U.S. will provide $200 million to Kansas and nine other states to help food stamp recipients find jobs
The Obama administration announced Friday that it would provide $200 million to 10 states, including Kansas, for pilot projects to help food stamp recipients find jobs.
The effort is part of a larger effort to reduce the rolls of a program that provides assistance to nearly 50 million Americans.
The pilot projects include skills training, work-based learning and support services such as transportation and child care. In Vermont, which will get $8.9 million, the program also will focus on hard-to-serve populations like the homeless, ex-offenders and people with addictions.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Labor Secretary Thomas Perez announced the grant recipients during a visit to Gwinnett Technical College in Georgia, a state that will receive $15 million. Other states receiving grants include California, Delaware, Illinois, Kentucky, Mississippi, Virginia and Washington.
The Agriculture Department said it retained two research organizations, Mathematica Policy Research in Washington and MDRC, which has offices in New York and California, to conduct independent evaluations of the projects, which were first authorized in the 2014 farm bill.
Moving people off food stamps, formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, has long been a topic of intense discussion and debate in Washington as the number of people getting assistance swelled during the recession. The number of people receiving benefits has fallen as the economy has improved.
Agriculture Department data show fraud rates are about 1 percent, a record low. But conservatives have raised the issue of fraud in the program and cited examples of people who were ineligible for the program getting assistance.
In their most recent budget proposal, Republicans have proposed turning the food stamp program — which cost about $74 billion last year — into block grants as a way for states to have a larger role in determining who gets the money.
“This budget converts SNAP to a State Flexibility Fund so state governments have the power to administer the program in ways that best fit the needs of their communities with greater incentives to achieve better results,” the Republican budget document reads.
Vilsack criticized that move.
“That’s not the way to go,” he said. “Helping people find good jobs is a far better strategy for reducing food assistance spending than across-the-board cuts.”
This story was originally published March 20, 2015 at 5:37 PM with the headline "U.S. will provide $200 million to Kansas and nine other states to help food stamp recipients find jobs."