Why work requirements don't work

The recent proposal to increase work reporting requirements for people receiving SNAP food assistance under the Limit, Save, and Grow Act is redundant and harmful for several reasons:

*work requirements already exist for SNAP. According to the USDA, these “include registering for work, participating in SNAP Employment and Training (E&T) or workfare if assigned by your state SNAP agency, taking a suitable job if offered, and not voluntarily quitting a job or reducing your work hours below 30 a week without a good reason.” States also have the option to impose additional requirements on able-bodies adults without dependents aged 18-49, although evidence suggests that these have failed to increase workforce participation.

*the term “work requirements” in the context of changing eligibility programs such as SNAP and Medicaid is misleading. A more accurate term would be reporting requirements which involve more layers of paperwork, bureaucracy, and surveillance in exchange for often meager benefits. These reporting requirements impose burdens people receiving food assistance and the businesses, organizations, and/or agencies for which they work and simply result in few people receiving needed assistance.

*work reporting requirements don’t promote work. For example, the New York Times reported that when West Virginia piloted the program in counties with the most favorable labor market conditions, the state Department of Health and Human Resources found that “Our best data does not indicate that the program has had a significant impact on employment figures.” Rather, people lost food aid and local businesses lost out. Similarly, when Arkansas added similar reporting requirements for Medicaid, workforce participation didn’t increase—but the number of uninsured people did.

*work reporting requirements for food assistance hit the most vulnerable people hardest, including homeless people or those with unstable housing—a population that includes many veterans, domestic violence survivors, rural residents, people with disabilities, noncustodial adults supporting children, people in recovery from Substance Use Disorder, and others.

*the “Limit, Save, and Grow Act” would double down on vulnerable populations by imposing reporting requirements on older adults up to age 55. According to AARP, over 9.5 million Americans over age 50 rely on SNAP, a group that faces age discrimination in hiring and employment practices.

*SNAP benefits help local businesses and economies—and loss of benefits costs both. The Food Research and Action Council reports that each dollar in federal SNAP benefits generates $1.79 in economic activity.

*reducing SNAP benefits for millions of Americans would only place greater demands on already stretched food pantries, soup kitchens, and charities which are often staffed by volunteers and seniors.

All of which is to say this is not cool.

Punching down

 Things are about to get rough for West Virginia families facing food insecurity, defined by the USDA as “the limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods or limited or uncertain ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways.”

Some hits are coming from federal changes in COVID programs and some from state legislation. But the unkindest cut of all could come from a mean-spirited bill recently introduced in the legislature if it crosses the finish line.

All of these involve the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps, which provides basic food aid to around 167,000 households here.

As of March 1, pandemic-related emergency allotment increases for SNAP will cease. The average household here will receive a monthly reduction of $195 in benefits. The individual will see a reduction of $102, a net loss of $33 million in income to state businesses.

Then there’s this: when the federal Public Health Emergency ends in May, the suspension of work reporting requirements will end for able-bodied adults without dependents will end.

This means that a law passed in 2018 will go back into effect on July 1, imposing reporting requirements and hurdles for non-custodial low-income adults. As many as 24,000 could be pushed off if they can’t satisfy reporting requirements for work activities.

The 2018 bill was touted to promote workforce participation. In fact, it doubled down on a failed 2016 policy piloted in nine counties. A later DHHR report found that “Our best data does not indicate that [limiting benefits] has had a significant impact on employment figures.” People were just cut off and local businesses lost out.

Those are bad enough, but potentially much worse is House Bill 3484. It would add so many reporting, documenting and other bureaucratic restrictions for so many people as to make it unworkable both for people receiving help with food and for the beleaguered state agency that would have to administer the bill if it passes.

At a recent legislative committee meeting, a state agency representative testified that implementing the proposed legislation would actually cost state taxpayers millions of dollars while the additional requirements would reduce number of low-income people receiving food assistance. And that research has indicated that additional requirements reduce food assistance without increasing employment.

