PUNISHMENT IS THE POINT

It’s a done deal.

Late Thursday night the Senate passed a bill that, among other things, suspended the nation’s debt limits until January 1st, 2025 and, thereby, enabled Uncle Sam to avoid a default that would’ve wreaked economic havoc on domestic and international markets.

Now, and not surprisingly, the key actors who banged this thing out are taking their victory laps. President Biden can get some shine by noting how the Dems managed to beat back some of the more draconian initial aims of the Republicans and Speaker McCarthy, of course, can prance about talking about how his side managed to get a cap on some spending.

Indeed, President Biden is touting the agreement as a huge win. Here’s what he said on Thursday, June 1st:

“No one gets everything they want in a negotiation but make no mistake: This bipartisan agreement is a big win for our economy and the American people.”

Speaker McCarthy, for his own reasons, would undoubtedly sign off on that sentiment.

A default could have unleashed economic hell, both domestic and international.

So, it’s understandable that more than a few folks are breathing a little bit easier and even, perhaps, in a somewhat celebratory mood.

Yet, it’s easy to overlook or to be outright dismissive of the fact that the deal has the potential to significantly harm some of the nation’s most economically pressed citizens.

It’s easy to overlook that some of what we see in the debt ceiling has more to do with punishing the poor than diminishing the debt.

It's easy to overlook that sometimes punishment is the point.

TIGHTENING AND EXPANSION OF WORK REQUIREMENTS

We ought not to overlook the fact that, in banging out the debt deal, Congress actually sold out—again— the interest of some of the nation’s most economically vulnerable households. They did this by agreeing to expand a straight up trashy and demeaning policy—work requirements— to an additional set of people participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as “food stamps”).

The deal requires “able-bodied” people between the ages of 18 and 54—and without dependents—to work or participate in an approved training program for a minimum of 80 hours per month in order to receive food stamps for more than three months every three years; previously, this requirement only applied to “able-bodied persons” between the ages of 18 and 50.

What the deal does, then, is to subject an additional group of SNAP participants to work requirements: “Able-bodied persons without dependents” and between the ages of 50-54.

But here’s the crazy thing about this: There’s a trail of studies indicating that work requirements are trashy as all get out .The evidence is overwhelming that work requirements don’t increase the employment rates or earnings of those subject to them (for instance, see here or here or here ). In other words, despite how the proponents of these janky policies are endlessly jacking their jaws about how they’ll put some much needed coins in the pockets of the poor and enable them to become “self-sufficient,” nothing could be further from the truth.

Some of these same studies, by the way, do point out something that work requirements actually do quite well: kicking people off the programs providing them with some much needed access to goods that are central to human functioning and flourishing. More pointedly, these studies find that work requirements for social assistance programs, including SNAP, results in large reductions in program participants.

A study published in the American Journal of Public Health, for instance, finds that, between 2013 and 2017, the expansion of work requirements resulted in 600,000 persons losing their SNAP benefits.

The upshot? The doubling down on, and expansion of, work requirements will do next to nothing to increase the employment and earnings of SNAP participants but it’ll sure as hell will increase the likelihood that their SNAP will get snatched and that their food insecurity will be heightened.

THE MYTH OF SHADY ASS POOR PEOPLE

Ultimately, though, the people continually pushing for work requirements don’t have the slightest interest in data. Nor, for that matter, do they actually give a damn that expenditures on food stamps account for less than 3% of the federal budget and, therefore, can’t possibly be driving the increase in the federal debt that they’re always whining about.

They are, however, convinced that poor people, and especially the Black poor, are a bunch of indolent, shady-ass characters. Always plotting their next lick, always figuring out ways they can finesse the system and get something for nothing, always plotting on how they can pick the pockets of the public.

The construction and implementation of work requirements has a history that’s deeply steeped in anti-Black racism, misogyny, and moral revulsion toward the poor.

Republicans, of course, were the ones who pushed this trash like all get out. But—and I know it’s unpopular to say this— Democrats ultimately went along an expansion of this detritus, even if it was less harsh than what was originally on offer.

All of this, I think, is aptly captured in the words of Annie Lowery:

“Republicans worried about poor people working should start supporting policies proven to boost employment, like universal child care and effective job training. Democrats should feel ashamed for ever having supported work requirements. They should feel even more ashamed for offering them as a policy concession to Republicans now, when we have so much evidence of how little they help and how much they hurt.”