Republican SNAP Proposals Could Take Food Away From Millions of Low-Income Individuals and Families

Prominent Republican lawmakers and conservative think tanks have proposed cuts and other harmful policy changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) that could gain traction in Congress this year. These changes would cut food assistance across the U.S., making it harder for millions of people to buy the groceries they need to eat a healthy diet.

SNAP is our nation’s most effective and important tool to fight hunger, reaching over 40 million children, parents, older adults, disabled people, workers, and other low-income people each month, or about 1 in 8 people in the U.S., including 1 in 5 children. Research shows SNAP reduces food insecurity and is linked to improved health, education, and economic outcomes and to lower medical costs for participants. It also supports workers in low-paid jobs and has ripple effects in the economy overall and in individual communities as SNAP benefits are redeemed in stores across the U.S.^[1]

Despite SNAP’s demonstrated effectiveness, some Republican policymakers are reportedly considering advancing harmful SNAP proposals in Congress this year that would take food benefits away from families with low incomes and increase food insecurity and poverty.^[2] This could include policies sought by President Trump during his first term, as well as proposals from key Republican lawmakers, the Republican Study Committee’s (RSC) budget plan, and the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 agenda that would:

• Cut future benefits for all 40 million participants, including 1 in 5 children in the U.S., and make SNAP benefits increasingly inadequate to afford a healthy diet over time by restricting future updates to the Thrifty Food Plan (TFP), the basis for SNAP benefits, or immediately slash benefits for all participants more deeply by rolling back the recent TFP revision.
• Take food away from people living in areas with insufficient jobs, older adults up to age 65, parents of school-age children, veterans, people experiencing homelessness, and youth who have aged out of foster care by expanding SNAP’s existing harsh and ineffective work requirement.
• Force states to make deep SNAP benefit cuts and eliminate the national commitment to adequate food assistance by radically altering SNAP’s funding structure.
• End food assistance for millions of people in households who were able to modestly increase their earnings or build savings, while increasing red tape for states and participants, by gutting broad-based categorical eligibility, a long-standing SNAP option currently used by more than 40 states whose governments run the political spectrum.
• Add misguided restrictions on the types of foods participants can buy, creating stigma for low-income families and costly red tape for program administrators, retailers, and participants.

These SNAP cuts and policy changes would come at a time of rising food insecurity. After falling for several years, food insecurity rose in 2022 and 2023 (the two most recent years for which data are available), coinciding with higher grocery prices and the end of most temporary pandemic-related relief measures. In 2023, 33.6 million adults and 13.8 million children lived in households that experienced food insecurity, with Black, Latino, and Native American households continuing to experience substantially higher rates of food insecurity than other households.^[3]

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Some policymakers have suggested SNAP’s spending levels are problematic to justify proposed cuts, but SNAP spending is driven by need. While SNAP spending rose during the pandemic and reached a new peak in 2022, spending fell substantially in 2023 and 2024 as temporary pandemic benefits ended. When measured as a share of gross domestic product (GDP), SNAP currently represents less than half of 1 percent of GDP and will continue to fall as a share of GDP over the next decade, based on Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projections.^[4]

Policymakers could use a variety of legislative vehicles to enact harmful SNAP changes. Cuts could emerge as part of a budget reconciliation bill, a bill to raise the debt limit, appropriations legislation, or a farm bill, all of which are slated for action in 2025. Key House Republicans have called for major cuts in mandatory spending in their first budget resolution, and budget reconciliation legislation is expected to move early this year.

Regardless of how cuts or other harmful changes to SNAP are proposed, lawmakers should reject plans that would make it harder for families across the U.S. to afford healthy diets. Instead, they should take steps to ensure that low-income people will continue to be able to put food on the table and to strengthen SNAP to do even more to combat food insecurity and hunger.

Restricting Thrifty Food Plan Updates Would Cut Future SNAP Benefits for 40 Million People

Congressional Republicans are reportedly considering cutting SNAP through changes to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) ability to set the Thrifty Food Plan, a market basket of foods that represents a nutritionally adequate diet at minimal cost that serves as the basis for the SNAP benefit calculation. Because the TFP underpins SNAP benefit levels, harmful changes to the TFP would cut benefits for all participants — some 40 million people.

