Portside

Top Trump administration officials took to the pages of The New York Times on Wednesday to champion the idea of work requirements as Republican lawmakers attempt to impose such mandates on recipients of Medicaid and federal nutrition assistance—an effort that could result in millions losing benefits.

The new op-ed was authored by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner.

The Cabinet members endorsed "efforts to require able-bodied adults (defined as adults who have not been certified as physically or mentally unfit to work), with some exceptions, to get jobs" and urged Congress to "enact common-sense reforms into law."

Alarmingly, the Trump administration officials pointed to Clinton-era welfare reform as a model for "successful" policy change. They neglect to mention that extreme poverty more than doubled in the wake of the 1996 overhaul.

"The good news is that history shows us that work requirements work," the officials wrote.

Research and state-level experiments with work requirements belie that claim. Journalist Bryce Covert noted in response to the administration officials' op-ed that "there have been many, many studies on the impacts of work requirements—both in the 90s and today—and the clear consensus is that they deprive people of benefits without increasing employment."

One study of Arkansas' brief implementation of Medicaid work requirements during the first Trump administration found "no evidence that the policy succeeded in its stated goal of promoting work and instead found substantial evidence of harm to healthcare coverage and access."

A recent review of the literature on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) work requirements similarly concluded that "the best evidence shows they do not increase employment."

That didn't stop congressional Republicans from making work requirements a centerpiece of their proposed cuts to Medicaid and SNAP. The GOP's proposed work requirements for Medicaid recipients—most of whom already work if they are able to—account for over $300 billion of the bill's projected spending cuts to the program over the next decade.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) said Tuesday that the Republican plans for SNAP and Medicaid would put millions of people at risk of losing benefits, in large part due to the administrative red tape that work requirements and reporting mandates inevitably bring.

The group cited research showing that "many people who lose SNAP are working or should have qualified for an exemption, but the bureaucratic red tape made documenting their employment or proving their exemption too difficult."

On Wednesday, Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) released a report examining the impacts of Medicaid work requirements in Arkansas and Georgia.

"These two case studies are a cautionary tale," the report found. "They show that work reporting requirements are not effective. Instead of getting more people working, they simply kick people off their healthcare, many of whom were already working full-time."

In a statement, Warnock said research "shows that the best way to create jobs and grow the economy is to remove bureaucratic red tape that keeps working people from accessing healthcare."

"Instead, Washington politicians are ignoring clear data and forcing reporting requirements on working Americans as a cynical ploy to kick working people off their healthcare," said Warnock. "All of this so they can fund a tax cut for the ultra-wealthy."

Jake Johnson is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams.