As deep recession settles in on the American economy, more and more people are relying on the public benefits safety net to help them put food on their table or meet health care needs.

A record 31.8 million Americans received food stamps in one recent month, and Medicaid enrollment around the country is surging by record numbers in many states.

cliff-edge-photoIn New Mexico, our unemployment is rising — up to 5.1 percent in January from 3.7 percent a year earlier — and we are seeing some of the worst job growth statistics since 1982-83.

Indeed, 8,600 jobs were lost in New Mexico between January 2008 and January 2009. Low-income working families have been particularly hard hit, as job losses have been concentrated in blue collar industries — 5,500 jobs lost in the construction industry, 1,800 in manufacturing, 3,300 in retail trade, and 1,100 in leisure and hospitality.

Against this background of lost job opportunities, New Mexico retains the third highest rate of poverty in the nation and the second highest rate of food insecurity.

Yet, in the face of worsening economic conditions and precisely when safety net programs should be providing support to more low-income families, participation in some of these programs has begun to stagnate and even decline.

According to the most recent data from the New Mexico Human Services Department (HSD), there was a surprising drop at the beginning of this year of the number of New Mexicans receiving help from two of our state’s primary safety net programs — General Assistance and Medicaid.

Perhaps most shocking was the decline in enrollment in the General Assistance program (pdf). General Assistance provides small amounts of cash assistance to people who are seriously disabled and very poor. In some cases, it helps children in difficult circumstances. The number of New Mexicans receiving help from this program fell by 40 percent since November — the steepest decline in ten years — as new HSD procedures caused application approvals to decline precipitously.

Only 11 percent of the 1,042 New Mexicans seeking help in January and February were able to receive it — the highest denial rate in recent history. Furthermore, the department cut benefits to people already enrolled in the program.

Other key parts of our state’s safety net are also faltering.

Medicaid, the program that helps more low-income New Mexicans than any other by providing critical access to health care, fell by 4,448 people between September and November, according to the latest data. This is the first time since May 2007 that a significant decrease in Medicaid has occurred.

This decline in the number of New Mexicans served by the safety net programs of Medicaid and General Assistance during the worst economic downturn in at least 25 years is of grave concern.

The number of people helped by these programs should be growing right now, not decreasing.

One program that did see an increase was the food stamp program, which is funded entirely by the federal government and provides $1 per meal per day to help New Mexicans avoid hunger and the health consequences of poor nutrition. Nearly 7,000 more New Mexicans began receiving food stamps in February, underscoring the deep need that is evident in our state.

New Mexico is at a crossroads: We must make some critical choices about whether we will help the people most in need or let our public assistance programs founder.

Safety net programs not only provide relief to families facing serious hard times, they also provide some of the most effective economic stimulus measures to protect local economies.

Those on limited budgets are likely to spend every additional dollar of assistance on basic necessities, helping themselves and local businesses. For example, $5 of food stamp benefits, which are federally funded, generates $9 in local economic activity. Those dollars spent at the grocery store, in turn, help to pay the salaries of the grocery clerks, truckers who haul the food, and the farmer who grows the crops. A failure to maximize the use of these programs not only hurts families, it hurts our entire state economy.

Indeed, the federal government recently passed a “stimulus” bill to explicitly serve these dual purposes: to help states meet the needs of Americans falling into the safety net and to provide local economies with powerful economic stimulus.

More than $700 million federal dollars are now available in New Mexico through the public benefits programs. New Mexico has an enormous opportunity to draw federal dollars directly into our economy through Medicaid, the food stamp program and New Mexico Works, a program that provides small amounts of cash assistance to very poor New Mexicans for a limited amount of time.

These are unusually difficult times. Yet such moments often provide unusual opportunities to improve our lives.

New Mexicans are known for their fundamental resilience and optimism in the face of adversity. Think of how the New Deal programs of the Great Depression years provided New Mexicans with jobs, education, and the legacy of public buildings and art we cherish today.

A similar opportunity now confronts us. New Mexico should rise to the occasion by making full use of the federal stimulus bills and having our public safety net programs provide the jobs and assistance they were designed to provide.

What will it be, New Mexico?


Patricia Anders is a staff attorney with the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty.