California for years has lagged behind the rest of the country in terms of participation. Tied for 48th in 2013, only 66 percent of those eligible participated in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, called CalFresh in California.

The pool of Californians who are eligible for the program is shrinking. While the pool has increased from 6.36 million in 2010 to 6.98 million in 2014, it has decreased from a peak of 7.17 million in 2013, according to CalFresh estimates based on Census data.

“The good news in California is we’re going in the right direction on both lines,” said Kim McCoy Wade, chief of the CalFresh branch of the California Department of Social Services.

Outreach

For years, outreach methods, internal procedures and state policy kept the rate low, said Wade, adding the nature of California played a role too.

“We’re a very big, diverse, complicated state, so sometimes we move forward in one county and then have to take longer to move forward in another,” Wade said. “We’re not in Idaho, where you can change your call center process and all of the sudden the whole state is dramatically better.”

Wade said the state is studying whether a language/information barrier and a distrust of government among ethnic groups played a role in the low participation rates.

“We really think it’s time for a fresh look to see if immigrant communities are connecting to CalFresh, and if not, why not,” Wade said.

ACA impact

In recent years, the implementation of the Affordable Care Act hindered the process as well, in that the tsunami of new people entering the system took time to process, with so much of the state’s efforts aimed at sorting it all out. But as a result of the flood of people entering the system, CalFresh had better access to families to let them know their options.

“The Affordable Care Act was both the best thing that ever happened to low-income families in California and a real challenge,” Wade said.

Increased participation

In 2015, there was approximately 4.4 million people in the CalFresh program, receiving more than $7 billion in benefits annually. That’s compared to 2005, when there were about 2 million Californians receiving more than $2 billion in annual benefits.

Eligibility is for those less than 130 percent of the federal poverty line, which is an annual income of $24,300 for a family of four.

The average benefit is $142 per person per month, according to federal data.

Additional data can be found in a Public Policy Institute of California study published this month.

The Los Angeles Times provided plenty of anecdotes about the cuts in its story about the program:

“The impoverished are forced to eat junk if we want to eat,” said 32-year-old Tabitha, a mother of a 2-year-old and a 7-year-old staying at a Culver City shelter, who asked that her last name not be used because she said she was embarrassed. “It’s going to be difficult, as it already has been. …”

Friday’s benefit reduction was meant to coincide with a brightening economy, yet many Americans remain stuck in poverty despite improvements from the worst of the recession.

“I think it’s a horrible thing,” said Najuah Mudahy, 30, also of the Culver City shelter, a food stamp recipient who works two jobs, as a clerk at a shoe store and a hostess at a California Pizza Kitchen. Both bring in $9 an hour. Mudahy said she runs out of money to keep her 3-year-old daughter fed before the end of every month, even on dinners of canned soup.

 “It only forces people to do desperate things,” she said of the cuts.

SNAP has grown dramatically in recent years. Around 19 million Americans received benefits in 2002. By 2007, 7 million more Americans were enrolled in the program. And by 2012, 47 million Americans were enrolled in the expanded program. Costs ballooned from $35 billion in 2007 to $80 billion in 2012.

Increase

So why the dramatic increase?

Two reasons: the economic recession and policy changes that made it easier to enroll in the program. The Washington Post explains:

Defenders of the program typically argue that enrollment rose because we had a horrific recession and unemployment hit the stratosphere. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is supposed to kick in to help families hit by economic distress. The program has kept 4.7 million people out of poverty. There’s no problem here. And so on.

Some conservatives, meanwhile, have emphasized that a big chunk of the increase is due to policy changes by Washington. In 2008, Congress allowed states to relax their standards for who could join the program. (Jobless adults could stay in the program if they lived in high-unemployment areas, for instance.) Then, as part of the 2009 stimulus bill, Congress temporarily boosted food-stamp benefits.

The cuts that began at the start of this month were mandatory; the expansion was only set to last for so long. But more cuts might be coming in the future. The House and Senate are currently debating how much to cut SNAP. Conservatives are arguing for more restrictions about who can join the program.

From the Washington Post:

The House bill would remove 3.8 million people from the food-stamp rolls over the upcoming year by making two big changes:

— First, it would reinstate limits on benefits for able-bodied, childless adults aged 18 to 50. These recipients would only be able to collect limited benefits — up to three months over a three-year period — unless they worked more than 20 hours per week or enrolled in job-training programs. (States are currently able to waive these latter requirements when unemployment is high.)

