2024 Federal Policy Priorities
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)
- Expand the number of people who are eligible to participate in SNAP:
- Align federal assistance programs with the eligibility standards of the Affordable Care Act, allowing all lawfully present immigrants to access federal programs without discriminatory bars or waiting periods
- End Able-Bodied Adults Without Dependents (ABAWD) time limits for all unemployed adults.
- In the interim, make permanent the new exemptions for foster youth, people experiencing homelessness, and veterans, currently set to expire to 2030.
- Permanently expand SNAP eligibility to students by eliminating long-standing work-for-food SNAP rules that require many students to work at least 20 hours per week or participate in federal work-study.
- Clarify the legal definition of the military’s Basic Allowance for Housing so it will not be counted as income when determining eligibility for SNAP.
- Repeal the 1996 ban on people with drug felony convictions receiving SNAP and allow for applications before release.
- Maintain and increase the adequacy of benefits provided through SNAP:
- Improve the adequacy of monthly SNAP allotments by using USDA’s Low-Cost Food Plan in place of the Thrifty Food Plan when calculating SNAP benefit amounts.
- Eliminate the cap on the Excess Shelter Deduction in the SNAP formula for all households to more accurately consider the cost of living for SNAP recipients in areas with high rent and utilities.
- Permanently authorize the standard medical deduction at a minimum of $140 for all seniors and disabled individuals to eliminate manual itemizing and to maximize SNAP benefit. Individuals with higher expenses could continue to apply for a higher, itemized medical deduction.
- Remove restrictions on purchase of hot prepared food items at participating SNAP retail locations.
- Maintain food choice for SNAP recipients, and prioritize incentives to purchase more produce.
Child Nutrition Reauthorization
- Reauthorize Child Nutrition Programs with timely and comprehensive legislation that ensures access to meal programs for all eligible children. The authorization for these federally-funded child nutrition programs expired in September 2015 and is currently being maintained through a Continuing Resolution.
School Meal Programs: School Breakfast Program (SBP), National School Lunch Program (NSLP), Community Eligibility Provision (CEP)
- Support Healthy School Meals for All
- Establish a nationwide universal school meal program where healthy free school meals are available to all children at no cost, regardless of individual household income.
- Strengthen and expand the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) in the following ways:
- Establish a statewide option to adopt CEP, enabling states to implement statewide universal meal programs.
- Increase the reimbursement multiplier from 1.6 to 2.5 to make CEP more financially feasible for eligible schools.
- Eliminate the eligibility threshold for CEP so that any school, group of schools, or school district can adopt the provision, similar to the approach to eligibility through Provision 2.
- Maintain and improve the integrity of school meals:
- Protect and maintain the school nutrition standards in SBP and NSLP.
- Increase SBP and NSLP reimbursements rates to match the recommended rates of the USDA School Nutrition and Meal Cost Study, then adjust annually for inflation.
- Allow school districts to retroactively claim and receive reimbursements back to the first day of the school year for meals that were served to low-income students who became certified for free or reduced-price school meals later in the school year.
- Similar to New York’s policy, protect all children from shaming due to unpaid school meal debt by banning any kind of overt-identification of students who cannot pay for lunch at school and punitive actions toward families.
- Streamline eligibility and the verification process to improve program access:
- Leverage additional opportunities to directly certify low-income children for free school meals:
- Expand Medicaid direct certification nationwide to automatically certify children for free or reduced-price school meals who live in a Medicaid supported household and are within the income limits for NSLP.
- Extend categorical eligibility for free school meals to:
- Children who receive Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits, guardianship, or adoption assistance payments, or are in kinship care.
- Children in households that participate in the Low-Income Heating Assistance Program (LIHEAP)
- Children in military households that receive the Family Subsistence Supplemental Allowance.
- Require states to incorporate all new and currently categorically eligible children into current data matching systems.
- Leverage additional opportunities to directly certify low-income children for free school meals:
Out-of-School-Time Meal Programs: Summer Food Service Program (SFSP), and Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) Afterschool Meals
- Streamline eligibility and administration to improve program access:
- Eliminate the area eligibility test for summer and afterschool meals to ensure access to healthy meals in all communities, including rural areas, which often do not meet the current eligibility threshold.
- An initial step toward this goal is to expand area eligibility by reducing the threshold from 50% to 40% of children qualifying for free or reduced-price school meals, in alignment with the Department of Education’s Title 1 and 21st Century Community Learning Center programs. This change would further align with the USDA’s new eligibility threshold for CEP, so all schools eligible for CEP at an Identified Student Percentage of 25% or higher would also qualify to serve summer and afterschool meals.
- Allow meal program sponsors to feed children year-round seamlessly:
- Allow schools to provide meals after school and during weekends and breaks throughout the regular school year through the National School Lunch Program.
- Allow summer meal sponsors to serve meals and snacks after school and during weekends and breaks throughout the regular school year through the Summer Food Service Program.
- Eliminate the area eligibility test for summer and afterschool meals to ensure access to healthy meals in all communities, including rural areas, which often do not meet the current eligibility threshold.
- Maximize program effectiveness:
- Allow all summer meal sites the option of serving a third meal.
- Provide funding for summer meals start-up grants for mobile meals and other innovative strategies for rural and other hard-to-reach communities.
- Increase flexibility and supporting options to provide summer nutrition to children with limited access to congregate feeding models outside of school.
- Give funding priority for federal grants to programs that sponsor/operate all eligible child nutrition programs.
Summer EBT
- Streamline eligibility and administration to improve program access:
- Extend Summer EBT eligibility to all students attending CEP schools, without a separate application. In the interim, allow alternative household income forms collected by CEP schools to be used for Summer EBT certification beyond 2024.