A representative of retail businesses testified that the loss of federal SNAP dollars would hurt local business and jobs, especially in rural counties.

Caitlin Cook, director of advocacy and public policy at Mountaineer Food Bank, which serves 48 of 55 counties, pointed out that the state food charity system is already overstretched and couldn’t make up for the loss of federal food aid. According to Cook, “For every one meal the food bank provides, SNAP provides nine, while simultaneously putting additional money into our local communities.”

Despite all the expert testimony, the bill passed out of committee and was reported to the floor of the House. At this writing its fate is unclear.

Aside from hungry people and local businesses, HB 3484 would also mean a loss for West Virginia farmers and farmers’ markets, which now offer SNAP Stretch, a program that allows people to double their purchasing power for fresh and locally grown food.

The bill goes against the grain of actions taken by political leaders in recent times. In 2021, for example, House Speaker Roger Hanshaw, R-Clay, announced the creation of a Food Insecurity Workgroup “dedicated to utilizing every tool at West Virginia’s disposal to help reduce hunger throughout the state.”

The group met regularly to hear from experts in the field and made positive recommendations about increasing CARES Act funding to combat hunger. In December 2021, Governor Justice agreed, providing $7.25 million for food insecurity partners across the state. Reportedly, Speaker Hanshaw may reactivate the group.

Meanwhile, Gov. Jim Justice in his 2023 state of the state speech said that “We need to try with all in us to say, by God we’re not going to have hungry people in West Virginia today.”

The governor released a proclamation declaring Jan. 26 to be Hunger Free West Virginia Day, acknowledging that 217,690 people here, including 63,070 children are food insecure; one in six children experiences hunger regularly; and that many seniors have to chose between lifesaving medications and a healthy diet.

It had strong language, such as “it is essential to provide appropriate, healthy nutrition to all residents of West Virginia suffering from food insecurity;” “Charitable programs are unable to fully support those facing hunger. A combination of charity and government assistance programs is necessary to help bridge the meal gap;” and “food is a human right.”

The senate also weighed in last month with a resolution that stated “The West Virginia Senate recognizes food insecurity is prevalent in our communities, with 1-in-7 West Virginians not knowing where their next meal will come from…”

Things are challenging enough in West Virginia already, whether we’re talking low-income adults, kids, and seniors or people in local businesses, farmers, agencies, and charities. We don’t need a bad law to make a tough situation worse.

It’s sad but some people seem to derive gratification from harming people with less power than themselves, especially if they don’t think their targets can retaliate. Poor people are a convenient target for those who enjoy this kind of thing.

That’s what this is. That’s all this is.

(This ran as an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

Child Tax Credit should help those who need it most

 Imagine developing a powerful medicine that could dramatically reduce human suffering, and then denying it to those who need it most.

Unfortunately, something like that could happen, with legislation now under consideration in Washington. The “medicine” is the expanded child tax credit that was passed as part of the American Rescue Plan and that went into effect in July and could expire at the end of the year, unless action is taken.

The child tax credit covers nearly all American children, including about 346,000 in West Virginia. And that’s a good thing. When the first installment of the refundable credit went out for the first time on July 15, the Census Bureau found that food insecurity in households with children immediately dropped by about 25%.

Probably the greatest thing about the child tax credit is its broad reach. By covering so many families, it could do for kids what Social Security did for elderly Americans. Before Social Security became a thing, poverty rates were high for older Americans. In 1969, for example, more than a third of older Americans experienced poverty. By the end of the century, the rate had dropped to less than 10%.

Without Social Security today, the poverty rate for the elderly would climb to nearly 40%, but it also makes life easier for millions of families living above the poverty line. That’s one reason why it’s so popular.

The child tax credit can do the same for our children. It has the potential not only to help working families but also to reduce child poverty by nearly half. However, that will happen only if it is extended and if it doesn’t exclude those families living in deepest poverty.