Conservatives have argued that reinstating the work requirements will encourage adults to find jobs more quickly. Liberal critics have countered that employment opportunities are still scarce in many parts of the country — many Americans will simply lose their food aid without finding work. This change would remove an estimated 1.7 million people from the food-stamp rolls.

— The second big change is that the House bill would restrict states’ abilities to determine a person’s eligibility for food stamps based in part on whether they qualify for other low-income benefits. This is known as “categorical eligibility” and has generally allowed families just above the poverty line to receive food stamps if they have unusually high housing costs or are facing other hardships.

This second change would take another 2.1 million people off food stamps in 2014 and then remove an additional 1.8 million people per year for the next decade.

It’s unclear how many of these cuts will actually get passed into law, however, since the House and Senate still have to figure out how to reconcile their two bills.

CalWatchdog.com will continue covering changes to SNAP in the upcoming months as farm bill negotiations continue.

By Chris Reed

A Democratic congresswoman from California wants you to know she cares about some poor people — the ones who use food stamps. This is from the Bee:

“Doris Matsui of Sacramento on Wednesday pledged to spend only $13.50 on food the next three days, joining nearly 30 of her fellow House Democrats in protest of cuts to the federal food stamp program.

“The Senate on Monday approved a 10-year, $955 billion farm bill that includes a $400 million a year cut to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. A House proposal would cut the program by $2 billion a year.

“Matsui said via Facebook and Twitter that 200,000 residents of Sacramento County rely on food assistance and that she would take part in the ‘SNAP Challenge’ and live off the average benefit of $4.50 a day.

“‘Feeding a family on SNAP is already challenging, and these cuts would make it even harder,’ Matsui wrote on her Facebook page. ‘That is why I am taking the SNAP Challenge to raise awareness of hunger in our nation and to highlight the importance of SNAP.'”

Help Central Valley farmers? Nah. Let them use food stamps to buy cake.

But does Matsui care about the  poor people who don’t want to rely on food stamps? The poor people who need not welfare but jobs — giving them regular paychecks so they can avoid being on the dole? Of course not. She’s a Democrat from Sacramento, after all — and one who turned her back on her hometown at an absolutely crucial moment.

This is what I wrote about her in June 2009 on the late lamented America’s Finest Blog:

“A Central Valley lawmaker’s crusade to move farmers ahead of fish in California’s water pecking order now has the backing of 37 House Democrats … . But when it came time for a crucial House Rules Committee vote Wednesday night on whether to allow Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Visalia, to try to attach farmer-relief language to a $32 billion Interior Department funding bill, the panel voted 8-4 to block the attempt. Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Merced, was the only Democrat to side with Nunes, the Bee reported.

“Which prompted me to look up the 13 members of the House Rules Committee. Which led me to this fact. If Cardoza was the only rules panel Dem to back Nunes, that means Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Sacramento, either voted against Nunes, abstained or missed the vote.

Mayor of Matsui’s impoverished hometown stunned at her callousness

“Given the importance of agriculture to California, this is bad already. But here’s the kicker from Matsui’s official bio. She grew up … on a farm in California’s Central Valley. Further research shows specifically she lived in Dinuba, a town in Nunes’ district, 30 miles southeast of Fresno. Where the families-in-poverty rate in 2007 was 22 percent, well more than double the national average, and is almost certainly much higher now between the recession and the environmentalist-led assault on Central Valley farming.

“Betrayals of the people you grew up among don’t get much more complete than this. Doris Matsui must not believe in karma.

“I called up Dinuba Mayor Mark Wallace. … Wallace said Nunes’ efforts to change Central Valley water policy were absolutely crucial. ‘I can’t believe that anyone would vote against this no matter who they were, especially in these tough times.’

“Wallace said he didn’t know Matsui or of her background. But he said that he ‘absolutely could not’ believe that someone from Dinuba could treat it and the Central Valley so poorly.”

Matsui did vote no on the relief. She wants farmworkers to have access to water and shade. She just doesn’t care if they actually have work on farms.

No, things haven’t gotten better in Dinuba since 2009. The most recent reports show the town has a 26.4 percent poverty rate, which is even worse than the state’s rate, which is the highest in the nation. But the congresswoman from Dinuba probably thinks that’s no big deal — at least if the impoverished people she betrayed have access to food stamps.

By Katy Grimes

The Employment Development Department used to be called the “Unemployment Department.” And state welfare recipients are now “clients.”

The majority party in the California Legislature appears determined on expanding social services in the state despite evidence demonstrating that the programs don’t necessarily improve lives, as the very mixed record of the 50-year federal “War on Poverty” confirms. While discussing the need for “safety net” programs for the poorest in the state, legislators always cast a wider net than necessary.

