What's at stake in the latest attack on food assistance

You may have heard that the Trump administration has proposed changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) that could result in taking away benefits from 3 million or more Americans.

Here's why it's bad: the proposed change eliminates "broad based categorical eligibility" (BBCE), which allows people who are eligible for other assistance programs (such as TANF or welfare, SSI or other programs) to be automatically eligible for SNAP.

Eliminating the BBCE creates a cliff effect in which people could experience drastic cuts in benefits when their living conditions modestly improve.

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities,

 SNAP supports work in part by phasing benefits down gradually — by only 24 to 36 cents for each dollar of increased earnings. But without BBCE, a family can lose substantial SNAP benefits from a small earnings increase that raises its gross income over SNAP’s eligibility threshold (130 percent of the federal poverty line, or $2,252 per month for a family of three in fiscal year 2019). BBCE allows states to lift this threshold and phase benefits out more gradually, which lets households close to that threshold take higher-paying work and still benefit from SNAP.

They also argue that eliminating BBCE could discourage struggling families from building modest savings and increase the level of bureaucracy in administering the program.

SOOOO....if you want to do a good deed and make a public comment about the proposed policy (click here for that),  your message can be as simple as "Eliminating BBCE will push struggling families over a benefit cliff." Or "It's a bad idea to discourage savings and asset building." Or "Why increase bureaucratic complexity? Keep it simple by keeping BBCE." Or some combination of the above.

Then there's this if you don't want to overthink it: it's not nice to take away food from hungry people.