In 2021, the USDA revised the TFP to more accurately reflect the cost of healthy diet based on a directive from Congress in the bipartisan 2018 farm bill, which required USDA to periodically re-evaluate the TFP based on factors including food prices, dietary guidance, and food consumption patterns. Before the 2021 revision, the Thrifty Food Plan’s cost had been adjusted only for inflation for nearly 50 years, even as the scientific and economic factors that determine the cost of a healthy, realistic diet evolved substantially. This meant that SNAP benefits were often inadequate, and many participating households struggled to buy the groceries they needed.^[5]

The 2021 TFP update resulted in a modest but meaningful benefit increase for all SNAP participants. With the adjustment, SNAP benefits still average only $6.20 per person per day in 2025. The updated benefit levels lifted more than 2 million SNAP participants above poverty line when it took effect, with the greatest poverty-reducing impact for Black and Hispanic individuals.^[6]

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Future TFP re-evaluations, currently required by law to occur every five years, will be the mechanism going forward to ensure SNAP benefits reflect the shifting cost of a healthy diet and to keep SNAP benefits from becoming outdated and inadequate. But key Republican lawmakers have sought to restrict these future updates and permanently freeze the cost of the TFP, and thus SNAP benefit levels, aside from inflation adjustments. This policy has been included in 2024 farm bill proposals from both Representative Glenn “GT” Thompson and Senator John Boozman, the incoming chairs of the House and Senate Agriculture Committees.^[7]

Inflation is not the only factor that influences the cost of a healthy diet; science on what constitutes a healthy diet and food offerings change over time. As a result, this policy would prevent SNAP benefits from keeping pace with the cost of a healthy diet, eroding participating households’ ability to purchase the food they need.^[8]

Failing to adjust the TFP for factors other than inflation would cut future SNAP benefits by roughly $30 billion over the next decade, with all participants receiving less in future years than they would under current law, CBO estimates.^[9] That would be the largest cut to SNAP in nearly 30 years.

Based on CBO’s projections, we project that the households whose food assistance would be cut in a typical month starting in 2027 include approximately 17 million children, 6 million adults aged 60 or older, and 4 million disabled people.^[10]

Other Republican lawmakers have proposed making even deeper and more immediate SNAP cuts through changes to the TFP. For example, the most recent RSC budget plan calls for reversing the 2021 TFP update, which would cut SNAP benefits for all participants by an average of about 22 percent immediately upon taking effect. This would slash the average benefit from $6.20 per person per day to only $4.80 and cut SNAP overall by more than $250 billion over the next decade.

Expanding Provisions That Take Food Assistance Away From People Who Don’t Show They Meet a Work Requirement Would Increase Poverty and Hardship

Many Republicans have long sought to expand SNAP’s harsh existing work requirements, including its rule limiting benefit receipt to three months out of every three years for non-elderly adults without children in their homes if they can’t document they are meeting a 20-hour-per-week work requirement or are otherwise exempt (e.g., because they have a disability). Most recently, the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 temporarily expanded this policy to older adults, applying it to individuals aged 50 through 54 for the first time. This put almost 750,000 older adults newly at risk of losing food assistance, a risk exacerbated by the facts that this population is more likely to have a work-limiting health condition and to face age-related employment discrimination.^[11]

President-elect Trump, Republican lawmakers, and conservative policy organizations have proposed several avenues to further expand SNAP’s work requirement. These include proposals to:

• Take food away from people who live in areas with insufficient jobs. Since the creation of SNAP’s harsh three-month time limit, SNAP rules have let states request waivers of this requirement to prevent people from losing food assistance if they live in an area with high unemployment or insufficient job opportunities. Every state has used waivers at some point to respond to local labor market conditions.

  During his first term, President Trump sought through regulation to substantially narrow states’ ability to waive the three-month time limit, though the courts halted these changes. At the time, the Trump Administration estimated that this regulation would cause roughly 700,000 people to be cut from SNAP in a typical month.^[12] The RSC’s 2025 budget and Project 2025 have similarly called to restrict these waivers.

