Food stamps for not working?

Opinion Journal:

John Lewis was furious. "They're coming for the children. They're coming for the poor. They're coming for the sick, the elderly and the disabled," said the Georgia Democrat. He was speaking in 1996 during the debate over welfare reform that he predicted would "put one million more children into poverty."

The reform passed but none of that happened. The law was an historic success, shrinking the welfare rolls even as its work requirement put more Americans on the road to self-sufficiency. Ron Haskins of the Brooking Institution found that, a decade after the changes, 60% of the adults leaving welfare were employed and child poverty rates fell.

It's worth recalling Mr. Lewis's fear and loathing amid this week's debate over a GOP attempt to impose a few modest reforms on America's exploding food-stamp entitlement. Democrats and the media are predicting a moral catastrophe, with the same over-the-top rhetoric, and they are as wrong now as they were then.

The nearby chart shows the explosion in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) from 2000-2012. The costs keep rising and will be about $83 billion this year, more than double the amount as recently as 2008. One-in-seven Americans, or 47.7 million, now let taxpayers pay for some or all of their grocery bills. That's more than the combined population of California, Oregon and Washington.

You'd expect the rolls to expand during a recession, but note that they are still climbing even in the fifth year of an economic recovery. Never has the program exploded like this. One reason is that the Obama Administration has actively sought to turn food stamps into another middle-class entitlement.

One of President Obama's first actions was to suspend the 20 hour-a-week work requirement for able-bodied adults as part of the 2009 stimulus. His budget requests in 2011, 2012 and 2013 called for the continued suspension of work requirements. Thanks to federal waivers, work rules remain effectively void in 45 states.

Mr. Obama also eliminated a long-standing three-month limit for employable adults to receive food stamps. Now benefits can last for three years or more. Congressional Research Service and USDA data show that the number of employable adults on food stamps without children expanded by 164% from 2007 to 2011 and only one in five of these recipients is working. College students are collecting food stamps in record numbers.

Mr. Obama also made food stamps more popular by giving recipients a cost-of-living adjustment that raised the value of food stamps by more than 10%. Families can now receive up to $10,000 in food stamps a year. Keep in mind this is only one of more than 50 federal welfare programs.
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The Republican bill would restore the work requirement and that has Democrats in another huff.  The program is out of control, but it must be seen as a good way for Democrats to buy votes, or they would not be supposed to reforming the program.