Massachusetts would have to find between $185 million and $704 million dollars a year to maintain food stamps for 1.1 million residents if the U.S. Senate approves cuts proposed in a House bill.
The legislation would shift costs for anti-poverty aid like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to states to help offset increased federal tax cuts. This includes aid for people well above the poverty line.
In Massachusetts, the Healey administration says SNAP provides an average of $10.70 per day for each enrolled household. Nearly a third of recipients are children, a quarter are seniors and 28% have a disability.
Even with SNAP, advocates estimate that residents of one in five Massachusetts households often don’t know how they’ll get their next meal.
“Food insecurity is a crisis here and SNAP is our most effective tool, hands down, to fight it,” said Jennifer Lemmerman, chief policy officer at Project Bread, the state’s largest food assistance support group. “It’s impossible to understate the impact this would have.”
The House proposal targets specific recipients. It would end food stamp benefits for legal immigrants. And it would expand work requirements including for parents of children ages 7 or older while making proof of employment more difficult. The Congressional Budget Office predicts all the changes will save more than $285 billion over a decade, partly by removing some recipients from the program.
In an opinion piece published last month in the New York Times, four Trump administration leaders wrote that more Americans on welfare programs, including SNAP, who can work must do so.
“Establishing universal work requirements for able-bodied adults across the welfare programs we manage will prioritize the vulnerable, empower able-bodied individuals, help rebuild thriving communities and protect the taxpayers,” they said.
Trump administration officials also argue that holding states more accountable will help uncover waste, fraud and abuse in the program. They point to examples like a case filed last week in New York that alleges a federal employee and five co-defendants processed more $30 million in illegal electronic food stamp benefits.
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But anti-poverty advocates and some Massachusetts officials warn that recipients who lose SNAP may have fewer options outside the program because of other federal funding cuts. The Greater Boston Food Bank expects to lose $2.3 million in federal funding this year. The large tax and spending cuts proposal would also make changes to Medicaid and student loans.
The Healey administration called the proposed SNAP changes “reckless and dangerous.”
“I’ve seen up close how SNAP and food assistance programs lead to better health outcomes and lower health care costs,” Health and Human Services Secretary Kate Walsh said in a statement. “To hack away at SNAP is bad policy, plain and simple.”
Cutting SNAP could hurt farmers, food manufacturers, grocers and delivery truck drivers as well. In a letter to leaders of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, Gov. Maura Healey said SNAP generates $1.50 for the state’s economy for every dollar spent.
Massachusetts would have to make up between 7% and 27% of the $2.6 billion in federal SNAP funds recipients received this year if the House plan becomes law. The range is due to varying levels of proposed federal funding that would punish states for errors that affect benefit payments. In 2023, for example, Massachusetts had to correct the way the state calculated benefits for just under 10% of SNAP payments.
Healey has said Massachusetts can’t afford to make up the SNAP funding the House plans to cut. The state can reduce eligibility in a few areas, but most of the criteria are set by the federal government. In her letter, she urged Congress to “strengthen SNAP and find new avenues to promote economic mobility…that do not involve undermining critical programs.”
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