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work requirements
As Trump Nominees Back SNAP and Medicaid Work Requirements, Report Shows Harms
"They do not reliably increase employment, but they do kick people off essential benefits like food assistance and healthcare," said an expert at the Economic Policy Institute.
Jan 24, 2025
After nominees for U.S. President Donald Trump's Cabinet this week endorsed work requirements for social safety net programs, an economic think tank released a Friday report detailing the policy's drawbacks.
"Work requirements for safety net programs are a punitive solution that solves no real problem," said Economic Policy Institute (EPI) economist and report author Hilary Wething in a statement about her new publication.
"They do not reliably increase employment, but they do kick people off essential benefits like food assistance and healthcare," she stressed. "If policymakers are genuinely concerned about improving access to work, they should support policies like affordable child- and eldercare."
"The existing safety net is too stingy and tilts too hard toward making benefits difficult to access."
EPI's report explains that recently, congressional Republicans—who now have a majority in both chambers—"have embraced proposals to ratchet up work requirements as conditions for the receipt of some federal government benefits. These proposals are clearly trying to exploit a vague, but pervasive, sense that some recipients of public support are gaming the system to get benefits that they do not need, as they could be earning money in the labor market to support themselves instead."
"However, a careful assessment of the current state of public benefit programs demonstrates that almost none of the alleged benefits of ratcheting up work requirements are economically significant, but that the potential costs of doing this could be large and fall on the most economically vulnerable," the document states. "The most targeted programs for more stringent work requirements are the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, popularly referred to as food stamps) and Medicaid, the health insurance program for low-income people."
"EPI has surveyed the research literature on work requirements and how they interact with these two programs in particular, and we find that the existing safety net is too stingy and tilts too hard toward making benefits difficult to access," the report continues. "Tightening eligibility by increasing work requirements for these programs will make this problem even worse with no tangible benefit in the form of higher levels of employment among low-income adults."
Wething found that work requirements generally target nonelderly adults without documented disabilities who don't have official dependents living in their homes, formally called "able-bodied adults without dependents" (ABAWDs).
"While ABAWDs might not have documented disabilities that result in benefit receipt or have dependent children living at home full-time, they often experience health challenges and must take on some caregiving duties, each of which could provide a genuine barrier to finding steady work," the report says. "We find that 21% reported having a disability that affects their ability to find and sustain work, suggesting that adults with genuine health barriers are being swept up in overly stringent work requirements."
Additionally, "13.8% of ABAWDs live with an adult over the age of 65 in their household, suggesting that many are potential caregivers in some form and likely have caregiving responsibilities beyond what is captured on paper," the document notes. "Despite ABAWDs having health challenges and caregiving responsibilities that make participation in the labor market difficult, our current social safety net does very little to support these adults."
The publication highlights that "low-income adults generally face steep labor market challenges, making it difficult to meet work requirements," including that "low-wage work is precarious, making work time hard to maintain."
The report also emphasizes that "by making the process of applying for crucial safety net programs more burdensome, work requirements effectively function like a cut to programs," and "the consequences of losing access to SNAP and Medicaid for low-income adults are severe, often resulting in food and health insecurity."
Despite the abundance of research about the downsides of work requirements, Brooke Rollins, Trump's nominee to lead the U.S. Department of Agriculture—which administers SNAP—expressed support for the policy during a Thursday Senate confirmation hearing, echoing what Russell Vought, the president's pick to direct the Office of Management and Budget, said about Medicaid on Wednesday.
Rather than pushing work requirements, the EPI report argues, decision-makers could advocate for "policies that would measurably improve employment in low-income households," including "macroeconomic policy to maintain full employment."
The publication also promotes policies that increase scheduling predictability, provide better help with caregiving responsibilities, assist formerly incarcerated people with finding and maintaining jobs, reduce unnecessary education mandates for employment, and improve transportation options. It further calls for reducing existing work requirements.
"It is entirely possible that reducing eligibility barriers to safety net programs—barriers like work requirements—may well be more effective in promoting work than raising those barriers would be," the report states. "A majority of adults who gained coverage through Medicaid expansion in Ohio and Michigan found that having healthcare made it easier to find and maintain work."
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Trump Budget Nominee Touts Welfare Reform That Doubled Extreme Poverty
Russ Vought, an architect of Project 2025, said he's "very proud" of Clinton-era welfare reform that devastated some of the nation's most vulnerable people.
Jan 22, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump's pick to lead the Office of Management and Budget told lawmakers Wednesday that he's "proud" of the impacts of Clinton-era welfare reform, a Republican-backed legislative change that doubled extreme poverty by stripping government support from some of the nation's most vulnerable people—including children with disabilities.
Pressed on his record of advocating work requirements for Medicaid recipients, Project 2025 architect Russ Vought told members of the Senate Budget Committee that "one of the major legislations that our side has been very proud of since the 1990s was the impact of welfare reform" and suggested it should be a model for the Trump administration to apply to other federal programs going forward.
