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The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) supports the proposals you have made to strengthen and simplify the programs in the Nutrition Title of the Farm Bill. NCSL believes that these changes will better align the Food Stamp program with the goals of welfare reform and ensure that eligible families, especially the working poor, receive the nutrition assistance they need. Full funding of the food stamp title represents a commitment to basic needs that has become all the more critical with the worsening economy. We urge you to resist efforts to decrease funding for food stamp improvements.
Often federal food stamp provisions are in conflict with state welfare reform efforts. We applaud your efforts to give states more options to align Food Stamp rules with the rules of other programs and streamline the eligibility and benefit determination procedure. The complexity of the program leads to confusion and discourages applicants. Unless the rules are changed, income-eligible individuals and children will continue to go without benefits.
State legislators are frustrated by the current quality control system that seems to focus on process, not outcomes. We fully support the original intent of quality control - to provide the states with a management tool to identify problems in public assistance administration and to facilitate corrective action. However, the current rules penalize states that serve large numbers of recipients with earned income, those who have left welfare for work, and the working poor. Your bills ensure that quality control rules support the our goal of keeping families with earnings in the workforce and stop policies that increase the risk of errors and financial penalties on states simply because of the composition of their food stamp population.
We especially appreciate that your proposals to address the cost shift to the states that occurred in the 1996 welfare reform law with the denial of food stamps to all legal immigrants and their children. While NCSL supported the federal welfare law, NCSL opposed this provision. Seventeen states now provide some type of nutrition assistance to legal immigrants and even more have provided increased funding to food banks. It is time to end this cost shift.
The nutrition programs in the Farm Bill are vital to working families with children, the elderly, and the disabled. State legislators will work with you on improving these programs. We are especially pleased that in a time of economic uncertainty, you have championed the Food Stamp program, a program that serves the unemployed, the underemployed and the working poor and is vital to our response in emergencies.
We hope that you will work together in the Committee to send a farm bill with the best nutrition title possible to the Senate floor. It is vital that the funding for the nutrition title be kept between $6.2 billion and $10 billion over 10 years if we are to continue the nation's progress in keeping low-income families self-sufficient. |