• Take food away from veterans, people experiencing homelessness, and former foster youth. The RSC budget also proposes removing some current exemptions from the work requirement and imposing the three-month time limit on veterans, people experiencing homelessness, and youth aged 18 through 24 who have aged out of foster care. Congress recently added exemptions for people in these groups in the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023, recognizing that they often face additional barriers to securing reliable employment. About 400,000 people in these populations are eligible for SNAP because of these exemptions, USDA estimates.^[13]
• Take food away from older adults up to age 65. The RSC budget plan calls to further expand the three-month time limit to include adults aged 55 through 64. This would put 1.4 million adults in this age range newly at risk of losing benefits. This population faces age discrimination in employment and substantial health barriers to work, with more than half of low-income adults aged 55 through 64 reporting a work-limiting disability or describing their health as “fair” or “poor.”^[14]

• Take food away from households with school-age children. House Agriculture Committee member Dusty Johnson introduced a bill last Congress (H.R. 1581) to expand the three-month time limit to adults who live with children aged 7 and older, in addition to expanding the age range to include adults up to age 65 and restricting waivers for areas without sufficient jobs. More than 3 million adults up to age 65, primarily parents or grandparents, who live in households with school-age children would be at risk of losing food assistance under this proposal.

  The more than 4 million children aged 7 through 17 who live in these households would see their families’ food assistance benefits fall if their parents or other adults in the family aren’t able to meet the 20-hour work requirement or document that they should be exempted. The impacts of food insecurity and hunger on children are well-documented, with even short periods of food insecurity harming their mental and physiological development and increasing their risk of adverse health outcomes.^[15]

These misguided efforts ignore the reality that most SNAP participants who can work already do so — often in key service or sales roles like cashiers, cooks, or home health aides. SNAP is a critical support for workers in these types of industries, as these jobs typically pay low wages, offer unreliable hours, and don’t provide benefits such as paid sick leave, one of many reasons that these jobs are often unstable. Other SNAP participants are only temporarily between jobs, often turning to SNAP after a job loss to help them weather the storm. Before the pandemic, in a typical month about 75 percent of SNAP households with children and at least one working-age adult were working that month. Almost 90 percent of such households had earnings in the year before or the year after that month, reflecting that joblessness is often a temporary condition for SNAP participants.^[16]

Additionally, independent studies have repeatedly shown that SNAP’s three-month time limit does not increase employment or earnings. It just cuts people off from the food assistance they need to buy groceries.^[17] A recent study found that the time limit cut SNAP participation among those subject to it by more than half (53 percent).^[18]

Proposals to expand this failed policy would take food assistance away from many people whom proponents claim the policy should not affect at all. Because the three-month time limit significantly increases red tape for states and families, people can lose benefits even if they are working but they can’t document enough hours, or if they shouldn’t be subject to the time limit (because of ill health, for example) but their state fails to screen them for an exemption.^[19]

This has been documented in both SNAP and other programs that have imposed work requirements on those receiving assistance. For example, 1 in 3 individuals identified by the Franklin County SNAP agency in Ohio as subject to the three-month time limit were later identified as having a physical or mental condition that impacted their ability to work, conditions that likely should have exempted them from the requirement.^[20] Another study found people who reported they have a disability — who also likely should have been exempt from the three-month time limit — lost benefits at the same rate as people without a disability.^[21]

Instead of applying these ineffective policies to more people or making them even more punitive, policymakers should advance policies that support employment opportunities without leaving people hungrier.

Block-Granting or Other Structural Changes to SNAP Would Force States to Make Deep Cuts, Undermining SNAP’s Anti-Hunger Role

The most recent RSC budget proposes converting SNAP into a discretionary block grant to the states, where funding would be set each year in the appropriations process and may not match need. It also calls for an “enhanced state cost share” to require states to cover a portion of the cost of SNAP benefits, which have always been 100 percent federally funded, as condition of receiving these federal block grant funds. President-elect Trump similarly proposed a substantial state matching requirement for benefit costs during his first term.^[22]

Such proposals to radically restructure SNAP would surely result in many people losing food assistance. However, because they are coupled with giving states authority to decide who gets SNAP and how much they receive in benefits, these kinds of proposals are often a way for policymakers to back massive SNAP cuts without specifying which SNAP participants would be harmed.

