Latest news with #SupplementalNutritionalAssistanceProgram
Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Health
- Yahoo
After multiple arrests, Iowa man sues when he's denied SNAP benefits
(Photo by) An Iowa man who says he has no stable access to food is suing the state, alleging it has unfairly denied him access to food assistance based on a criminal conviction later voided by the courts. Charles Hasselmann, 32, of Ankeny alleges that in 2023, he applied for food assistance while residing in a correctional facility as a result of a probation-revocation order that was premised on a finding of him being a habitual offender. The sentence was later vacated by a district court judge, Hasselmann claims, with the judge finding the habitual-offender enhancement to his sentence on a theft conviction lacked sufficient factual basis. Because of that finding, the court also set aside the related order that revoked his probation, Hasselmann claims. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX Court records indicate the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services later disqualified Hasselmann from receiving food assistance through the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, or SNAP, for at least 12 months. It also demanded restitution for overpayment, citing 'stolen' funds that Hasselmann says are due to others' unauthorized use of his benefits card. In his lawsuit against DHHS, Hasselmann is seeking an injunction that would award him SNAP benefits and halt any further efforts at collections for the alleged overpayments. In his petition, Hasselmann claims he was recently released from more than two years of incarceration and now has no reliable access to food or income. The public interest, he argues, strongly favors his access to 'basic nutritional support.' The state has yet to file a response to the lawsuit, but in a related court case attorneys for the state argued that while a judge did find there was insufficient factual basis to impose the habitual-offender sentence enhancement on the conviction for theft, the court did not disturb the underlying conviction for theft. The state's lawyers say that under a plea deal that was later reached, Hasselmann had agreed to a prison term of no more than five years on the theft charge. The court then set aside the earlier probation violation order, the state alleges, not because it represented 'an illegal sentence,' but because, through the subsequent plea deal, a five-year prison sentence had been agreed to and imposed. Court records indicate that since 2012, Hasselmann has been charged with numerous felony and misdemeanor offenses, resulting in seven convictions for theft, five convictions for driving while barred, five convictions for forgery, two convictions for assault and two convictions for drunken driving. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Largest cuts ‘in history:' Local impact of potential cuts to SNAP benefits in Trump bill
SAVANNAH, Ga. (WSAV) – President Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill' aimed at cutting taxes and federal spending will also include cuts to programs like the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), a program hundreds of thousands of Georgia households rely on to feed their families. The legislation passed in the United States House of Representatives over a week ago. The way the bill is currently written, thousands of Georgians would no longer meet the federal requirements to receive SNAP benefits. 'I stay home because I'm disabled, but even with the food stamps I get, I'm still having to pay out of pocket,' Heather Nelson, whose family receives SNAP said. Right now, anyone who does not work but has children under the age of eighteen is eligible to receive benefits. Under Trump's bill, those who do not work would only be eligible to receive SNAP if their children are under eight. 'They're still growing. They're actually hungrier than after that age. So, they're eating more food than normal, especially in summer. So, they're home all the time,' Nelson said. 'Cutting after the age of eight, I think that's crazy.' The second major change would be an increase in the age requirement for SNAP for older adults. People who don't or can't work wouldn't be eligible to receive SNAP until 64, instead of the current age of 54. 'It takes about 300 billion dollars out of SNAP, according to the non-partisan congressional budget office. This is the largest cut to the food assistance program in history,' Alex Jacquez, Chief of Policy and Advocacy at Groundwork Collaborative, an economic policy think tank in Washington, D.C, said. According to Jacquez, Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill' shifts some of the cost for SNAP benefits to the states, which could lead to major cuts to the program at the state level. 'These are generally payments that have always been made by the federal government, and they're instituted in an escalating penalty type of way,' Jacquez said. 'Instead of having to actually make the outlays, the choice that these states are going to make is either to cut benefits back or opt out of the SNAP program entirely.' Trump's bill will go to the U.S. Senate next and it could be changed or rewritten in any number of ways during that process. House Republicans said their goal is to get the bill passed in both chambers and signed into law by July 4. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
7 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
This program helps 6 million families pay their energy bills. Here's what's at risk if it's cut.
