May 13, 2025 – Last night, House Agriculture Committee Chair G.T. Thompson (R-Pennsylvania) revealed a plan to dramatically cut federal spending on food aid while increasing aid to commodity farmers. The provisions—which lawmakers are currently working on as part of the budget reconciliation process—would cut $290 billion in spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and increase subsidies for commodity farms by about $60 billion.
“This portion of the One Big, Beautiful Bill restores the [SNAP] program’s original intent, offering a temporary helping hand while encouraging work, cracking down on loopholes exploited by states, and protecting taxpayer dollars while supporting the hardworking men and women of American agriculture,” Thompson said in a statement.
On the SNAP side, the bill text would require any future changes to the Thrifty Food Plan, which determines how much money participants receive each month, to be cost-neutral. (For example, benefit amounts would not be allowed to increase if the mix of foods in the plan was updated based on changing dietary guidelines.) The bill would also increase the number of people who are subject to certain work requirements in several ways. It would make it harder for states to qualify for waivers, and change requirements that currently apply to all SNAP recipients 15 to 60 years old to apply to participants between 17 and 65. And the bill would increase the number of people who qualify as “Able Bodied Adults Without Dependents,” who are subject to stricter requirements, extending their qualifying age from 54 to 64—and by including adults with dependents who are over seven.
However, the most significant change would be increasing states’ share of the program’s administrative costs from 50 to 75 percent and requiring states to pay for a portion of SNAP benefits, which they have never done before. All states would have to contribute 5 percent of the cost of benefits beginning in 2028. States with higher rates of payment errors, which can be overpayments or underpayments based on administrative mistakes, would contribute more, with the top tier contributing as much as 25 percent.
Experts say those changes would likely force states to cut benefits. “The language is unclear, but it could end SNAP entirely in some parts of the country if states decide the new state funding requirements are impossible for them to meet,” said Ty Jones Cox, the vice president for food assistance at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Anti-hunger groups said the plan would increase hunger.
On the farm side, the bill text inserts some of the Republican leadership’s farm bill priorities. It would increase the prices paid to commodity growers between 10 and 20 percent, make additional acres eligible for commodity subsidy payments, eliminate payment limits so wealthier farms can access payments, and expand crop insurance. It also appears to combine Inflation Reduction Act funds allocated for conservation with general conservation program funding, meaning that more money would flow to conservation program funding, but it would remove any climate-related focus for the programs.
Democrats on the committee have said cutting SNAP and adding farm bill programs to the tax bill would likely kill the possibility of passing a farm bill later this year.
“The budget reconciliation bill offers a simple deal—pass up a full, five-year farm bill in exchange for dramatically increased farm subsidies funded by hundreds of billions in cuts that will deepen hunger and threaten farmer livelihoods,” said Mike Lavender, the policy director at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, in a statement.
However, it is still very early in the budget reconciliation process. The House Ag Committee will meet tonight to offer amendments and work on the text. Then it will need to be combined with text from other committees, where many big questions are still being worked out on cuts to other programs like Medicaid. If the House gets a final bill together within the next couple of weeks, it will then go to the Senate, where further changes will be made. (Link to this post.)
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