These proposals would undermine one of SNAP’s greatest strengths: anyone who qualifies under SNAP rules, and applies, will receive SNAP. SNAP’s structure allows enrollment to automatically expand to meet need when the economy weakens and contract when the economy recovers, and fewer people need assistance.

This automatic response not only eases food hardship for the people impacted by a downturn, but also acts as an important economic stimulus when households use their benefits to buy groceries from local stores. Setting an arbitrary spending cap through a block grant would mean that SNAP would no longer automatically respond to increased need in a future recession, environmental disaster, or pandemic.

Under a block grant, if states wanted to let the program expand when need rises, state budgets would have to cover the full additional cost of meeting greater food assistance needs. Given state budget constraints (particularly during tough economic times), it is more likely that states would significantly cut eligibility, benefits, or both. If they shielded some households from cuts, others would need to bear even larger cuts. ^[23]

Similarly, requiring states to cover a portion of benefit costs, with or without converting SNAP to a block grant, would impede SNAP’s ability to respond to greater need. During a recession, when state budgets would be strapped by declining revenues, each additional dollar needed for SNAP would require an additional state contribution. That would likely force states to cut benefits, restrict eligibility, or make accessing SNAP difficult, increasing hardship and undermining SNAP’s role as an economic stimulus.^[24]

In addition, such proposals would abandon the national commitment to provide low-income individuals, including 1 in 5 children, a SNAP benefit that is sufficient to afford an adequate diet. SNAP benefits are now set federally and reflect the cost of a very low cost, but realistic, healthy diet. To lower their costs under a block grant or state match, states would very likely cut SNAP benefits or make some individuals ineligible, eliminating the guarantee of access to a basic diet and increasing hunger and poverty, with negative impacts on health and other outcomes.

Converting SNAP into a state block grant would also have serious consequences for program integrity and accountability. Depending on the structure of a block grant, it could let states divert federal funds meant to pay for food for low-income families to plug holes in their state budgets — similar to what happens under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families block grant — while undercutting existing, rigorous federal processes to combat fraud and ensure payment accuracy.

Eliminating Popular Eligibility Option Would Create Benefit Cliffs, Disincentivize Work, and Worsen Red Tape

Some Republicans have long targeted another SNAP rule that more than 40 states across the political spectrum have used to modestly raise SNAP’s income eligibility limits to make SNAP work better for households with earnings. (See Figure 3.) The policy, known as broad-based categorical eligibility (BBCE), provides help affording adequate food to many low-income, working families who have difficulty making ends meet, for instance because they face housing or child care expenses that consume a sizable share of their income. (Ironically, many policymakers who call for taking food assistance away from people who cannot meet more stringent work requirements also want to cut SNAP for households with earnings.) BBCE also lets states adopt less-restrictive asset tests so families, older adults, and people with a disability can have modest savings without losing SNAP.^[25]

The most recent RSC budget and Project 2025 call for rolling back BBCE and reimposing stricter federal income and asset tests. President-elect Trump also proposed making similar changes by regulation during his first term, which his administration estimated would terminate SNAP for more than 3 million individuals and end automatic eligibility for free school lunches and breakfasts for nearly 1 million children. However, several more states — including those with Republican governors and state legislatures — have since adopted and expanded BBCE, so restricting or eliminating it would now have a greater impact.

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States have used BBCE to extend SNAP’s reach to low-income households that struggle to afford food but might not otherwise meet SNAP’s rigid income and asset tests. The policy:

• Helps working families by eliminating a “benefit cliff” as their earnings rise. One way SNAP supports work is by phasing benefits down gradually — by only 24 to 36 cents for each dollar of increased earnings. But without BBCE, a family can lose substantial SNAP benefits from a small earnings increase that raises their gross income over SNAP’s federal eligibility threshold (130 percent of the federal poverty line, or $2,798 per month for a family of three in fiscal year 2025), even though their income net of deductions for expenses like housing and child care is low enough to qualify for SNAP benefits. This can cost them more in lost benefits than what their raise is worth, and thus disincentivizes work advancements. BBCE allows households to increase their gross income slightly above this threshold without abruptly losing eligibility altogether, phasing their benefits down more gradually as they earn more.

