Ryan Budget Would Slash SNAP by $137 Billion Over Ten Years
Low-Income Households in All States Would Feel Sharp Effects
End Notes
[1] House Budget Committee staff provided this figure verbally in response to a question from Rep. Gwen Moore during the mark-up of the proposed budget resolution on April 2, 2014.
[2] House Budget Committee, The Path to Prosperity, Fiscal Year 2015 Budget Resolution, House Budget Committee, April 1, 2014, p. 62. The budget documents specify that $125 billion in cuts would come, beginning in 2019, from “converting SNAP into an allotment tailored for each state’s low-income population, indexed for inflation and eligibility.” The documents mention three additional policies, which would go into effect prior to the block grant: repealing “broad-based categorical eligibility,” eliminating state-option waivers from the three-month time limit for areas with high unemployment, and severing the link between SNAP and the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. The first two cuts were part of the SNAP bill the House passed in September 2013; the third was part of a budget reconciliation bill the House passed in 2012. For more information about these policies see: Dottie Rosenbaum, Stacy Dean, and Robert Greenstein, “Cuts Contained in SNAP bill Coming to House Floor Would Affect Millions of Low-income Americans,” revised September 17, 2013, https://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=4009.
[3] More than 90 percent of SNAP expenditures are for food assistance benefits for low-income households. The rest goes to the federal share of state administrative costs for SNAP, block grants for nutrition assistance in Puerto Rico and American Samoa, employment and training and nutrition education services for SNAP households, commodities for The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP), and the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR). For purposes of this analysis, we assume those other activities would bear a proportional share of the cuts. As a result, we assume that SNAP benefits would be cut under the block grant by $112 billion over the period. This is a conservative estimate; in the past, Congress has favored most of those other activities and not looked to them for large budget cuts. In addition, in past years during the Budget Committee mark-up, committee staff have indicated that under a block grant, states could cut benefits in order to fund other activities, such as job training. Thus, the cut to SNAP benefits could be deeper than this analysis assumes.
All estimates use CBO’s February 2014 baseline assumptions for SNAP outlays and CBO’s May 2013 detailed assumptions about the number of SNAP participants and average benefits. (CBO did not make detailed assumptions available for the February 2014 baseline, but the projections changed by less than 1 percent.) The eligibility and benefit cut estimates in this paper do not take into account the three policy proposals that House Budget Committee staff indicated were included in the $135 billion (see footnote 2). Rather, they are illustrative of the size of the cuts that the proposed block grant would require states to make.
[4] Estimates are relative to CBO’s SNAP participation projections and assume that on average, the individuals who would be cut would otherwise have received the average benefit.
[5] See USDA’s estimates of the monthly cost of the Thrifty Food Plan at: http://www.cnpp.usda.gov/usdafoodcost-home.htm. To estimate an across-the-board cut, we reduced the size of maximum benefits relative to the Thrifty Food Plan by 23 percent beginning in 2019.
[6] The Path to Prosperity: Fiscal Year 2015 Budget Resolution, House Budget Committee, April 1, 2014, p. 61.
[7] Dottie Rosenbaum and Brynne Keith-Jennings, “SNAP Costs Starting to Fall, Almost Certain to Fall Further,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, March 6, 2014, https://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=4054.
[8] Dottie Rosenbaum, “The Relationship Between SNAP and Work Among Low-income Households,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, January 29, 2013, https://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3894.
[9] Under federal rules, a household’s monthly income must be at or below 130 percent of the poverty line — or roughly $2,116 a month (about $25,000 a year) for a family of three in 2014 — to qualify. There are some exceptions; for example, households with seniors and people with disabilities are not subject to the gross income test but must have net income (after deductions for certain necessary expenses) at or below 100 percent of the poverty line. States have some flexibility to lift the gross income test for certain other households, while some categories of people are not eligible for SNAP regardless of how low their income and assets may be — such as workers on strike, certain legal immigrants and many college students, and all undocumented immigrants. Unemployed childless adults may receive SNAP benefits for only three months out of every three years, except in areas with high unemployment.
[10] The figures refer to working individuals and people in family units where one or more family members worked at some point during the year.
[11] These are the average earnings and SNAP benefit for a family of three with earnings and two children for fiscal year 2012, based on USDA Household Characteristics Data. The benefit boost from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) ended in November 2013; this increase has been removed from the figures cited here to show what the typical working mother with two children would receive currently, as well as under Chairman Ryan’s budget plan.
[12] Based on CBPP analysis of the Supplemental Poverty Measure. See Kathleen S. Short, “The Research Supplemental Poverty Measure: 2012,” Bureau of the Census, November 2013, http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/p60-247.pdf. The Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure defines poverty as family income (cash income after taxes plus the value of SNAP and other food assistance, housing assistance, and energy assistance, minus out-of-pocket medical and work expenses) that falls below an updated poverty line. It uses a broader family unit that includes unmarried partners and foster children.
[13] Unpublished CBPP analysis of the March 2012 Current Population Survey using the Supplemental Poverty Measure.