May 1, 2025 – While addressing agriculture journalists on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, Republican leaders of the Senate and House Agriculture Committees said that despite their party’s directive to cut billions of dollars in spending, they are committed to keeping current benefit levels in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which 42 million Americans currently receive each month.
“We’re not gonna’ reduce the amount of money that individuals are getting right now,” said Senate Chair John Boozman (R-Arkansas).
“We’re not gonna’ be cutting benefits,” echoed House Chair G.T. Thompson (R-Pennsylvania). “We’re not gonna’ hurt people that are living in poverty, folks that quite frankly are struggling paycheck to paycheck that are really dependent upon this nutritional assistance.”
However, proposals on the table to deliver the cuts far-right lawmakers are demanding are still controversial and could push hungry people out of the program, anti-hunger experts say.
Republicans are looking to slash spending during budget reconciliation to pay for making tax cuts passed during Trump’s first term permanent. They are direction the Senate Ag Committee to find $1 billion in savings and the House Ag Committee to find $230 billion. The final number will be worked out later and the committees are scheduled to begin drafting their plans next week.
SNAP is the most likely place to find the cuts, as it represents more than $100 billion in federal spending annually. Democrats have been loudly pushing back on various proposals that have been floated on the Hill, including rolling back a Biden-era update that increased benefits.
Thompson said he’s not interested in that rollback and that while he suspects the final number will be lower than $230 billion, he has identified a way to get to that number without cutting any benefits, although it would be challenging. Depending on what he can get others in his parties to agree to, he may not have a choice–Republicans are also divided amongst themselves over cuts to Medicaid.
Boozman pointed to overpayments as a place to find savings, and Thompson also cited “program integrity,” a term that generally refers to correcting errors. In 2023, USDA reported the overpayment rate within SNAP at 10 percent. Both lawmakers also mentioned work requirements. One proposal previously introduced by Representative Dusty Johnson (R-South Dakota) would raise the age range for SNAP recipients subject to the strictest work requirements from 55 to 65 and reduce the number of counties in the country that would be eligible for waivers exempting participants from work requirements due to high unemployment.
Finally, another proposal would shift some of the costs of paying for SNAP benefits to state governments rather than the feds. Thompson said he does not like this idea, but that if his hand is forced, he’d choose it over cutting benefit amounts.
Advocacy groups and think tanks argue that while many of these changes would not directly change how much participants receive each month, they qualify as “cuts” because they would push participants out of the SNAP program and therefore could still increase hunger. For instance, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities estimated changes to work requirements could push 6 million people out of the program and that the proposal to shift costs to states would force some states to cut benefits.
Another analysis of the state cost-share plan found that in the case of a recession, it could lead to an average annual benefit cut of $327 per household and 862,000 additional people falling into poverty.
Last week, Democrats on the House Ag Committee held a briefing to address negative impacts of shifting costs to states.“This proposal would not generate any cost savings—it would merely pass the buck from the federal government to the states and take food away from innocent people in the process,” Ranking Member Angie Craig (D-Minnesota) said in a statement. (Link to this post.)
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