What Next - Do Work Requirements Work?
What Next | Daily News and Analysis
Slate Podcasts
4.3 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 5 June 2023
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Last week, Congress finally passed a debt ceiling deal. Part of that deal included expanding the work requirements for government assistance programs like SNAP, specifically for people ages 50 to 54.
Where did the idea of work requirements come from? And do work requirements actually help keep people in the workforce?
Guest: Pamela Herd, professor of public policy at Georgetown University and co-author of Administrative Burden: Policymaking by Other Means.
If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Dear Prudence—and you’ll be supporting the work we do here on What Next. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to help support our work.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This show is headed down your feed on June 5, 2023. |
| 0:10.5 | And I'm here to tell you congratulations. |
| 0:30.9 | Today was supposed to be the ex-state in Washington, the day the federal government would hit the debt ceiling and run out of money to pay its bills. |
| 0:35.1 | But last week, Congress did something it has trouble doing much of the time. |
| 0:36.6 | It came to an agreement. |
| 0:38.9 | Inside of seven days, |
| 0:44.4 | new spending legislation went from the negotiating table, through the House, over to the Senate, |
| 0:53.0 | and then back to President Biden to be signed into law. So, Pamela, we have a debt limit deal. |
| 0:57.2 | It's flown through Congress. Are you celebrating? |
| 1:05.4 | So I think on the whole, yes. Right, because defaults, especially for vulnerable populations, |
| 1:12.7 | really would have been catastrophic economically. Pamela Hurd is a professor of public policy at Georgetown University. |
| 1:17.4 | The kind of person who reads the fine print when it comes to spending agreements like this one. |
| 1:23.0 | For the last few weeks, she has been particularly focused on one element of this debt limit deal, |
| 1:29.5 | work requirements. This new legislation expands the number of people who have to prove that they're doing enough to access cash welfare and food aid. This was one of the thornyest issues negotiators talked |
| 1:36.1 | about. Progressives said any work requirements were a non-starter. Conservatives wanted to extend |
| 1:43.1 | work requirements to programs like Medicaid. In some ways, |
| 1:47.0 | Pamela says, she's surprised these cuts didn't go farther. I mean, it's been on the Republican |
| 1:53.0 | agenda work requirements, I mean, for decades. And in recent years, I do think there's been a much more aggressive conservative push to generically add work requirements or expand work requirements and programs that already had them. |
| 2:09.7 | You're saying it's actually a logical endpoint. |
| 2:11.8 | Yes. It's a logical endpoint given where the political discourse has been going. |
| 2:16.9 | But just because Pamela anticipated this turn of events, it doesn't mean she liked it very much. |
| 2:22.6 | She says there's good data showing that work requirements don't really help people get back to work, |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Slate Podcasts, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Slate Podcasts and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.