The Democrats will fight tooth and nail to save the unearned government entitlements.
Rep. Jim Jordan introduced a bill Thursday that would reform the Department of Agriculture’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
“Welfare programs are meant to be a temporary safety net, but they have become a permanent way of life for millions of Americans,” Jordan, R-Ohio, said in a statement. “Instead of giving impoverished families and individuals a helping hand, the current system penalizes positive steps toward self-sufficiency.”
According to a press release from Jordan’s office, H.R. 5360, the Welfare Reform and Upward Mobility Act, is based on Maine’s successful reforms and the welfare reforms of 1996.
The bill would, among other things, implement stricter work requirements for “able-bodied” adults without dependents receiving assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. It would also help recipients with employment training and job searches to give recipients the tools needed to overcome poverty.
“Able-bodied individuals should be required to work—or be prepared to work—as a condition to receiving aid,” Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal.
Jordan, alongside Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, wrote in an op-ed for National Review on Thursday that “the key to understanding America’s social-welfare system today—and why it needs to be reformed—is not its bloated annual budget but its tendency to undermine the two most dependable routes out of poverty: work and marriage.”
“Work and marriage are the greatest protectors against poverty. Unfortunately, the means-tested welfare system undermines both,” Rachel Sheffield, a policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal in an email. “These institutions are weaker today than when the War on Poverty began back in the 1960s.”