The Trump administration wants to eliminate the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), a little-known piece of the social safety net that helps low-income people pay their utility bills. Congress created the program in 1981, initially to help people pay for heating in the winter. The program — which has had broad bipartisan support — has increasingly been used to pay for cooling as summers grow hotter and more dangerous to human health due to climate change. At a recent budget hearing, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, called the program a 'lifesaver' for residents in Alaska when questioning Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about its future. Kennedy acknowledged the importance of the program but also said Trump's proposal to eliminate the funding was based on the expectation of lower future energy prices. Yet according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, residential energy prices are expected to go up in much of the country at least through 2026. Murkowski and lawmakers from across the aisle have been pressuring the administration to commit to funding the program, which provided $4.1 billion to states, territories and tribal nations in fiscal 2025. But the administration has not only called to defund the program in its entirety, but also has put the staff that administer the program at Health and Human Services (HHS) on leave. Advocates say the end of the program could be disastrous for households who rely on other government benefits that are also under threat, like the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) and Medicaid, which are both facing deep cuts. As the funding of LIHEAP continues to be debated on the national level, here's an explanation of what the program does and who it helps: LIHEAP helps about 6 million households pay their heating- and cooling-related utility bills annually and prevents disconnections through an emergency assistance fund. The payments typically go directly to the utility companies. States tailor the program to best fit the needs of residents. For example, in places like Arizona, where extreme heat kills hundreds of people a year, a higher allocation of funding goes to cooling assistance. In some states, funds can be used to repair furnaces or air conditioning units. States are required to account for both a household's income and its energy burden, or the percentage of a family's income that goes to pay utility bills, to target those most at risk for utility disconnections. Low-income households typically have higher energy burdens, often due to homes with poor insulation or drafty windows and doors. The LIHEAP program targets households with family members who are particularly vulnerable to extreme temperatures. In fiscal 2023, the program reached 2.1 million households where a resident had a disability; nearly 1 million households that had small children; and 2.4 million households that housed an elderly person. Both children and the elderly are more sensitive to extreme temperatures because they are physiologically less able to regulate their body temperature. People with complex medical needs also shoulder higher energy costs, due to electricity-dependent medical equipment. Single parents, who are disproportionately women, are more likely to be energy insecure, as are rural residents, Black, Indigenous and Latinx households. And the people who utilize the program are usually on the brink of an emergency — either already disconnected from their utility or on the verge of it. 'By the time they're reaching out for help, it's that their situation has escalated,' said Diana Hernandez, an associate professor and sociologist at Columbia University who studies energy insecurity. Only about 17 percent of eligible households receive LIHEAP assistance, said Hernandez, who has been pushing to increase funding for the program. 'The money always runs out,' she said. Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, an organization that works with state officials to implement LIHEAP, said electricity costs are going up at a higher rate than inflation and that rising temperatures are also leading to a greater need for cooling. 'In Southwestern states the length of the [heat waves are] getting longer,' Wolfe said. 'The bills are going up, and a lot of housing is just poorly built … so the costs are going up faster than expected,' he said. LIHEAP has multiple benefits that all center on keeping people safe and healthy in their homes, advocates say. While in many states residents have some protection from a utility disconnecting their electricity, without energy assistance programs like LIHEAP more households would likely keep their homes at dangerous temperatures to keep their bills down. In a Census Household Pulse Survey from 2024, nearly 23 percent of households reported keeping their homes at unsafe temperatures over the previous 12 months due to rising energy costs. But doing so is risky in places like Maricopa County, where Phoenix is located. While there is a moratorium on electricity shutoffs during the summer, in 2024, 138 people died indoors of a heat-related cause, with 18 percent of those deaths in a home where the AC was functioning but not turned on. Seventy percent did not have a working AC unit in a place where average summer temperatures are over 100 degrees. These deaths occurred in a state where over 20,000 households received LIHEAP assistance in fiscal 2023, according to the National Energy Utility Affordability Coalition, which tracks state use of funds. Without the program, 'we'll be having more and more of these unnecessary deaths,' Wolfe said. Helping to pay energy bills has also been shown to help keep families more food secure. According to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, 20 percent of U.S. households said they skipped meals and medicines to pay for electricity bills in 2020, a time when households were under additional stress due to the pandemic. And in a 2019 survey of LIHEAP recipients, 36 percent said that before they began to receive energy assistance, they went without food for at least a day to pay utility bills. It's called the 'heat or eat' phenomenon. 