Expanded Work Requirements in House Republican Bill Would Take Away Food Assistance From Millions: State and Congressional District Estimates

The House Agriculture Committee bill cuts SNAP by at least $230 billion over nine years, cutting the program by more than 20 percent. One of the harshest cuts would take food assistance away from people — including, for the first time ever, parents with children over the age of 6 and adults aged 55 to 64 — who don’t meet a red-tape-laden and ineffective work requirement.

Adults subject to the requirements would only be able to receive food benefits for three months in a three-year period unless they show compliance with a 20-hour-per-week work requirement or prove they qualify for an exemption such as having a disability.

In total, nearly 11 million people — about 1 in 4 SNAP participants, including more than 4 million children and more than half a million adults aged 65 or older and adults with disabilities — live in households that would be at risk of losing at least some of their food assistance under the provision.^[1] (See Table 1.)

These requirements already apply to adult ages 18 to 54 who don’t have children. The evidence is clear — these requirements don’t do anything to raise employment rates.^[2] But they do result in many people losing food benefits they need, deepening poverty and increasing hardship. Research also shows that many people who lose SNAP are working or should have qualified for an exemption, but the bureaucratic red tape made documenting their employment or proving their exemption too difficult.^[3]

The work requirement provisions in the bill mirror those put forward in legislation sponsored by Rep. Dusty Johnson. The Congressional Budget Office previously analyzed that bill and estimated 3 to 3.5 million fewer people would participate in SNAP in a typical month due to these requirements.^[4]

Research consistently shows that SNAP’s work requirement does not increase employment or earnings. This means that the vast majority of people who would lose SNAP under an expanded work requirement — including older adults, parents, veterans, people experiencing homelessness, and young people who have aged out of foster care — would lose the assistance they need to afford groceries with no improvement in their job prospects or income.^[5] Ending SNAP eligibility for these individuals would harm not only the adults subject to the requirement but also the people they live with, including children and people with disabilities, by reducing food benefits for the entire household.

The 11 million people at risk of losing SNAP benefits entirely or seeing the benefits for their families cut include older adults; parents, grandparents, and their children; veterans, people experiencing homelessness, and former foster youth who, under the bill, would lose their current exemptions starting in 2030; and people living in areas without sufficient jobs that lose their waivers of the work requirement as a result of the bill’s provisions.

People in every state are at risk of losing their food benefits. For state and congressional district data, see the following interactive map and table.^[6]