WASHINGTON, Dec. 7, 2016 - The House
Agriculture Committee says the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program can be
improved by nudging recipients into jobs or better-paying work and by ensuring
that they have access to healthful foods.
Those ideas are among the findings of
a report on lessons the committee learned about from 16 hearings held over the
past two years. The report will be used in shaping the committee’s work on the
next farm bill.
The report includes
ideas that could find bipartisan support. There is “sincere interest on both
sides of the aisle in ensuring that SNAP is meeting the needs of those it is
intended to serve,” according to the report’s executive summary.
Among the
findings is that some states need to better enforce their work requirements and
that enforcement needs to be coupled with better employment and training
programs. “Promoting pathways to employment is
the best way to help individuals climb the economic ladder out of poverty and
into self-sufficiency,” the report says.
The report
also emphasizes the need for low-income people to have access to healthful
foods, regardless of whether they live in
rural or urban areas. “Nutrition education - working in tandem with targeted
incentives - can help SNAP recipients develop healthy lifestyles and healthy
eating habits,” the report says.
The report also says that more can be
done to cut down on errors and fraud and that there need to be clear program goals and
metrics for measuring progress. The committee found that addressing hunger
requires collaboration among governments, charities, businesses, health care
providers and communities, but the report also says that the diversity of
programs serving the poor have “simultaneously generated overlaps and gaps in
recipient services.”
"Over the past two years, we have
found that the program is working well in many areas, but there are a number of
areas in need of improvement,” said House Agriculture Chairman Mike Conaway,
R-Texas. “The findings in this report
will guide our efforts as we prepare to reauthorize SNAP in the 115th
Congress.”
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