Badger Institute will push legislation banning work requirement waivers
and seek enforcement of training requirement.
New Badger Institute research tying big increases in the number of FoodShare recipients to state officials’ reluctance to make recipients work today prompted the Institute to push for two new initiatives in the upcoming legislative session.
- A push to bar the Wisconsin Department of Health Services from applying for waivers from the federal law that requires able-bodied adults without dependents seeking FoodShare to work. The law would move discretion to seek waivers from the DHS to the Wisconsin Legislature.
- A push to fully fund and enforce 2017 Act 264, which requires almost all non-elderly, able-bodied FoodShare adult recipients to work or to participate in the Wisconsin’s FoodShare Employment and Training (FSET) program as a condition of receiving the benefit.
Badger Institute analyst Angela Rachidi analyzes FoodShare data from 2012 to 2023. Her results suggest that waiving the work requirement led to an increase of 780 adults receiving FoodShare on average per county per month during this time — approximately 56,160 more FoodShare adults across the state.