It’s kind of like the flip side of the old story about asking a bank robber why he robbed banks. He answered, “That’s where the money is.” If you want to reduce child poverty and the lifelong damage it can do, you need to go where the money isn’t.

Any measure that would impose income requirements to qualify for an extended child tax credit would undo its most beneficial effects by leaving out those with little or no income.

One population that could be hit hard by income and employment requirements is households with grandparents and other seniors raising children. According to the Census Bureau, in 2019 — before the COVID-19 recession — West Virginia was among the top five states where grandparents were responsible for taking care of children. We’re mostly talking about retirees, although anyone who has raised children knows that is work.

According to a news report from Clarksburg’s WBOY, “More than half of grandparents in West Virginia who live with their grandchildren who are 18 or younger are responsible for them, according to the 2019 U.S. Census numbers, making West Virginia the second in the nation for grandparents raising grandchildren.” The numbers have gone up since then.

According to the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources, slightly over half of state children in foster care are in a formal or informal kinship/relative home, with much of the weight carried by seniors.

Another group that could miss out is people with disabilities or those who care for them, a group that overlaps to some degree with seniors. In 2019, about one in five West Virginians (nearly 350,000) had some type of disability. For people over age 65, the figure is about 40%. In 2017, 37% of working-age West Virginians with disabilities, i.e., those most likely to have children, lived in poverty.

Then there are parents and kids in domestic violence situations, which have been described as “intimate terrorism.” Among a host of bad things, this can keep people from meeting income and employment requirements for reasons of either power and control or personal and family safety.

According to Futures Without Violence, a national nonprofit advocacy group, “About one in four women experience intimate partner violence over their lifetime and reported some related impact.” Women between the ages of 18 and 24, prime childbearing years, suffer the highest rates of intimate partner violence.

The group also notes: “Increased financial security also gives survivors of domestic violence more options for safety for themselves and their children, such as living independently from an abusive partner.” Too often, people stay with abusive partners because they lack financial resources to support themselves and their children. Fully 74% of women in those situations reported staying in an abusive environment because they lacked financial resources according to a 2012 survey.

The Resource Center on Domestic Violence: Child Protection and Custody reports: “One researcher has estimated conservatively that at least 10 to 20% of children are exposed to intimate partner violence annually, with as many as one-third exposed at some point during childhood or adolescence.”

Nobody wins by denying benefits to people who are too terrorized to hold a job.

Aside from those situations, there also are people simply with very low incomes, those who have lost work because of the pandemic and seasonal workers in industries like tourism, one of our few growing economic sectors.

The beauty of the child tax credit is that it benefits a wide range of families with children. That needs to stay. But we shouldn’t leave anyone behind, especially those who would gain the most.

(This ran as an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

Some REALLY good news

 For those who are dreading what promises to be a metaphorical legislative bloodbath in West Virginia, here's some good news for the state and nation.

First a little background. A major provision of the 2010 Affordable Care Act was expanding Medicaid eligibility to 138 percent of the federal poverty level. Originally, that was supposed to be applied across the board, but the US Supreme Court made it a state option when it ruled the ACA to be constitutional in 2012.

By now, 39 states, including DC, have extended the coverage, which is life saving and game changing in so many ways, from supporting jobs to opening the door to recovery. You can probably guess many of the states that haven't expanded it if you think of the Civil War. Thank God West Virginia isn't on that evil list.

When Trump became president, a major goal was total repeal of the ACA. It was scary for a long while, but eventually that idea went the way of the whole Mexico-paying-for-the-wall thing. However, his administration did encourage states to apply for waivers that would require people in the expansion population to meet so-called "work requirements." 

These didn't promote work but rather paperwork, reporting and surveillance on a population that mostly consisted of people already working. These would have resulted a huge portion of people in the program being cut off for no good reason. Some states applied, but their waiver plans were blocked by the courts.

In West Virginia, we've worked with allies to fight off at least two serious efforts to seek Medicaid waivers and until today were expecting more, which brings us to the good news part of the program. According to an article in today's Washington Post, 

The Biden administration is planning Friday to wipe out one of the core health policies of the Trump era, taking actions that will immediately rescind permission for states to compel poor residents to work in exchange for receiving Medicaid benefits.

