House Bill 3 is an extreme proposal to further restrict access to nutrition, health and cash assistance in Kentucky. It would require a massive, costly bureaucracy to implement and would push more low-income Kentuckians deeper into poverty. Similar bills have been introduced in other states in recent years, but HB 3 in Kentucky is by far the most harsh proposal of this kind.
Click here for a one-page fact sheet about HB 3.
Would cut off and reduce assistance for thousands of very poor Kentuckians
HB 3 proposes to change and restrict how Kentucky spends federal funding through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, which provides modest cash assistance and other services to very poor families. By shifting TANF funds away from cash assistance (only 15 percent could be used for this purpose compared to over half being used in this manner currently), HB 3 would result in thousands and possibly tens of thousands of poor Kentuckians, overwhelmingly children, having their benefits reduced and/or cut off completely. This shift in funds is a 78 percent cut to cash assistance. There are currently over 27,000 children receiving TANF in Kentucky, and the majority are in households led by caretaker relatives, most of whom are grandparents. HB 3 also puts at risk the state’s very successful Ready to Work program, which enables Kentuckians receiving TANF to earn a community college degree or credential.
Requires ineffective “workfare” for parents receiving food assistance
HB 3 would require all parents, ages 19 to 64 with children over the age of 5, to participate immediately in “workfare” to keep Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits if they are not already working or participating in the SNAP Employment and Training program. Workfare is basically an unpaid internship typically with a nonprofit organization, and research shows such programs are not beneficial to participants as a form of “training” when it comes to long-term employment and economic stability. Meanwhile, HB 3 does not address the many barriers to employment and training these families face, including the high cost and lack of availability of child care. There are approximately 95,000 parents in Kentucky with children ages 6 to 17 who are receiving SNAP.
Already in Kentucky, nondisabled adults ages 18 to 49 without dependents who receive food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) are newly subject to work requirements in all but 8 counties in southeast Kentucky. Under this rule, continuing to receive benefits after three months is contingent on participating in a “work activity” (such as a job or training program) for 20 hours a week. We’ve already seen more than 10,000 Kentuckians lose SNAP benefits due to the requirement — while many SNAP participants already work, research shows they face numerous barriers to employment, including a lack of jobs in many parts of the state, as well as barriers to participating in training programs.
Because of problems with compliance and reporting that will inevitably emerge, the new workfare mandate for parents in HB 3 would leave many more without the food assistance that is critical for health and productivity. And in order to implement a workfare program for tens of thousands of Kentuckians, the state would need to set up new complex systems for monitoring. It would also need to recruit and provide significant administrative oversight and support to a very large number of nonprofit organizations that likely cannot readily make use of so many people. All of this would cost tens of millions of dollars at the same time there is no meaningful evidence that unpaid work experience leads to consistent employment, has an impact on earnings or leads to reductions in public benefit receipt.
Codifies major barrier to Medicaid coverage
HB 3 enshrines the work activity-reporting requirement in the proposed 1115 Medicaid waiver into state statute. Under that plan, participants must report a minimum of 80 hours of work or work-related activity each month in order to stay covered by Medicaid.
This bill would make this requirement not just an experiment, meant to temporarily test the idea, but a permanent fixture of Kentucky’s Medicaid program. That would potentially tie the hands of future governors. This barrier to coverage already led to 18,000 Arkansans losing coverage over just five months last year. There is an ongoing lawsuit challenging this requirement and other parts of the waiver, and a federal judge is expected to rule prior to April 1, potentially striking it down.
Requires expensive new surveillance with SNAP and TANF photo ID cards
Another section of HB 3 would require that SNAP and TANF participants be issued Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards with a photo of the participant on the card. It would then also require that businesses authorized to sell groceries to SNAP participants check those photos and names to make sure the person purchasing the groceries is the same person on the card. Some individuals could be authorized to purchase groceries on behalf of SNAP participants, but there are few details in the bill about how that would work.
This is problematic for several reasons. First, federal rules prohibit SNAP retailers from treating SNAP participants differently from other customers. All customers paying with a bank or credit card would have to provide some form of photo ID, and the photo ID would have to match the card being used or else the cashier could not complete the transaction. If retailers violated this rule, they could be sanctioned by the federal Food and Nutrition Service agency.
Implementing this requirement would be very expensive and cumbersome. Purchasing the equipment to take photos, print the new EBT cards and train all case workers to use them would be enormously costly (potentially more than $10 million the first year). It could also jam up offices where applicants would have to show up in person annually to take their pictures. Applicants can currently enroll and renew online or on the phone, but this bill would likely require their physical presence for a picture to be taken.
And as mentioned, the state would have to track and authorize all individuals purchasing groceries on behalf of participants, and then distribute that information to every SNAP retailer in the state. It’s not even clear if the state has the legal authority to implement such a policy. There are a host of exemptions to this rule that would also have to be carefully tracked to ensure children, people with disabilities, seniors, homeless individuals and victims of domestic violence are not issued photo EBT cards and thus subject to the requirement.
While proponents of such changes believe they would lessen fraud, there is actually very little fraud in the SNAP program — and the benefit trafficking that does exist is primarily by retailers. Other states have found photo EBT to be costly and to have no impact on fraud.
Makes public benefits contingent upon costly, wasteful drug testing
HB 3 proposes the state spend an exorbitant amount of money to administer potentially illegal drug testing for public benefits, which, based on the experiences of other states, would not result in many people testing positive for drugs.
HB 3 would implement a mandatory “substance abuse screening program” for many Kentuckians applying for or already receiving TANF, SNAP and Medicaid. Anyone with a felony or misdemeanor “history of substance abuse” would have to go through a screening. That could include a questionnaire and blood or urine testing as an initial condition to receive benefits and then randomly once each subsequent year they receive assistance. An individual would have to pay all screening costs up front and be reimbursed if they do not test positive.
Kentucky already requires individuals with drug felony convictions to show proof they have participated in treatment in order to receive SNAP benefits, which is a barrier to nutrition assistance and reentry for many people. HB 3 would potentially apply to a very large number of Kentuckians who have ever been involved with the criminal justice system and have substance use documented. And because those receiving or applying for these public benefits are by definition low-income, it is unlikely they would be able to pay for a drug test up front.
Meanwhile research shows individuals receiving public assistance are not more likely to use drugs. There are also many questions about the legality of the drug testing proposed in HB 3, particularly for SNAP and Medicaid applicants/recipients.
Updated on March 4, 2019