- Improve benefit adequacy:
- Increase Summer EBT benefit amounts to equal the value of free school breakfast, lunch, and snack reimbursement rates for each day that the child receives benefits.
- Expand the program to provide benefits during all school breaks or virtual or hybrid instruction periods longer than five consecutive days.
- Support strong program implementation and outreach:
- Provide federal funding to cover 100% of states’ and Indian Tribal Organizations’ (ITOs) administrative costs, rather than requiring states to cover 50% of these costs.
- Provide additional funding to states and ITOs to support the development or upgrading of data systems to carry out this program.
- Prioritize equity and access in all Summer EBT card policies, including policies for replacement cards, benefit expungement, and card security.
- Cross-promote Summer EBT with other federal nutrition programs, including by adding Summer EBT to the existing requirement that schools conduct outreach for USDA summer nutrition programs.
Child Care Meal Programs
- Streamline eligibility and administration to improve program access:
- Eliminate the area eligibility test for family, group family, and legally exempt child care providers, allowing all such providers to receive Tier 1 reimbursement rates.
- Establish a Community Eligibility Provision and a “Provision 2” option that would align CACFP with NSLP, streamlining paperwork for parents, programs, and sponsors.
- Establish an area eligibility option for child care centers.
- Allow annual eligibility for proprietary centers.
- Modernize CACFP applications and enrollment forms, including eliminating normal days and hours from forms.
- Reauthorize a paperwork reduction workgroup.
- Continue to allow flexibility to conduct virtual monitoring reviews.
- Maximize program effectiveness:
- Restore CACFP providers’ option to serve a third meal in full-day child care.
- Increase CACFP reimbursement rates to align with updated meal patterns that strengthen the nutritional quality of meals and snacks.
- Align the reimbursement rates for legally exempt, family and group family child care providers with rates used for child care centers using the Consumer Price Index for Food Away From Home as the cost of living adjustment.
- Increase administrative reimbursement rates for CACFP sponsors to fully cover the cost of administering the program.
Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC)
- Protect and preserve the scientific integrity of the WIC food package by improving the adequacy of benefits:
- Sustain the increase in WIC’s Cash Value Benefit through at least September 2024 and take additional steps to permanently enhance the value and nutritional quality of WIC-approved foods, in alignment with expert recommendations from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
- Implement the recommendations included in the 2017 review by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine:
- Provide WIC families with options and flexibility to meet their dietary and nutrient needs.
- Allow increased consumption and choice in whole grains, fruits and vegetables.
- Decrease certain foods that were found to be offered in too large a quantity or were burdensome to WIC families.
- Encourage continued and improved support for breastfeeding mothers.
- Streamline eligibility and administration to improve and expand program access:
- Go-To WIC: USDA should partner with Medicaid and private health plans to provide nutrition counseling and breastfeeding services to all while continuing to means-test WIC’s healthy food benefit.
- Extend eligibility to address targeted nutrition gaps in current eligibility:
- Extend eligibility for children until their sixth birthday.
- Extend postpartum eligibility until two years.
- Modernize and streamline WIC services to expand access to WIC for all eligible families:
- Relax physical presence requirements to permit remote certifications and allow families 90 days to demonstrate nutrition risk.
- Require states to accept electronic documents before, during, and after appointments.
- Extend certification periods to two years for all categories and align certification periods for all family members.
- Incorporate additional programs targeted at young children, including Early Head Start and Head Start, as adjunctively eligible programs to enhance retention of toddlers and preschoolers.
- Develop state-by-state estimates of the number of children under 5 and pregnant women receiving SNAP, Medicaid, Early Head Start or Head Start but not WIC.
- Support efforts to use technology for applications, appointment scheduling, and ongoing participant requirements, ideally integrated into state management information systems.
- Require states to create and update joint cross-enrollment plans and policies that include cross-enrollment goals and timelines that routinely refer SNAP and Medicaid recipients to WIC; fund state and local partnerships and technical assistance that help to implement state plans and work toward cross-enrollment goals.
- Improve equity in WIC:
- Enhance data collection efforts including making available disaggregated enrollment data to support targeting outreach, and strengthening tribal services.
- Ensure ongoing access to WIC services for immigrant or mixed-status families.
- Establish annual funding for WIC outreach.
- Maximize program effectiveness by:
- Modernize WIC services to enhance WIC’s public health impact and provide a participant experience compatible with other benefit programs and healthcare/ commercial standard practices.
- Leverage telehealth options to provide a modern participant experience, and provide funding for virtual services.
- Provide additional funding to accelerate online shopping solutions that permit online transactions, in-store or curbside pickup, and additional transaction technologies that afford WIC participants a modern, convenient, and equitable shopping experience.
- Expand WIC’s breastfeeding services through peer counselors and innovative out-of-clinic placement of WIC breastfeeding staff at hospitals, physician offices, and with home visiting programs.
- Consider appropriate flexibilities to enhance WIC’s capacity to respond to disasters and emergencies.
- Strengthen state spend-forward authorities to permit greater flexibility in program investments.
- Expand WIC research in underserved communities.
- Modernize WIC services to enhance WIC’s public health impact and provide a participant experience compatible with other benefit programs and healthcare/ commercial standard practices.
- Based on learnings from COVID-19 response:
- Ensure any future enhanced federal unemployment is not countable for WIC eligibility.
- In any future issuances, expand Pandemic-EBT eligibility criteria for children 0-6 to include all WIC participant children.
- Provide sufficient funding to support full participation among all who are eligible, and to adequately equip WIC local agencies to recruit and retain their professional workorce.
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