Federal health officials will withdraw their predecessors’ invitation to states to apply for approval to impose such work requirements and will notify 10 states granted permission that it is about to be retracted, according to a draft plan obtained by The Washington Post and confirmed by two individuals familiar with the decision, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

So it looks like that's one less thing to worry about. I'll take it.

 

Hungry times

In case you missed it, here's a great New York Times article about the impact of restrictions on SNAP food assistance in West Virginia. It actually features my hometown, along with the great work of a friend and comrade with the WV Center on Budget and Policy's Seth DiStefano.

Beginning in 2016, the state imposed work reporting requirements on the nine counties with the best employment outlook...and the result was disaster, with over 5,400 people being cut off. As a result of bad legislation passed last year, that failed policy is going statewide.

Now, thanks to a certain presidential administration, that bad idea is about to be nationalized, as I wrote in this blog post for the national AFSC.

Yesterday, WV Governor Jim Justice proclaimed "Hunger Free West Virginia Day." While we're hoping to make some progress in that arena, I wanted to scream that the job would be a lot easier if WV hadn't messed with SNAP to start with.

The right way to promote work

During the last legislative session, the West Virginia House of Delegates came dangerously close to passing a bill that could have taken away health insurance coverage from 46,000 or more West Virginians covered by Medicaid expansion.

The bill was framed as a work requirement for the 160,000 or so people who gained coverage by the expansion. Actually, it would have been more of a paperwork reporting requirement that would have created an extra layer of bureaucracy and done a lot of damage without actually promoting work.

There were several things wrong with the bill, the most obvious being that the vast majority of adults who gained coverage are already working the many low-wage but necessary jobs that don’t come with benefits like health coverage and paid sick days and are often only part time.

That’s the real problem.

The Kaiser Family Foundation reported in 2017 that 48 percent of private-sector jobs don’t provide health coverage. Making life more miserable for the people who hold down those jobs would accomplish nothing.

If policymakers really want to help this population move ahead in employment, rather than punish them for being poor, they might look at an innovative and nonpunitive work program being piloted in Louisiana with bipartisan support.

The state’s governor, John Bel Edwards, expanded Medicaid in 2016. Louisiana was the first deep Southern state to take that step. The rate of uninsured Louisianans declined by half over the next year. By early 2019, around half-a-million state residents gained coverage.

As is the case in West Virginia, most of those people hold down jobs, but some might only be working part time or going to school or caring for a relative with a disability.

As an effort to help people move up the economic ladder, the state recently unveiled a voluntary work training program for Medicaid expansion recipients to be piloted in Monroe and West Monroe via a collaboration between the Louisiana Department of Health and Louisiana Delta Community College.

The program will offer training to prepare people for real jobs that need filled in the local community. At this point, offerings include Certified Nurse Assistant/Behavioral Health Technician (239 hours), Commercial Vehicle Operations (160 hours), Environmental Services Technician (120 hours), forklift and OSHA 10 training (24 hours) and Mortgage Documents Specialist (18 hours).

The long-term goal is to expand the program statewide, again offering voluntary training targeted to local labor-market conditions.

In today’s climate, it’s pleasant to note that people reached across the aisle to make something work.

According to Democratic Rep. Katrina Jackson, who authored the bill, “This is not just about training but about helping our people transition to a work environment that gives them a hand up and enables them to get to the point where they can take care of themselves and their families by being gainfully employed.”

Republican Rep. Frank Hoffman, who earlier had proposed similar legislation, was equally supportive, saying, “The goal of my legislation was never to cause anyone to lose their Medicaid coverage, but rather to help them find solid employment. I am pleased that we have reached this point and anticipate great success for those who participate and make the most of this opportunity.”

This is a good example of what can happen if people put ideology aside, focus on problem solving and give what Abraham Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature” a turn at the bat.

