Colleen Heflin on SNAP and Reauthorization of the Farm Bill

Siers-Poisson Hello and thanks for joining us for the Poverty Research and Policy podcast from the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I’m Judith Siers Poisson. For this episode, Dr. Colleen Heflin joins us to discuss the recent policy brief that she co-authored with Camille Burman titled, “How does the reauthorization of the Farm Bill impact SNAP?” You can find a link to that brief in the program note for this episode. Colleen Heflin is a professor of public administration and international affairs in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. She’s also a senior research associate in the Center for Policy Research and the Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion and Population Health. She’s also an IRP affiliate. Colleen, thanks for joining us today.  

Heflin Thank you for having me.  

Siers-Poisson I’d like to start with some basics. Can you give us a brief explanation of the SNAP program?  

Heflin Sure. The SNAP program is the country’s largest food and nutrition assistance program. It currently, as of August 2024, served 42.2 million individuals. It is the program that’s available from birth all the way to the end of the life course. And so it has the fewest restrictions out of all the food and nutrition programs. in terms of level of support, individuals receive on average $191 of benefits monthly, and households receive $358 monthly. It is a food voucher that individuals redeem at local grocery stores. And it is designed to cover the cost of food that is purchased and then consumed at home. So it doesn’t cover health care needs, personal supplies, cleaning supplies, or hot foods or prepared foods.  

Siers-Poisson And who is eligible for SNAP. And we should say that SNAP is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.  

Heflin SNAP is a means-tested program, which means it’s limited to those with incomes below a certain level. That level, using federal guidelines, is 130% of the poverty line, or $2,100 a month for a two-person household. Households also have to meet a net income guideline, which allows them to deduct essential expenses like shelter, utilities, childcare, and out-of-pocket medical expenses from the gross income guideline. And then their income needs to be below a hundred percent of the income, which is about $1,600 a month, again, for a two-person household. It has a different name in many states. Actually, it’s formally known as the food stamp program. So it can be confusing to know what to call it, but SNAP is the name of the federal program that covers food assistance in each of the states. And it is eligible without a time restriction for households with children or elderly and disabled households. And if individuals aren’t in one of those categories, if they’re what’s called an able-bodied without dependent children household, they’re able to receive the program for three months out of a three-year period unless they comply with work requirements currently.  

Siers-Poisson So SNAP is part of the farm bill. Can you tell us a little more about that particular piece of legislation?  

Heflin Yeah. The farm bill goes back all the way in the 1930s. So it’s origination is in the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl period, the time of severe droughts and economic hardship for Americans and the federal government for the first time sort of stepped in to stabilize food prices, to ensure adequate food supply and to support struggling farmers. The modern farm bill, as we know it, has really evolved over the decades and expanded, now it covers many more issues, including this large portion, about 80% covers food assistance through the SNAP program, but it also covers conservation programs, trade and rural development. The bill has represented a political compromise for the last large number of years between rural lawmakers by providing support for rural development, conservation, crop subsidies and to stabilize farm ownership. And urban policy makers, by covering food assistance programs that are the bulk of people who received them, are in the more population dense areas, which often tend to have more poor people in them as well.  

Siers-Poisson So what is the current status of the farm bill? When did it expire and what happened when it did?  

Heflin Sure. The last time the farm bill was reauthorized was in 2018 and it expired at the end of the fiscal year, at the end of September of this year then. And so what happened is different for different programs as a consequence. For programs like SNAP, they continue in their existing form, assuming that they have appropriations to fund them. For other programs like farm commodities and dairy support programs, those expire at the end of the season, the growing season, so at the end of the calendar year 2024. There’s a set of other programs that were reauthorized through the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. These are mostly conservation programs, but there’s other programs that had expired and no longer have authority to continue providing benefits. And these are a smaller set the Seniors Farmers Market Nutrition Program is one and also the Emergency Food Assistance Program Farm to Foodbank project is another.  

Siers-Poisson Let’s zoom out a bit and look at the current landscape of food prices and recent trends. There was a lot of talk during the recent election season about the costs of groceries and other necessities. How do prices today compare to recent years?  

Heflin So, food inflation has been really high in the last three years over the 2021 to 2023 period. The average price of food increased by 19.6%. But note that in 2024, food prices are expected to only rise by 2.3%, according to the latest USDA estimates. It has come down quite a bit, but it is really quite high, and that cost increases due to supply chain shortages, large increases in labor costs, and all sorts of things.  

