Rep. Carter Nordman Photo courtesy of ballotpedia.org

The Iowa House continues to work on a bill that would make some changes to who can qualify to use a state run welfare program.

House District 47 Representative Carter Nordman (R-Panora) tells Raccoon Valley Radio they are looking over a Senate bill that would essentially codify what the Iowa Health and Human Services Department is currently doing with the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

“A few years ago the state was actually penalized for having too many people on the SNAP program that didn’t actually qualify for it. And so the Department of Health and Human Services put in a number of practices and guidelines that would help with ensuring that people who were using this benefit were actually people who needed it. And so what we’re doing is just codifying that and putting that into code.”   

Nordman points out another addition to qualifications for those who can use SNAP is an asset testing portion. He says items like someone’s income, along with planes, boats and vehicles are ways for those individuals who need to use SNAP can. The bill is still in the House for consideration.