House Republicans are preparing one of the largest overhauls to the country’s largest anti-hunger programs in decades, with a plan to limit future increases to benefits, implement deep new work requirements and push costs to states in a move that risks millions of low-income Americans being removed from the program.
The Agriculture bill has faced delays since last recess amid centrist backlash over the deep food aid spending cuts. But GOP leaders are targeting a markup for next week, May 13 or 14, after deciding late last week to push back this week’s expected meeting, according to four people with direct knowledge of the matter.
Republicans in the last day have altered the most controversial piece of the House Agriculture Committee’s portion of the Trump megabill: a plan to force states to pay a portion of benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for the first time. The program helps to feed more than 40 million low-income Americans.
A previous proposal the panel was pursuing would have seen the states’ share of costs reach 25 percent by the end of a10-year window, while stair-stepping in and not starting until after 2027. Several centrists, including Reps. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) and David Valadao (R-Calif.), have raised concerns about the plan. Rep. Derrick Van Orden, who represents a more competitive district in Wisconsin, walked out of an Agriculture panel GOP briefing last week over the matter, slinging an insult at staff before he left. Van Orden also stood up in the closed-door House GOP conference meeting to raise concerns about the even reworked cost-share proposal, arguing his state was being unfairly penalized. Rep. Doug LaMalfa later stood up and reiterated the panel needs to reach $230 billion cuts. White House officials and other Republicans have been wary of the impact on deep red states of the SNAP plans in combination with Medicaid spending cuts. But White House officials effectively green-lit the proposal in recent days.
The latest plan would phase in for the 2028 fiscal year and skew more of the financial burden to states with higher payment error payment rates, while decrease the percentage of the cost-share on states with fewer penalties to start as low as 10 percent, as Republicans were considering amid the backlash.
A spokesperson for Agriculture Committee Republicans declined to comment.
Senior House Republicans say they need the cost-share measure to hit the $230 billion in cuts across the Agriculture panel’s jurisdiction, with the bulk focusing on spending cuts to SNAP.
But beyond the cost-share plan, Agriculture Republicans will increase the age of recipients who need to complete work requirements to receive food aid, reaching so-called able-bodied adults with children age 7 and older for the first time. That move alone is expected to save at least $40 billion, according to projections from the Congressional Budget Office.
Another piece of Republicans’ plan, which has long been panned by Democrats, is to limit future increases to families’ SNAP benefits after a recent Biden-era update created a record increase that shocked Republican lawmakers. Republicans would effectively limit future updates to the Thrifty Food Plan that serves as the basis of SNAP benefits, in order to make any future updates cost-neutral and also include a cost-of-living adjustment.
The bill will also crack down on what Republicans say are largely blue state abuses of waivers that skirt current SNAP rules, including waivers of certain layers of work requirements. And it will end a so-called internet utility loophole from the Biden administration and another loophole associated with the Low Income Energy Assistance Program that Republicans argue allows states to skirt a standard utility deduction in the SNAP program.
The Agriculture panel is also planning to fit a raft of farm bill program funding into its portion of the megabill, with the goal to pass a smaller, slimmed down farm bill later this year without major fights over mandatory funding.
One aim is to rescind billions in climate-focused agriculture program dollars from the Biden administration and reinvest it into the farm bill baseline. Agriculture Republicans also want to add tens of billions of dollars for crop reference prices but also trade export promotion, livestock biosecurity, additional so-called orphan programs and more pieces that represent mandatory funding to the GOP package. But some Republicans are skeptical GOP leaders will accept such a tall order, especially with hard-line House fiscal hawks deeply opposed to such spending and time running out.
“It’s still gotta math,” hard-liner Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) warned Tuesday morning. “Now they want to add more?”
