Going into Tuesday’s markup of Trump’s “one big beautiful bill,” House Republicans on the Agriculture Committee were expected to make $230 billion in cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the food stamp program that’s long been one of the country’s leading anti-poverty initiatives. The actual outcome was even more devastating, with Republicans proposing a massive $300 billion in cuts over the next decade.
“Every single one of my Republican colleagues here tonight should be ashamed. The instruction to this committee was to find $230 billion in cuts to SNAP, but that wasn’t good enough for the extremists in your party. So tonight, you’re cutting more,” said Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN), the ranking Democrat on the Ag Committee during Tuesday’s markup.
SNAP helps 41 million Americans afford food; it cost the federal government around $115 billion in 2023. The program helps put food on the tables of some of the most vulnerable people in the country: data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows that the vast majority of SNAP recipients—80 percent—live in a household with a child, a senior citizen, or someone with a disability.
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Republicans made most of their cuts to SNAP through policy changes that food policy experts have described as devastating. The biggest proposed change is the implementation of a state match program, which would require states to contribute to the direct cost of food benefits. As of now, the federal government pays 100 percent of food benefit costs, while states help cover half of the administrative costs of SNAP.
This change would likely hit heavily rural states the hardest—most of which are represented by Republicans. If passed, the bill would use state payment error data to determine how much states would pay into the cost of SNAP benefits. States with the lowest payment error rates would be responsible for around 5 percent of the cost of SNAP benefits, and states with error rates higher than 10 percent would be charged with funding 25 percent of SNAP benefits. With the country’s highest error rate of 60 percent, Alaska would be forced to pay far more than they ever have before; despite this, their single House member, Rep. Nick Begich, told Politico that he supports the plan. What’s more, all states would be responsible for 75 percent of the administrative costs of SNAP, up from 50 percent.
Advocates have told the Prospect that forcing states to contribute toward the cost of food benefits would likely spell the end of SNAP in some states. “We’re going to see some states that have smaller budgets, like in the South and in rural parts of America, not be able to support that change,” Salaam Bhatti, SNAP director at the Food Research & Action Center, told the Prospect in April.
According to an analysis from the Congressional Budget Office, this proposed state match policy would save the federal government $128 billion. Forcing states to pay for more of the administrative costs would save another $27 billion. A policy imposing work requirements for SNAP eligibility, which was part of Tuesday’s Ag Committee markup, would save $92 billion. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that these work requirement changes could take food assistance away from a staggering 1 in 4 SNAP recipients. A smattering of other regressive policies adds up to the full $300 billion cut.
By moving ahead with these cuts, House Republican leaders are breaking promises they made to vulnerable members of their caucus who have expressed concern about cutting social safety net programs like Medicaid and SNAP. GOP centrists like Reps. Don Bacon (R-NE) and David Valadao (R-CA) have already warned that the state match program would hurt their constituents. Despite that, Republicans are charging full steam ahead. In a Truth Social post on Monday, Trump told Republicans to get behind committee leaders like Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-PA), who leads the Ag Committee.
Republicans are up against an August deadline to finalize and pass the spending bill; that’s when the Treasury expects the country to hit its debt limit. The Trump administration wants Congress to act by mid-July, which means it’s now prime time for Republicans to start their slashing of social programs to fund Trump’s tax cuts and border militarization.
Committees, including Agriculture, will vote this week on their changes to the bill. The Budget Committee will vote on Friday morning, followed by the Rules Committee on Monday. In order to pass the omnibus bill through reconciliation—which allows a bill to pass the Senate with a 51-vote simple majority instead of 60 votes—House and Senate Republicans must “reconcile” their two versions of budget resolutions to draft and pass the final bill. It remains to be seen whether the Senate will go along with these massive cuts to SNAP.
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