The Kentucky House Committee on Families and Children voted Thursday to advance a proposal that would enforce a rule saying Kentuckians can’t qualify for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program if they have financial assets that exceed certain thresholds.
A federal policy called broad-based categorical eligibility — which is used by most states — effectively lets the Kentucky government skip the asset test when determining if a resident is eligible for SNAP benefits.
Instead, it allows the state to grant SNAP eligibility if a person receives a benefit through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program.
House Bill 367 would eliminate the broad-based categorical eligibility policy for Kentucky and reapply the asset test for SNAP applicants.
“This is a means tested program. It's meant to focus on the truly needy, not be for everyone,” said Scott Centorino, of the Florida-based Foundation for Government Accountability and Opportunity Solutions Project.
Centorino, who testified at the committee hearing Thursday in favor of HB 367, said it “simply restores the federal asset test in food stamps and closes that loophole.”
Members of three Kentucky-based organizations — the Community Farm Alliance, Feeding Kentucky and the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy — spoke against the bill at the committee meeting.
They told lawmakers it would hurt families who genuinely need SNAP’s help to put food on the table.
Jordan Ojile of Feeding Kentucky said the current federal policy keeps families from getting penalized when they manage to cobble together a few thousand dollars in savings — enough money to disqualify them from SNAP but not enough to lift them out of poverty for the long term.
“The months go by without SNAP. They chip away at their savings paying for groceries, until they are right back in the hole that qualified them for nutrition assistance in the first place,” Ojile said.
Dustin Pugel, policy director at the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy, told LPM News that HB 367 also would require the state to use a stricter SNAP eligibility test for a household’s gross income. He said it would drop the threshold from 200% of the federal poverty level to 130%.
But he said the reinstatement of the asset test would have the biggest impact on families, explaining that basically every Kentuckian who gets SNAP benefits has that test waived under the broad-based categorical eligibility policy the bill would eliminate.
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Categories: Kentucky, General