(This ran as an op-ed in yesterday's Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

Urgent alert for WV people: save health care for thousands

WV people, please consider calling your delegates and ask they vote NO on HB 3136. It would cost money, create bureaucracy, cut off around 46,000 people from Medicaid, most of whom work. It's up for a vote today. Thanks!

Here's the roster and here's a reminder of why the bill is a bad idea.

Messing with Medicaid is a bad idea

Back in May of 2013, then-Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin made the decision to expand Medicaid coverage to low-income families earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level.

By that one act, I think he did more to relieve unnecessary human suffering than any number of his predecessors. Maybe more than all of them put together.

Medicaid expansion was an option under the Affordable Care Act. It was originally intended to apply to all states, but this provision was struck down by the US Supreme Court in 2012. Since then, it has become a state option.

That decision has been a lifesaver and a game changer for tens of thousands of West Virginians. As of Feb. 19, 158,137 West Virginians are enrolled in Medicaid expansion. That’s a little shy of one out of 10 state residents, but not by much. In any given year, around 200,000 people have received coverage due to Medicaid expansion.

Most people who gained health coverage came from working families not otherwise eligible for traditional Medicaid.

A lot of the credit for that goes to the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources, which did an amazing job of reaching out to and enrolling eligible citizens.

I’m not sure how much this weighed on Gov. Tomblin’s decision at the time, but the expansion opened the gates of treatment for addiction and, ultimately, recovery for thousands of West Virginians struck by the opioid epidemic.

In the words of Nan Whaley, mayor of Dayton, Ohio, a city that has made great progress in reducing overdose deaths, “If you’re a state that does not have Medicaid expansion, you can’t build a system for addressing this disease.”

Not only did West Virginia do something right, but it did it well. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that there’s a move in the Legislature to impose a policy that has failed elsewhere. The House Finance Committee recently voted to impose on West Virginia a policy that has caused a great deal of unnecessary suffering in Arkansas.

The failed policy sounds good, at a superficial level: Let’s impose work requirements on those who receive expanded Medicaid coverage.

I’ve used this Bible verse more than once, but it still fits: “There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.”

Instead of promoting work, it increases bureaucratic costs and reporting requirements and results in cutting people off for no good reason.

By August 2018, over 18,000 enrollees out of 62,000 — nearly one out of three — in the Arkansas program had been cut off. There’s no evidence whatsoever that those people are doing more work, but it’s a safe bet that they are worse off.

Closer to home, Kentucky has applied for a waiver to impose a similar but more draconian work requirement on its Medicaid population. According to the research of Simon Haeder of West Virginia University’s Rockefeller School of Policy and Politics, if West Virginia would follow suit, this would impact 95,000 West Virginians, including those who are unemployed or who are working but can’t get enough hours to meet the requirement.

Even if we just assume that West Virginia’s results would be similar to those in Arkansas, we would see over 46,000 people losing coverage. That would be about the same as the entire population of Huntington or Charleston — or of Pocahontas, Doddridge, Calhoun, Pleasants, Pendleton, Tucker and Wirt counties combined.

Apparently, some people didn’t get the memo that having health care isn’t a barrier to employment, it actually helps you stay in the game. I know plenty of people, myself included, who are working and paying taxes today but would probably have been disabled or dead without health care.

For that matter, cutting people off from Medicaid doesn’t just hurt those individuals, it also affects local hospitals and health care providers, reduces money coming to local communities and can have a negative effect on employment. And it drives up health care costs for everyone else by increasing emergency room visits and uncompensated care.

The main support for this seems to come from the same kind of outsider-funded astroturf groups that gave us education “reform.” Last year, one of these types of bills succeeded, resulting in new state code that took basic food assistance away from homeless people.

It’s sad to say, but some people in power evidently derive some kind of weird gratification by imposing misery on those less powerful.

Somehow, however, I don’t think most West Virginians are into that kind of thing.

I hope the majority of West Virginia legislators ultimately agree.

