HHS did not answer a question about whether updating the poverty guideline counts as a critical program. The agency plans to cut 10,000 workers, on top of another 10,000 who have already left.
“This is the worst possible time to be dealing with that vacuum of leadership and expertise,” said Ismael Cid Martinez, an economist in the Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy at the Economic Policy Institute.
Dozens of programs rely on official poverty guidelines to determine who is and isn’t eligible. Food stamps, formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, covered 40 million people last year, who were deemed eligible based on their income relative to the poverty guidelines. Medicaid, the largest health insurance program in America with 72 million adult members, relies on a formula that uses the poverty level; so do programs including free school lunch, Head Start, legal aid for the poor, and low-income taxpayer assistance clinics, which help millions of taxpayers file their taxes at no cost. The Affordable Care Act allows people to get subsidies for private health insurance—as long as they earn up to 400% of the poverty line.
“These programs keep millions of people out of poverty every year,” Martinez, the economist, told Fortune.
“The point we should be at right now is having conversations about how to expand the access to and adequacy of these programs, as opposed to gutting them and restricting access,” he added. Republicans in the House and Senate are teeing up deep cuts to the benefits paid out through Medicaid, SNAP and other programs, which many conservatives claim is rife with waste and fraud. A budget blueprint passed by the House predicts $2 trillion in cuts, largely through programs that help the poor, veterans, and older Americans.