Farm Policy quotes Global Business and Economics Program Senior Fellow Douglas Besharov from his testimony before the House Committee on Agriculture on the need to modernize the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and better coordinate it with the other programs that make up the social safety-net:
Robert Greenstein, President of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and University of Maryland Professor Douglas J. Besharov were the only two witnesses at Wednesday’s hearing.
In prepared testimony, Prof. Besharov noted that, “I applaud this committee’s multi-faceted re-examination of the program, its past, present, and future. Based on my research and analysis, I think the key challenge is to modernize a massive program that started as a small program of food assistance to become the primary US program of income support.”
Prof. Besharov added that, “That would mean coordinating the SNAP program with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Unemployment Insurance, Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), and the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and other tax credits. In doing so, there should be an effort to rationalize the current patchwork of programs that make up the US safety-net in a way that balances what looks to be long-term weak demand for labor economic with the need to minimize the work and marriage disincentives in current law.”