(This ran as an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

Speaking of the Grinch...

The big news lately is Prince Joffrey's President Trump's government shutdown temper tantrum. But that's not the worst thing he's done this week. That honor would have to go to his decision to bypass congress and impose restrictions on basic SNAP food assistance to low income Americans.

Congress debated such measures for a good part of this year and wound up doing the right thing. Apparently, the president and his cronies couldn't let that good deed go unspoiled. You can read more about what that means here and here.

It's not over by any means. There are likely to be political as well as legal challenges. It's a good idea now to prepare to flood USDA inboxes when the proposed changes are up for public comment. Things might have to get a bit more interesting down the road.

IN A RELATED STORY...spiders could at least theoretically eat all humans on earth in one year.

Hunger games, WV style

This op-ed on efforts to restrict SNAP (formerly known as food stamp benefits) ran in today's Gazette Mail.

I think it’s interesting that many religious traditions uphold the idea of food justice. In part, that notion means that all people should have access to the nourishment that sustains life.

In the Torah, the fountainhead of Judaism, the biblical Book of Leviticus (23:22) requires all keepers of the covenant to leave a portion of their harvest for the poor and the foreigner, a theme reiterated many times by the Hebrew prophets.

The gospels are all about food, both literal and spiritual. One of the strongest passages is in Matthew 25 related to the last judgment. In it, both those destined to be saved and those destined to be damned are pretty surprised at their status. The former are told that they gave the Son of Man food and drink when he was hungry, while the latter did not.

Neither group seems to know exactly what he was talking about. The punchline came when the Judge says that whatever acts of justice or mercy were given to or withheld from “the least among you” was also done to him.

In the Quran, it is written that “In the sight of God, harshness, carelessness or even insensitivity to the suffering of the poor, helpless and hungry is tantamount to denying the religion and the Day of Judgment.”

Even pagans seemed to get the memo. Say what you want about the ancient Romans, but they at least provided food assistance for citizens displaced from their farms when rich aristocrats took over vast tracts of land. In the Egyptian Book of the Dead, souls seeking a pleasant afterlife must pledge to the gods among other things that “I have not caused hunger.”

I could go on.

I hope that state legislators recall such ancient wisdom as they contemplate legislation that would restrict SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) assistance through time limits, punitive asset tests, unrealistic requirements, and time limits.

Or at least that they’d do the math.

Whatever noble motives people championing such legislation claim, the end result will be increased hunger and food insecurity. And less money circulating through our communities. And more of a drain on already overburdened food pantries and charities.

This isn’t speculation. It’s a fact.

Last year, the state Department of Health and Human Resources piloted a program implementing just some of these measures in nine counties. These were the most prosperous counties with the least unemployment. Presumably, these would be the counties with the best possible outcomes.

The results are in. Imposing time limits and unsupported requirements on able bodied adults without dependents (so-called ABAWDs, a dehumanizing label) didn’t result in more people being better off. It resulted in more people losing basic assistance and millions of dollars being taken out of the local economy.

Of nearly 14,000 people referred to education and training programs, only 259 gained employment by participation in the program.

There was no growth in the employment of the target population. According to DHHR, “The percentage of working ABAWDs proportional to the total SNAP population has held steady since the work requirements were put into place.”

On the other hand, 5,417 people were cut off. And over $13 million dollars was taken out of the local economy. (Multiply 5,417 by around $200 per month in SNAP benefits times 12 months.)

That was money that could support over 700 full-time retail jobs for a full year at the state’s minimum wage. That unspent local money doesn’t go into some imaginary pool for the “worthy poor” or get refunded to taxpayers. It’s just gone.

And it’s money that would have created jobs, supported food producers and local businesses, been invested in local banks and loaned out to local people for homes, cars and businesses.

DHHR estimates that if these measures were implemented statewide, it would mean the loss of nearly $18 million that could have been circulating through West Virginia’s economy. That’s even more of a loss to local jobs and businesses.

