The tentative agreement by President Biden and House Republicans to raise the debt ceiling creates domestic spending cuts that are likely to disproportionately harm low-income and other vulnerable people. The deal to prevent US debt default targets a group of struggling workers in their 50s for particularly harsh treatment by denying many of them food aid. This is indefensible.

The media has lazily repeated Republican characterizations of the proposed new restrictions on nutritional aid as work requirements. They are not.

When most people hear job requirement, they assume that those in need can simply fulfill the requirement and get help. They assume they are like the airline seatbelt requirement, which allows anyone to fly as long as they buckle up.

Prior to the 1990s, job requirements in welfare programs generally worked that way. not anymore

Chairman Bill

Clinton’s Social Security reform ushered in a new type of work requirement that is, in effect, a means of disqualifying the unemployed and underemployed from government assistance. To refuse help to people when they are between jobs, that is, when they need it most, would seem cruel to most people. So those who wanted to coined the Orwellian term work requirement, and it stuck.

Since 1996, assistance to childless adults up to age 50 under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as SNAP and formerly food stamps, can be terminated after three months without monthly proof of at least part-time employment. The debt limit agreement would extend that limitation to age 55.

The Social Security Administration categorizes those who would be affected as near advanced age. People with limited education and skills face increasingly bleak job prospects as they age and their capacity for heavy manual work declines. Many support themselves by stitching together several part-time jobs with hours that are often highly variable.

Some of their employers have no interest in reporting their hours to government agencies. And sometimes their total number of hours falls just under half the time, after which their benefits are stopped. In theory, they can reapply when their hours increase, but applying for help is a pain, all the more so when juggling several dodgy jobs.

When so-called work demands were first imposed, proponents insisted that anyone unable to find work could do unpaid community service in exchange for benefits. The law allowed it, but only a few states enacted workfare programs, and even those typically served only a small number of people in a few counties. The Clinton administration and Congress provided extra money to states that agreed to provide job opportunities for those who would otherwise not receive benefits, but only a handful of states accepted, and at least one failed to keep its promise.

State officials across the political spectrum hate running workfare programs because they are complicated, expensive, and ineffective at getting people into paid work. Conservative states prefer to simply stop aid. Liberal states prefer to give aid to those in need and let them find work themselves, which they generally do energetically so they can earn money for housing, utilities, and needs other than food.

Work requirement advocates also pushed for states to be able to get exemptions for people in areas with insufficient job opportunities. But conservatives characterized such waivers as anti-work and passed laws barring government human services agencies from seeking them, even for the most underserved areas.

Proponents of the restrictions also point out that the law exempts those who can demonstrate incapacity for work due to disability. But the people who are denied assistance often don’t have access to doctors to document those disabilities, especially in conservative states that have rejected Medicaid expansion enabled by the Affordable Care Act.

For a quarter of a century, we have denied food aid to people who are temporarily unemployed, underemployed, or unable to navigate a myriad of bureaucratic hurdles for various reasons. Numerous studies have shown that this did nothing to increase employment.

Disqualifying older workers is even less likely to achieve that supposed goal. And because food aid payments are so modest, the additional restrictions are unlikely to reduce the deficit much. The deal being considered by Congress adds minor exceptions to the requirement, but the fundamental result will be that older workers who are out of work will be denied food.

Amazingly, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his fellow Republicans held US credit and the global economy hostage for this reprehensible purpose and the president gave them what they wanted. The result should bring nothing but shame to all involved.

David A. Super is a professor of law and economics at Georgetown.