Last month, Gov. Pat McCrory reversed eight years of state policy regarding Simplified Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, also known as food stamps. Able-bodied, childless adults under age 50 will soon be required to work or train for work at least 20 hours a week in order to continue receiving assistance. This change in policy came as an attachment to the infamous HB 318 (as if the original content of HB 318 wasn’t bad enough) and it will go into effect Jan. 1 in the 23 most urban counties, including Wake. This will potentially affect hundreds of thousands of the state’s 1.6 million SNAP recipients. The other 77 North Carolina counties will see this law go into effect July 1.
All of these SNAP recipients are just the latest casualties in our state legislature’s exhaustive war on the working poor. Other casualties include working women who make only about 82 cents on a man’s dollar in the same job. This is thanks to the defeat of the Paycheck Fairness Act, which was blocked by then-Speaker Thom Tillis. Immigrants will also now have a much harder time legally finding work under HB 318 as well as those too poor to afford insurance and are covered under the Medicaid system, which was recently privatized, and those struggling with mental health issues since $110 million was slashed from mental healthcare agencies last September. Let’s not forget the state’s 1 million minimum wage workers, whose hourly pay has stagnated for six years; and those who fall on hard times and must go on Unemployment Insurance, since the limit for this is a terribly short 12 weeks, the shortest in the country.
Another policy from our General Assembly worth honorable mention for its devastating effect on middle and lower class workers is the 5.75 percent flat income tax, which heavily favors the wealthy. This rate is a substantial fee for those living paycheck to paycheck, yet 5.75 percent is nearly nothing when you’re earning millions; what’s more, the wealthy in general tend to have diversified income, usually in the form of capital gains and investments, which are taxed at a much lower effective rate.
Supporters of cuts to programs like SNAP, UI and Medicaid for the unemployed believe that it will inspire them to pull themselves up by the bootstraps and go get a job, since they were clearly just lazily sitting around, raking in that fat $194-per-month SNAP check or, for the average North Carolinian, a mere $36 per month. This is a myth.
Not only do these cuts have no impact on job growth according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, but 82 percent of households receiving SNAP were employed the previous or following year; 96 percent who were recently unemployed and went on SNAP began working after receiving benefits.
The new policy, however, will cut off benefits for three years for anyone spending three months unemployed while on SNAP; if someone is lucky enough to find a low-paying job after those three months, they will not be able to have SNAP supplementing their income. The reality is not that a bunch of lazy people are abusing the system, but that real, hardworking people simply cannot find jobs, especially in highly rural parts of our state where jobs simply do not exist.
Cutting SNAP and UI doesn’t just hurt those receiving the benefits either. To cut these programs is actually very much anti-business; since cutting off unemployed recipients does not just make jobs, people go from having some income to having little or no income. They are essentially unable to spend money at local businesses, causing the economy of their community to stagnate or even shrink, as less prosperous businesses have to lay off workers, unemployment increases and a downward cycle is created.
Economist Mark Zandi conducted studies that show SNAP and UI provide the greatest benefit of any economic stimulus package. According to Zandi, every dollar spent on SNAP will generate $1.73 in economic activity; $1.64 for every dollar spent on extending UI benefits. USDA research agrees with this finding, showing that every $5 spent on SNAP generates nearly twice that in economic activity.
There are facts and there are myths. The facts are clear: Cutting benefits does not put people to work. Rather, cutting benefits hurts businesses, limits economic growth and damages hardworking people who have been given the short end of the stick and been subject to harmful, selfish cuts based on myths and stereotypes for far too long.
Our legislators should not be making policy based on myths, like the stereotype of a welfare recipient who is lazy and entitled, refusing to work, collecting their check and living it up on “my hard-earned tax dollars.” The General Assembly should put away these stereotypes, stop blaming the poor for their misfortune and acknowledge the benefit of benefits programs. And this is all to say nothing of the moral responsibility we, the privileged, have to take care of the less fortunate, because frankly, it seems a majority of our state legislature abandoned this moral responsibility long ago.
