The U.S. House Agriculture Committee’s portion of Republicans’ massive taxes and spending bill would partially shift to states the costs of the country’s largest food assistance program, which some experts and Democrats predicted will lead to major cuts in the program — and possibly even an end to it in some states.
The measure will be taken up by the panel Tuesday night and is expected to be voted on late Tuesday or early Wednesday, after which it will be folded into a larger reconciliation package with 10 other bills passed out of committees and sent to the floor. The entire House is set to vote on the legislation before Memorial Day.
The federal government currently pays for all Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits. A provision in the Agriculture Committee’s piece of Republicans’ “big, beautiful bill” to enact President Donald Trump’s agenda would transfer between 5% and 25% of that cost to states, depending on each state’s payment error rate, starting in 2028.
The program provided about $100 billion in food assistance to nearly 42 million Americans last year, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Eligibility currently depends on tests related to income, assets, work requirements and more.
But the change in cost structure could lead states to opt out entirely, said Ty Jones Cox, vice president for food assistance at the left-leaning economic think tank Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, leading some needy families unable to pay for groceries.
“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,” Cox said in a statement late Monday after the bill’s release. “The bill’s massive cuts disguised as ‘cost shifts’ pass the buck to states – but ultimately would leave families holding an empty grocery bag when states aren’t willing or able to backfill for lost federal funds.”
Republicans plan to use the reconciliation package to permanently extend the 2017 tax law, increase spending on border security and defense by hundreds of billions of dollars, overhaul American energy production, restructure higher education aid and cut spending.
“Our budget reconciliation text restores SNAP to its original intent—promoting work, not welfare—while saving taxpayer dollars and investing in American agriculture,” House Committee on Agriculture Republicans said on X on Monday night.
Funding tied to error rate
Under the bill, states’ responsibility would rise with the broadly defined error rate of payments, which includes fraud as well as paperwork mistakes by a beneficiary or caseworker.
States with an error rate of 6% or less would be responsible for paying 5% of benefits, and those with an error rate higher than 10% would shoulder one-quarter of the cost of benefits.
Two other intermediate categories would exist for states with error rates between 6% and 10%.
Based on current data, more than half of states would fall into the highest category of error rates. The national average is 11.7% and more than two dozen states and territories have rates higher than 10%.
The states are: Alaska, Arizona, California, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia. The District of Columbia also has an error rate over 10%, as do Guam and the Virgin Islands.
Alaska’s nation-leading 60% error rate would be nearly impossible to bring under 10% by the time the provision goes into effect, Jones Cox said in a Tuesday interview.
Only seven states — Idaho, Iowa, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Wisconsin and Wyoming — would qualify for the lowest state cost-share.
$290 billion in cuts overall
The measure would incentivize states to control the $13 billion per year in erroneous payments, a House Agriculture Committee summary of the legislation said. The bill as a whole would cut $290 billion in federal spending over a 10-year budget window, according to the summary.
While congressional Republicans can claim they are not cutting benefits with the bill, the program would shrink with a lower federal cost-share, Jones Cox said.
“They can say it’s not a cut, because they’re going to say it’s just shifting those costs to the states,” she said. “But it is a cut because states, if they cannot fill the gap… that brings down the program, period.”
The changes would force state budget officers to choose from among a host of unattractive options: cutting SNAP, offsetting costs with corresponding cuts to other programs or raising revenues through taxes or other measures.
States “have a few options,” Jones Cox said. “None look good.”
Republicans are using the complex reconciliation process to move the package through Congress with simple majority votes in each chamber, avoiding the Senate’s 60-vote legislative filibuster, which would otherwise require bipartisanship.
Reconciliation measures must address federal revenue, spending, or the debt limit in a way not deemed “merely incidental” by the Senate parliamentarian. That means the GOP proposals must carry some sort of price tag and cannot focus simply on changing federal policy.
Democrats slam bill
On a press call Tuesday, Democratic officials and an anti-hunger nonprofit blasted the proposal.
Sen. Peter Welch, a Vermont Democrat, expressed skepticism that U.S. DOGE Service head Elon Musk could find a more efficient use of the $2 per meal SNAP provides during the call with other Democratic senators, Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek and the nonprofit, Hunger Free Vermont.
“This is not a waste, fraud and abuse deal,” Welch said. “This is really about taking away basic nutritional security that is so absolutely essential to the well-being of our families and our kids in Vermont and in every single state across the nation.”
Kotek, who started her political career as a policy advocate for the Oregon Food Bank, said she saw firsthand the effect of food insecurity. More than 700,000 Oregonians receive benefits from SNAP, and every dollar spent on SNAP generates another $1.50 to $1.80 in economic activity at grocery stores, farmers’ markets and other local businesses, Kotek said.
“When you cut SNAP, you’re not cutting bureaucracy,” she said. “You’re cutting a child’s dinner. You’re cutting their breakfast. You’re cutting their family’s dignity.”
One in four New Mexicans rely on SNAP, said Sen. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M. The farmers and ranchers he represents also plan their farming season based on what grocery stores and food banks will need, and farmers already planted seeds with the idea that those vegetables will be used for school lunches and other food programs.
“The way to look at this is it’s not fiscally responsible,” Luján said. “It’s taking away from the hungry across America to make billionaires and millionaires even wealthier, and it’s going to even explode the deficit.”
• This article originally appeared online at alaskabeacon.com. Alaska Beacon, an affiliate of States Newsroom, is an independent, nonpartisan news organization focused on connecting Alaskans to their state government.
