This chapter discusses how Republicans at the federal and state level are adding behavior modification requirements to a wide array of public benefits programs, thus driving a divide between red and blue states.  Behavior modification requirements include tying public assistance to work requirements, family caps (limits on benefits based on family size), and drug tests.  Congress first approved behavior modification requirements on a large-scale as part of welfare reform in 1996.  These requirements are attempts to control the behavior of the poor, based on an assumption that poor people are morally deficient.  To implement these changes, Republicans are using federalism tools such as waivers, or statutorily permitted deviations from federal program norms on a state-by-state basis. The Trump administration has already approved work requirements for Medicaid and signaled that it will permit a range of behavior modification requirements in housing and nutrition assistance programs.  As a result, state variations in terms of poverty rates and poverty relief will deepen.  In short, a person’s experience at the bottom of the economic ladder differs widely depending on where they live, and red state versus blue state policy differences are driving part of that geographic divergence.

A resurgence in work requirements for safety-net programs, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), has marked the early years of the Trump administration. Some lawmakers at both the federal and state level have moved to revive and expand SNAP’s work requirements, despite evidence that such work requirements do little to increase self-sufficiency or improve long-term economic outcomes among those living in poverty.This chapter takes up the issue of work requirements in the context of rural communities, where the need for safety-net programs and food system supports is acute. We begin with a brief overview of SNAP and examine the recent push to make SNAP work requirements more strict.We then turn to an overview of the need and current state of use of the social safety net in rural America. If work requirements are to be effective – and, indeed, appropriate – work opportunities must be available.We, therefore, consider employment data and information on safety-net use across the rural-urban axis. Finally, we present a case study about the results of relatively early efforts to impose work requirements on SNAP receipt in Maine.

This chapter argues that federalism-based controversies in the social welfare field over legal structures, legal rules, and the location of governance are best understood as arguments about both deservingness and control played out through controversies about administrative structure. In short, programs are called “welfare,” or are urged by some to be more like “welfare,” when what is really meant is that we wish to use the administrative mechanisms of federalism to control, stigmatize, punish, and deter recipients. In contrast, when we perceive recipients as entitled, these mechanisms fall away to be replaced by purely federally controlled, far less visible, and far more inviting administrative structures. To make this process visible, the chapter describes the administrative tools of benefit programs across the economic spectrum, as well as the corresponding cultural assumptions tied to programs across this spectrum, and then contextualizes a debate like the one over Medicaid work rules in this context.