Siers-Poisson What about food security? First, what does it mean to be food insecure?  

Heflin Yeah, food insecurity is defined as not having stable access to the resources to provide a healthy diet for all household members. In 2023, 13.5% of all households were designated as food insecure, and that percentage of all households has increased each year since 2021. And so this is like the inflation of food prices it’s been on a steady rise.  

Siers-Poisson Let’s go back to SNAP and the farm bill that was proposed but wasn’t passed. What changes specifically to the SNAP program had been floated?  

Heflin The Senate never actually proposed a bill. They had a one-page summary of a framework. The Republican House Ag. Committee did release a bill but was never voted on in the full House. So, we don’t have a clear sense actually of where negotiations stand. But what we do now in the House Ag. Bill is that there was proposed a very large $30 billion reduction in the SNAP program, and most of this was coming from a change in how the thrifty food plan was going to be designated moving forward. And so I think that is the single most important component. That cut has been priced at by the Congressional Budget Office. So that is, you know, a nonpartizan estimate of the size of that cut. And I have to say, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities has suggested that it would equal a day’s worth of benefits each month in the early years and rising to almost two full days’ worth of benefits by the end of the decade. And so this is a sizable reduction that would have accrue across all households that receive SNAP and would really be meaningful.  

Siers-Poisson Let’s talk a little bit more about that thrifty food plan, what it is exactly and what the purpose of that measurement is.  

Heflin Yeah. So the thrifty food plan, the USDA has four different food plans, the thrifty food plan is the least expensive one. And it is really meant to ensure a modest ability to meet minimum dietary standards. The food plan itself had not been readjusted for over 40 years. And so there was already efforts underway before Covid to reassess the food plan and modernize them. So to do things like instead of relying on dried beans, allow for the cost of households to purchase canned beans. And so that may seem like a minor thing, but it changes the cost quite a bit. And so as well as allow for more foods for fresh fruits and vegetables, which are a lot more common, had the dairy requirements met not just from drinking what amounted to gallons and gallons of milk, but also be able to do things like eat cheese and yogurt. And so, a panel basically decided that a more modern diet, that was still very modest, needed substantial change and benefits. And they recommended that every five years this plan should also be reevaluated. And it’s that reevaluation which the House Republican bill would no longer allow. It would take the existing plan, freeze it, and only adjust it for the price of inflation.  

Siers-Poisson So no changes to what could potentially be bought because just thinking even of how I cook, dried beans take a lot more time and a lot more planning and I’m guessing that a lot of these households are already strapped for time.  

Heflin Absolutely. So the diet is a lot more monotonous. It definitely is not keeping with what current people want to eat and have time to prepare. Sort of reduces the effectiveness of the SNAP program in supporting food security, because even for people getting the maximum benefit, it doesn’t necessarily allow for people to maintain healthy and nutritional food access.  

Siers-Poisson It seemed like there were also some suggestions of maybe allowing people to buy prepared food or even using SNAP at some restaurants. Looking at the reaction to the current thrifty food plan and suggestions for that, do you think those would ever get any traction?  

Heflin So Democrats had suggested during COVID states were allowed to allow for home delivery and pickup of food and so that was an important step forward. There have been some states that have begun to experiment with redeem their benefits at restaurants or use prepared meals, but that’s a very small set of states that are using that currently. I think for individuals who are older have difficulty preparing foods, those with physical limitations. I think that would absolutely allow for the ability of SNAP to really support a healthy food diet. You know, one of the interesting things is that proposals are currently suggesting putting as one of the objectives of SNAP is that it really supports health in a more systematic way, which I think has some people a little concerned that that might get into reducing the types of foods that the SNAP voucher could be used for. But that rationale could also be used to expand the places and again, allow more access perhaps to prepared foods, because for many individuals, again, they’re going to lack the ability to carry and stand and cook those foods. And so I think we need to be thinking about how to expand that access to healthy and nutritious foods, and I’d like to see SNAP be a part of that.  

Siers-Poisson Colleen, earlier you talked about the employment requirement for some folks who are receiving the SNAP benefits. Have there been any discussions or proposals that would change that employment requirement for any of the groups that we’ve talked about?  