'Just because the bill gets paid, people should not assume that that's not at great cost,' said Olivia Wein, senior attorney with the National Consumer Law Center. But with multiple social welfare programs facing deep cuts, 'it's going to be harder and harder for people to do that, to juggle enough to get the bills paid on time,' she said. Wein points out that people's housing security could also be impacted. Maintaining a utility connection is a condition on many housing leases, and without LIHEAP, more people could face evictions, Wein fears. She's also worried children could be taken from their parents. 'Not having heat in the winter could result in Child Protective Services getting involved because your home is not habitable,' she said. 'So there are all of these ripple effects from unaffordable energy that we will unfortunately see on the grand scale without a strong LIHEAP program.' For fiscal 2025, all of the program's funding has already been released, so residents won't see an impact until fiscal 2026, which starts in September. But even if the program is funded, Wein says there will be issues with disbursement because of the federal layoffs. While each state develops individual programs, they still have to run their plans by the federal agency every year to determine state allocations, Wein said. This plan is also accompanied by a complicated formula that happens each time funding is released. Right now only four people are managing the LIHEAP program on the federal level; after the entire office was laid off in April. Wein predicts this will delay funding being sent to the states. HHS did not respond to a request for comment by press time. Additionally, community action agencies, places around the country where people go to apply for benefits like LIHEAP, could be shut down, due to a separate move to defund the Community Services Block Grant. This would make it harder for residents to apply to the program. 'We need that funding as part of our whole ecosystem,' Wein said. Trump also sought to zero out LIHEAP funding in his first term, but Congress ultimately is in charge of approving a budget. But Wein said the precarity of the program feels different this time around. 'Congress is really looking at cutting, cutting, cutting, cutting. … Things that you would never imagine being cut like entitlement programs are in live discussion right now. So that's the unknown.' Advocates say that there really isn't any other comparable safety net for residents seeking energy assistance if LIHEAP ends up being cut. Though alternatives like charitable giving and religious organizations can help pay for energy costs, it doesn't come close to meeting the needs of 6 million people who were previously reached by the program, Wein said. 'There is no easy fix and there is no comprehensive fix to losing LIHEAP,' she said. 'Every state is going to be devastated with the loss of this funding.' The post This program helps 6 million families pay their energy bills. Here's what's at risk if it's cut. appeared first on The 19th. News that represents you, in your inbox every weekday. Subscribe to our free, daily newsletter.
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Opinion - Working for welfare benefits is not punishment
One of the longtime dividing lines between conservatives and liberals or progressives is whether those receiving welfare benefits should be required to work. Conservatives see the requirement as a way to reduce costs; liberals see it as punishment for being poor. But its real benefit is to help individuals regain the dignity and self-respect that comes from having a job. The Republicans' budget bill will reportedly require states to enforce a work requirement for able-bodied individuals on Medicaid between the ages of 19 and 64. (They can also satisfy the requirement by looking for work or receiving job training.) Exceptions are made for those who are disabled, pregnant women, incarcerated or in a rehabilitation program. Like the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (also known as food stamps), Medicaid is a means-tested welfare program. Under the bill, an estimated 5 million people are expected to lose their Medicaid coverage, saving the government an estimated $300 billion over seven years. Any time Republicans propose a work requirement for welfare benefits, liberals and progressives whine and moan and claim the heartless Republicans are trying to punish people just for being poor. For example, the left-leaning Center for Budget and Policy Priorities complains, 'Taking assistance away from people who don't show they are complying with a work requirement punishes them for the racial and gender inequities of our nation's labor market.' When the Biden administration removed Republican-led work requirements for Medicaid, the pro-labor group On Labor wrote, 'This welcome change is a recognition of the fact that work requirements unfairly punish people living in poverty and are out of sync with workers' needs in the modern economy.' But it cannot be emphasized strongly enough: Requiring able-bodied people to work for their taxpayer-funded benefits — whether its food, housing, Medicaid or any other means-tested assistance program — is not punishment. About 165 million Americans under age 65 and their dependents — about 60 percent of the population — currently have employer-provided health insurance. They work for their health insurance. It is a benefit, not a punishment. When the pandemic started in February 2020, there were 71.4 million people enrolled in Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Plan. Due to the Biden administration's Medicaid expansion, that number went up, peaking at 94.6 million in April 2023. Since then, the numbers have slowly declined to 78.5 million. So even if the work requirement reduced the number of Medicaid participants by an estimated 5 million, that's still 2 million more people than were in the program at the beginning of the pandemic. In short, the proposal does not at all obliterate Medicaid. But any time a work requirement is proposed on any means-tested welfare program, liberals claim there is no need for it, because most recipients are already working. For example, the Kaiser Family Foundation says that in 2023, 64 percent of Medicaid participants were working full or part-time, and the rest weren't working because they fell into one of the exemptions. But this misses the point. If able-bodied recipients are already working, then why complain about requiring them