"It led to caseload reductions, people getting off of welfare, going back into the workforce," Vought said of the 1996 reform, neglecting to mention research showing that the law resulted in an explosion of extreme poverty as people were often unable to find jobs after losing benefits.
In response to Vought's remarks, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) noted that Arkansas' temporary imposition of work requirements on Medicaid recipients—with a green light from the first Trump administration—was a "failed experiment," with thousands losing health coverage without any significant increase in employment.
Watch the exchange:
At @SenateBudget confirmation hearing, Russell Vought says he's "very proud" of his plans to take Medicaid away from people who can't work.@SenJeffMerkley tells Vought this would trap Americans in poverty: "The way that people are able to work is when they're healthy". pic.twitter.com/3GmaVwmnVo
— Social Security Works (@SSWorks) January 22, 2025
Later in Wednesday's hearing, Vought—a longtime supporter of Medicaid cuts—said that "we need to go after the mandatory programs," a category that includes Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
Republicans in Congress have reportedly discussed cutting trillions of dollars from Medicaid to help pay for another round of tax cuts that would disproportionately benefit the wealthiest Americans.
During his time questioning Vought on Wednesday, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said that "the distillation of the Trump economic program is to give tax breaks to all the people at the top, and it's gonna be paid for by" cuts to Medicaid and federal nutrition assistance.
"We would not characterize our economic program that way," Vought replied.
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As House GOP Reelects Johnson as Speaker, Coalition Says Hands Off Medicaid
Hundreds of advocacy organizations warned lawmakers that "enacting Medicaid cuts would betray your constituents of all political affiliations who are seeking more economic security, not less."
Jan 03, 2025
As Rep. Mike Johnson won reelection as House speaker on Friday, a broad coalition of more than 300 advocacy organizations warned the incoming Republican-controlled Congress against cutting Medicaid amid reports that the GOP is eyeing work requirements and other damaging changes to the program that provides healthcare coverage to around 80 million Americans.
In a letter to the congressional leaders of both parties, Families USA, the AFL-CIO, the American Federation of Teachers, Doctors for America, the NAACP, and other national and state-level organizations wrote that "cutting Medicaid was not a budget solution that American families asked for" during the 2024 election cycle.
"Doing so now would betray your constituents of all political affiliations who are seeking more economic security, not less," the groups continued. "Cutting Medicaid would shift costs and administrative burdens onto working-class families, states, and health systems. Proposals to cap funding, reduce the federal share of Medicaid spending, establish block grants, institute work reporting and community engagement requirements, cut state revenue from provider taxes, or otherwise undermine the fundamental structure of the Medicaid program all have the same effect."
"If instituted," they added, "Americans will lose access to lifesaving services, states will be strapped with massive budget holes, hospitals and clinics will lose revenues and be forced to cut staff and scale back services, and American families and workers will be unable to afford essential care and get sicker—leading to a loss in productivity and the economy suffering as a result."
"The American people are watching... and we urge you to take this opportunity to choose a different path: one that secures our country's health and economy."
The letter was sent as House members gathered on the floor of the chamber and voted to keep Johnson (R-La.) as speaker in the new Congress.
Once members are sworn in, Republicans are expected to pursue a massive tax-cut package that they will seek to fund by slashing key social programs, including Medicaid.
GOP lawmakers have discussed imposing work requirements on Medicaid recipients as part of a broader effort to offset the enormous costs of another round of tax cuts that would disproportionately benefit the wealthy and large corporations.
The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that Medicaid work requirements, which typically entail difficult-to-navigate bureaucratic procedures, would cause roughly 600,000 people to lose insurance.
Shortly after the November election, The New York Timesreported that "some Republican legislators are interested in even more sweeping changes, such as turning Medicaid into a block grant program, which would keep federal costs fixed even if more people sign up for coverage."
Edwin Park, a research Professor at the Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy's Center for Children and Families, warned in a November blog post that turning Medicaid into a block grant program would be "deeply harmful."
"To compensate for the severe federal funding cuts resulting from block grants," Park wrote, "states will either have to dramatically raise taxes and drastically cut other parts of their budget including K-12 education or, as is far more likely, institute deep, damaging cuts to Medicaid eligibility, benefits, and provider and plan payment rates."
"That includes not just dropping the Medicaid expansion, which covers nearly 20 million newly eligible parents and other adults, but gutting the rest of state Medicaid programs that serve tens of millions of low-income children, parents, people with disabilities, and seniors," Park continued.
In their letter on Friday, the advocacy coalition reminded congressional leaders that "millions upon millions of Americans rose up" in opposition to the GOP's failed attempt to cut Medicaid in 2017.
"The American people are watching once again," the groups wrote, "and we urge you to take this opportunity to choose a different path: one that secures our country's health and economy."
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