. Restore Food Stamp Program eligibility for all legal noncitizens.

1. Simplify eligibility and benefit determination requirements. For example, institute a process that uses household composition and income as the detrermining factors, allowing only an earned income disregard versus the multiple factors that now exist.
2. Directly certify food stamps for SSI recipients in eligible living situations.
3. Establish a $5,000 asset limit for all households.
4. Exempt one vehicle for each person who is working or expected to work, and for households with no one working or expected to work (senior/disabled), exempt one vehicle. Count all others at equity value.
5. Allow states to define included and excluded assets to match their TANF cash assistance or Medicaid rules.
6. Creat a six-month transitional food stamp benefit for working familes.
7. Simplify eligibility and benefit determination requirements.
8. Move to an eligibility review concept as used in TANF and Medicaid rather than a fixed certification period.
9. Continue and expand recent options regarding the types of changes in circumstances that households must report.
10. Require the Food and Nutrition Service to do a comprehensive review of the regulations and give state flexibility a higher priority, especially in process regualtions such as application, verification, and recertification. States need flexibility to mesh processes across programs.
11. Allow for and direct FNS to approve innovative state waivers to test new reporting and processing options.
12. Provide states the option to integrate the food stamp employment and training requirements with TANF and WIA.
13. Eliminate or significantly alter the requirement to devote 80 percent of employment and training funding to able-bodied adults without dependents.
14. Eliminate the $25 monthly maximum for federal matching of employment and training expenses.
15. Reimburse states for 100 percent of the Electronic Benefit Transfer costs they have assumed that were not part of the old paper system.
16. Adjust responsibilities so that USDA reassumes some that have been shifted to state agencies, such as supplying equipment needed to redeem the electronic food stamp.
17. Move to an incentive system of outcome measures for the Food Stamp program, within which a dramatically revised payment accuracy measurement will only be one factor.
18. For all measurements of the state's error rate, use the lower bound of the confidence-interval rather than the point estimator.
19. Simplify the complex requirements for determining eligibility and calculating benefits.

1. Amend Food Stamp Program statute as recommended by the American Public Human Services Association (APHSA).

1. Simplify eligibility by using a single deduction.
2. Simply reporting for working families by modifying the change-reporting requirements.
3. Improve access to the Food Stamp program for the elderly and disabled by a) increasing the minimum benefit for the elderly and b) implementing a standard medical deduction to ease the application process for elderly applicants.
4. Adjust vehicle exemptions to allow working families and individuals to have reliable transportation.
5. Provide more flexibility in the adminsitration of the Food Stamp Employment and Training program.
6. Refocus accountability mechanisms to focus on a) a credible measure of payment accuracy, b) a sound theoretical and research basis for standard, c) a system of accountability for things under the states' control, and d) measurements related to program purpose.
7. Allow states to collect on all benefit overpayments, regardless of how the overpayment occurred.
8. Allow states to retain a more generous portion of sanctions in fraud cases.