One would hope that considerations of justice, compassion and humanity as expressed in our religious traditions would be considered. Failing that, there’s the hope that considerations of jobs, profits for food producers and local businesses might be considered.

Failing either, the mean spirited political bullying of the least among us might prevail.

The jury is still out. I stand with the Judge.

Food, work, money and survival

This op-ed of mine ran in the Charleston WV Gazette-Mail Friday. It's about proposed changes to the SNAP or food stamp program:

There’s concern across the political spectrum about how to get more people into the workforce. For good reason. Our participation rate of around 53 percent is lowest in the country and below the U.S. average of around 63 percent. That brings our numbers down when it comes to income and productivity.

There are several proposals to address this. Some have evidence to back them up. Others are likely to be counterproductive.

One that could do more harm than good unless we get it right has to do with the SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) or food stamp program.

Proposals are circulating in the Legislature and administration to impose 20-hour weekly work requirements for able-bodied adults without dependents aged 18 to 50. Those who don’t would only be eligible for benefits in three months of a three-year period.

The administration has already implemented a pilot in nine counties based on this concept, although it allows for exemptions for recipients who have mental or physical disabilities, etc.

Work requirements sound good. We’d all be better off if more were working, earning money and paying taxes. But a ham-fisted approach could not only hurt low-wage workers but local businesses and charities as well. And it could even kill more jobs.

According to Metro News, there are nearly 90,000 such adults in this group statewide. Many are already working but can’t get 20 hours or more per week. They’re already subject to basic work requirements which include being registered for work, participating in SNAP education and training as required, accepting suitable employment if offered, and not voluntarily reducing work hours below 30 per week (although the degree to which these have been implemented here isn’t clear).

Still others in this group are seeking work but haven’t found it. Jobs are scarce, particularly in areas hard hit by the decline of coal. We have the highest unemployment rate in the country and 39,000 fewer jobs than before the recession.

A 20-hour weekly average work requirement would be great if the Department of Health and Human Resources could guarantee job or volunteer placement, workfare or training and if it gave adequate supportive services when needed such as transportation assistance. And if it had the ability to do case management and exempt people not suited for employment.

Unfortunately, as of now it can’t and doesn’t. Before we move in that direction, we need to make sure the infrastructure is in place.

Even in these polarized times, conservatives and progressives have found common ground on this. A recent report jointly produced by the Brookings Institution and the conservative American Enterprise Institute argued that “if we require more work as a condition of receiving public benefits, we should support policies expanding work availability to those who need it, especially during economic downturns or in depressed regions of the country.”

“Depressed regions of the country” … that would be us.

If we don’t do this right, tens of thousands of people — despite their best efforts —are likely to be cut off. In Maine, for example, 80 percent lost benefits.

These are people with very low incomes. Over 80 percent are below half of the poverty line. They don’t qualify for TANF or disability benefits. SNAP benefits for such people averaged $143 per month in 2015.

Try living on that.

If cutoffs come, businesses would lose. SNAP benefits don’t gather dust. They’re spent right away in convenience stores, groceries, big-box retailers and farmers markets. This supports jobs for local workers. According to the USDA, every $5 in SNAP benefits generates as much as $9 of economic activity. Further, this boost to West Virginia’s economy doesn’t come out of the state budget; SNAP is a federal program that also supports farms and agri-businesses.

State food pantries, soup kitchens and local charities often operated by our faith communities are already stretched to the limit and won’t be able to take up the slack.

Worse, all this could actually result in fewer jobs due to the millions we’re taking out of the economy.

Let’s do the math: if only half as large a percentage lose benefits as in rural Maine, we’re talking about taking around $62 million per year away from local businesses and economies every year (36,000 people x $143 per month x 12 months). That’s enough to pay for nearly 3,400 full-time, 40-hour per week retail jobs at the state minimum wage of $8.75.

Bottom line: if we get this wrong, it would hurt local businesses, charities and low wage workers trying their best to get by. Nobody wins. We need to take the time to get it right and find solutions that work for everyone.