Heflin [00:12:57] Yes. So one of the Republican suggestions right now is to increase the work requirements. Currently, individuals that are living in households without children that are below the age of 60 and are not disabled do have a work requirement. The suggestion has been to expand that to households with parents of children who are age seven above and to extend it to adults below the age of 65. And so that would extend work requirements for the older adults between the ages of 54 and 64, which is quite a large extension, as well as people with school-agde kids who may find it difficult to find work during those hours and may, you know, experience childcare difficulties. In addition, I have to say that there are suggestions to limit the ability of local areas to decide whether there is a labor market sufficient to support those work requirements. So, for example, if a local manufacturer closes in an area, the state can declare a part of the state exempt from those work requirements because they know that there aren’t enough jobs to absorb the influx of people who have perhaps just been laid off. Now, the House plan would also restrict the ability of states to decide for themselves whether their local labor force is adequate to absorb everyone who’s looking for a job.  

Siers-Poisson You were just talking about how depending on especially things like the local unemployment rate or availability of open positions, how much discretion do the states have given that this is a federal program, but it is administered at the state and even lower levels?  

Heflin  Yeah, it’s confusing. It is a federal program. States have a great deal of discretion. For the last 20 years, states have been allowed to really tailor the SNAP program to their own sensibilities. So, the program is more difficult to access and offers lower benefits in some states than in others. And so I think that’s been one way that the support for SNAP has continued by allowing states to sort of tailor the program to meet their own sort of cultural sense of responsibility. But I think it bothers people on both sides of the aisle the the flexibility there.  

Siers-Poisson What do we know about how SNAP benefits local economies? Because it seems like folks would be spending a lot of those allotments close to home.  

Heflin So SNAP is created as a counter-cyclical program. So during periods of unemployment, it’s designed to help stabilize both individual households, but also the local economy. Because SNAP has to only be spent on food, it can’t be saved, it can’t be used for other purchases, and food is purchased locally usually. And so this is a program that the majority of benefits are spent each month. More than half are spent in the first week. It is disbursed very quickly and it’s spent locally. So this is really a local community economic support as well.  

Siers-Poisson Are there other ripple effects of the SNAP program?  

Heflin SNAP has been shown to be affected at reducing health care costs, at supporting children’s learning in school, increasing their test scores, for example. There’s been many, many impacts of SNAP all the way from cognitive support to physical health. Yeah, absolutely. It’s a very effective program.  

Siers-Poisson [00:17:04] We’re having this conversation in mid-November. Have there been any indications of what actions the new administration and a reshaped Congress might take on the farm bill or SNAP specifically?  

Heflin I think we have to think about two things. One, we have to think about the farm bill and the reauthorization, and then we have to think about the appropriation bills which actually provide the funding. So currently both expire at the end of December. So that creates sort of a double jeopardy for SNAP, right now. It’s unclear, but the House Republicans are indicating that they have a strong interest in passing a farm bill. It’s unclear that that’s going to happen. So I think that’s more likely that we’ll have another extension there. And I think for the appropriations bills, the funding for the actual SNAP benefits, I have to say right now, funding that’s available through the end of December would fund January benefits, but without reappropriation there would be problems moving forward. Right now, discussions are going on as to whether they’ll be a continuing resolution to extend reappropriations through the end of March. There’s some people indicating an interest in trying to get all 12 appropriation bills figured out and the lame duck session, which seems a little unlikely, but I think it’s a new rodeo in D.C. right now, so who knows?  

Siers-Poisson What do you hope that policymakers know and take into consideration as they make those plans for the future of SNAP?  

Heflin I think SNAP is a program that is incredibly effective. It’s effective at reducing poverty. It’s effective at supporting children, elderly, disabled. And these are very vulnerable populations, and I and I think it’s effective at reducing health care costs. For me, I think about what a great investment the SNAP program is and all the different ways that it brings returns to the country. I’m really hopeful that lawmakers will keep in mind all the positive externalities of food assistance programs while they’re thinking about both reauthorizations and appropriations.  

Siers-Poisson Well, Colleen, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us and provide such really valuable context to the farm bill and SNAP.  

Heflin Thank you for this opportunity, Judith.  

Siers-Poisson Thanks so much to Dr. Colleen Heflin for joining us to discuss her recent policy brief titled “How Does the Reauthorization of the Farm Bill Impact SNAP?” You can find a link to that brief in the program note for this episode. The production of this podcast was supported in part by funding from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation. But views expressed by our speakers don’t necessarily represent the opinions or policies of that office or any other sponsor, including the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Music for the episode is by Poi Dog Pondering. Thanks for listening.