Kentucky's Gov. Matt Bevin (troglodyte) has another plan in mind for making life as miserable as possible for the state's poor. In addition to having to jump through regular hoops and spend hours documenting their employment in order to stay on Medicaid, they'll have to do the same now to get food assistance. The state is going to impose a three-month limit on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. After three months, many receiving assistance will have to prove they are working to be able to eat.
Since jobs are still hard to find in significant parts of the state, this change will result in loss of food assistance and harm to economic activity in already-struggling local communities. […]
By May, most of the 87,000 Kentucky adults without dependents will have to prove to the state that they work or engage in some kind of work activity such as school, voluntary employment and training programs provided by the state or workfare (a kind of unpaid internship, often with nonprofits). If they have not kept up 20 hours of work activities per week for more than three months at any point in the past three years they will become ineligible for SNAP benefits—a rule that has never been in effect for all of Kentucky since the time limit went into effect in 1998. In fact in most of the years since 1998, a large number of Kentucky counties have been under a waiver due to a persistent lack of jobs. […]
Reinstating the three-month time limit will be especially difficult for groups of Kentuckians facing special barriers. Racial and ethnic minority Kentuckians more likely to face discrimination in labor markets, Kentuckians lacking a high school degree or GED and those with criminal records all deal with added challenges to finding long-term employment with enough hours. This is especially true in rural parts of the state where job availability continues to shrink compared to urban parts of the state that have better recovered from the Great Recession. There are 77 rural Kentucky counties that have fewer jobs now than 10 years ago, and 23 of those counties have seen a greater than 20 percent drop in jobs.
Even with food assistance, many Kentuckians are struggling. More than 743,0000 struggle with hunger at some point during the year, and many already have to rely on food banks because their incomes don't qualify for SNAP. This move from Bevin will swell those numbers.
Bevin is going to make being poor a full-time job for Kentuckians. In order to keep the assistance they need to get health care and food, they'll have to spend hours and hours proving that they are working. His real aim, however, is to make getting that assistance so onerous and humiliating that people stop getting help.