The Assembly held a committee hearing Wednesday about expanding mandatory universal government preschool in California. By Thursday, the Senate Health and Human Services Committee was focused on the CalWORKS program, and how to attract more “clients.” Expansion of the state’s Health and Human Services agency is an obvious goal.

CA has nation’s worst poverty rate

This push to expand government aid programs has as a backdrop California’s poverty rate of 23.5 percent — the highest in the nation and much higher than the national average of 16.1 percent. The U.S. Census Bureau said the high poverty rate was driven in part by California’s high cost of living, which is never a focus of the Legislature.

The stated goal of Thursday’s Senate hearing was to get  several questions answered, including “What does evidence indicate can help families avoid the negative consequences of poverty?”

The challenges of stress are made worse by poverty, according to Sarah Bohn of the Public Policy Institute of California and Ann Stevens, the director of UC Davis Center on Poverty Research.

Stevens said the well-known correlation between poverty in childhood and long-term effects mean poverty later in life, poor health and low educational achievement.

Subsidies for poor advocated, and more of them

“Constant stress is worse in poor people,” said Stevens. “Unobserved things in families in poverty lead to other bad outcomes.”

“Persistent poverty creates chronic stress for children,” Stevens added.

Stevens and Bohn advocated for subsidies for the poor, and for longer periods of time.

“A strong case can be made for reducing material deprivation,” Stevens said. “There’s growing credible evidence to support this.”

But both Stevens and Bohn also advocated for universal mandatory preschool. “There’s growing evidence to support intervention in early childhood and preschool,” Stevens said. She added this is crucial to break the cycle of poverty. “It’s not a trade-off,” said Stevens.

On welfare, mixed messages from Washington

Meanwhile, the federal government is sending out mixed messages. Under President Obama, one form of welfare has exponentially increased since he first took office in 2009. His administration, however, is also pressuring California to limit another type of welfare.

“When Obama was inaugurated in January 2009, the number of Supplemental Assistance Nutrition Program (SNAP) recipients was 31,939,110. By October 2012, the latest month reported, they had jumped to 47,525,329,” CNS News reported. “That means the food stamp program grew by approximately 11,133 recipients per day from January 2009 to October 2012.” SNAP used to be known as the Food Stamp program.

CNS News also reported, “[F]ederal spending on SNAP has increased every fiscal year that Obama has been in office. In FY 2009 — when SNAP was still known as the ‘Food Stamp’ program — the government spent $55.6 billion. According to an April 2012 report from the Congressional Budget Office, SNAP enrollment increased by 70 percent between 2007 and 2011.”

In California, spending on such programs is going up. But the Brown administration is also trying to implement some of the welfare reforms seen in other states — because of federal pressure.

“The Governor’s budget proposes $20.3 billion from the General Fund for health programs—a 3.4 percent increase over 2012-13 estimated expenditures—and $8 billion from the General Fund for human services programs—a 7.9 percent increase over 2012-13 estimated expenditures,” the Legislative Analyst’s Office wrote in its 2013-14 “Analysis of the Health and Human Services Budget.”

Recent changes to the CalWORKs program include a phase-out of exemptions from welfare-to-work requirements, and the introduction of a new 24-month limit on adult eligibility in the program.

Existing law requires each California county to provide cash assistance and other social services to needy families through the California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids program. CalWORKs uses funds from the federal Temporary Assistance to Needy Families block grant program, as well as state and county funds.

Reforms prompted by federal pressure

As a condition of the federal grant, the federal government requires states to meet work requirements. But California has been in violation of this rule, and was notified the state will be assessed penalties of $160 million by the federal government. This is just for 2008 and 2009. There is no word yet if California will be penalized for 2010, 2011 and 2012.

The state claims to have a plan to remedy this, but not by requiring CalWORKS recipients to get to work.

“Planned state actions are projected to increase the state’s work participation rate by (1) increasing the number of countable cases that meet the federal work requirement through the work Incentive Nutritional Suppliment program, and (2) removing from the work participation requirement calculation certain CalWORKS cases that do not meet the federal work requirement,” the LAO reported.

The LAO estimates that California “may be compliant with the requirement by 2015.”

CalWORKS recipients are required to work 20, 30, or 35 hours per week, depending on family composition. California allows CalWORKS recipients to substitute mental health and substance abuse programs for work.

CalWORKS reductions may be reversed

California has made $700 million in reductions to the CalWORKS program since 2009. But now, the Legislature is actively pushing to expand the program.

SB 1041, passed in 2012, authorized the changes to the CalWORKS program, but only through 2012.