to work to receive Medicaid? Perhaps most hypocritically, liberals and progressives often claim that even if a work requirement increases employment, it doesn't last long. What they don't tell you is that liberal politicians and bureaucrats at all levels of government work relentlessly to reduce, moderate or water down imposed work requirements over time. Progressives think they are doing welfare recipients a favor, but they're not. People who have been out of the workforce for months or even years begin to lose needed work habits and skills. They begin to lose respect for themselves, and they may turn to alcohol or drugs or other ways to ease the pain. Some welfare reform groups have demonstrated that employers are willing to take a chance on these individuals, if the state will let the welfare benefits (including Medicaid) continue during a trial working period, offsetting part of the cost to the employer. The employer gets a partially subsidized employee for a limited time, and potentially a full-time employee if it works out. I have talked to some of these individuals who were required to work for their benefits. They have very encouraging stories to tell of how they regained their dignity by once again providing for themselves and their families. They discover that work is empowering. They just needed a little push to get started. Merrill Matthews is a public policy and political analyst and the co-author of 'On the Edge: America Faces the Entitlements Cliff.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
20-05-2025
- Politics
- The Hill
Working for welfare benefits is not punishment
One of the longtime dividing lines between conservatives and liberals or progressives is whether those receiving welfare benefits should be required to work. Conservatives see the requirement as a way to reduce costs; liberals see it as punishment for being poor. But its real benefit is to help individuals regain the dignity and self-respect that comes from having a job. The Republicans' budget bill will reportedly require states to enforce a work requirement for able-bodied individuals on Medicaid between the ages of 19 and 64. (They can also satisfy the requirement by looking for work or receiving job training.) Exceptions are made for those who are disabled, pregnant women, incarcerated or in a rehabilitation program. Like the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (also known as food stamps), Medicaid is a means-tested welfare program. Under the bill, an estimated 5 million people are expected to lose their Medicaid coverage, saving the government an estimated $300 billion over seven years. Any time Republicans propose a work requirement for welfare benefits, liberals and progressives whine and moan and claim the heartless Republicans are trying to punish people just for being poor. For example, the left-leaning Center for Budget and Policy Priorities complains, 'Taking assistance away from people who don't show they are complying with a work requirement punishes them for the racial and gender inequities of our nation's labor market.' When the Biden administration removed Republican-led work requirements for Medicaid, the pro-labor group On Labor wrote, 'This welcome change is a recognition of the fact that work requirements unfairly punish people living in poverty and are out of sync with workers' needs in the modern economy.' But it cannot be emphasized strongly enough: Requiring able-bodied people to work for their taxpayer-funded benefits — whether its food, housing, Medicaid or any other means-tested assistance program — is not punishment. About 165 million Americans under age 65 and their dependents — about 60 percent of the population — currently have employer-provided health insurance. They work for their health insurance. It is a benefit, not a punishment. When the pandemic started in February 2020, there were 71.4 million people enrolled in Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Plan. Due to the Biden administration's Medicaid expansion, that number went up, peaking at 94.6 million in April 2023. Since then, the numbers have slowly declined to 78.5 million. So even if the work requirement reduced the number of Medicaid participants by an estimated 5 million, that's still 2 million more people than were in the program at the beginning of the pandemic. In short, the proposal does not at all obliterate Medicaid. But any time a work requirement is proposed on any means-tested welfare program, liberals claim there is no need for it, because most recipients are already working. For example, the Kaiser Family Foundation says that in 2023, 64 percent of Medicaid participants were working full or part-time, and the rest weren't working because they fell into one of the exemptions. But this misses the point. If able-bodied recipients are already working, then why complain about requiring them to work to receive Medicaid? Perhaps most hypocritically, liberals and progressives often claim that even if a work requirement increases employment, it doesn't last long. What they don't tell you is that liberal politicians and bureaucrats at all levels of government work relentlessly to reduce, moderate or water down imposed work requirements over time. Progressives think they are doing welfare recipients a favor, but they're not. People who have been out of the workforce for months or even years begin to lose needed work habits and skills. They begin to lose respect for themselves, and they may turn to alcohol or drugs or other ways to ease the pain. Some welfare reform groups have demonstrated that employers are willing to take a chance on these individuals, if the state will let the welfare benefits (including Medicaid) continue during a trial working period, offsetting part of the cost to the employer. The employer gets a partially subsidized employee for a limited time, and potentially a full-time employee if it works out. I have talked to some of these individuals who were required to work for their benefits. They have very encouraging stories to tell of how they regained their dignity by once again providing for themselves and their families. They discover that work is empowering. They just needed a little push to get started. Merrill Matthews is a public policy and political analyst and the co-author of 'On the Edge: America Faces the Entitlements Cliff.'