  Notably, many policymakers of both parties have cited benefit cliffs as a problem they want to solve. For example, Ohio recently adopted a BBCE policy that expands SNAP eligibility to households with slightly higher gross incomes, with a state official noting that this “provides an incentive to accept promotions and pay raises knowing they won’t immediately lose benefits.”^[26]

• Allows low-income households to save for the future. Modest assets enable low-income families to avoid debt, weather unexpected financial disruptions, and better prepare to support themselves in retirement. Under regular federal SNAP rules, countable assets cannot exceed just $3,000 for most households and $4,500 for households with members who are elderly or have a disability, but BBCE lets states increase or eliminate those limits for SNAP. Low-income households in states that have used the policy to raise asset limits are likelier to have a bank account and have at least $500 in it, a recent Urban Institute study found.^[27]
• Simplifies SNAP administration. BBCE reduces the complexity of the SNAP application process for states and households. Even though few low-income households that apply for SNAP have assets above the federal limits, states that do not use BBCE to lift the asset test must ask applicant households about their assets and review documentation of those assets. BBCE also lowers “churn,” which occurs when SNAP households stop participating in SNAP (for procedural reasons or because they briefly become ineligible) and then reapply within a very short period. Churn creates added work for state workers and benefit gaps for SNAP households.^[28]

Restricting SNAP Purchases Would Increase Stigma and Costly Red Tape; Proposals Ignore SNAP’s Links to Better Health

Purportedly out of concern for SNAP participants’ health, some Republican lawmakers have proposed restricting the types of foods that participants can buy. For example, House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee Chair Andy Harris has previously proposed pilot projects to restrict SNAP purchases to “nutrient-dense” foods.^[29]

SNAP rules currently allow participants to use their benefits to buy most grocery items (with some limited exceptions, such as alcoholic beverages and hot prepared foods). Restrictions on an array of foods for purchase would be deeply stigmatizing for participants, who would no longer have the autonomy and dignity of choosing their own groceries. All people, regardless of how they pay for their groceries, should be able to buy the foods that best meet their cultural preferences, dietary requirements, and other needs.

Imposing food restrictions would also interfere with SNAP’s primary purpose of reducing hunger and food insecurity without evidence that it addresses the root causes of poor diet and health outcomes.^[30] Moreover, research has found no major difference between the spending patterns of SNAP and non-SNAP customers.^[31]

This policy would also create substantial and costly red tape. Program administrators would need to decide which of the several hundred thousand food items available for purchase would be eligible under these restrictions, with thousands of new items entering the market each year. The approximately 260,000 retailers that are authorized to accept SNAP benefits would be tasked with enforcing such restrictions, requiring their point-of-sale systems to be constantly updated and their staff consistently trained as allowable items shift over time. With the additional burden of enforcing these restrictions, some retailers may choose to no longer accept SNAP, making healthy foods less accessible to low-income households. And all participating households would face a substantial burden of navigating which specific items can and cannot be purchased with SNAP each time they go to the grocery store.

Misguided attempts to blame SNAP for diet-related disease and poor health ignore the strong evidence that SNAP participation is linked to improved health and lower health care costs.^[32] (See Figure 4.) In fact, SNAP participants report that their most common barrier to achieving a healthy diet is the affordability of healthy food.^[33] Restricting food purchases and other harmful proposals to cut benefits, as described in this paper, would only worsen this challenge.

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Other Changes Would Increase Paperwork and Costs for States, at Low-Income Families’ Expense

The proposals listed above are not an exhaustive list of harmful changes to SNAP that this Congress could seek to advance. Policymakers have previously proposed numerous other misguided changes to SNAP that would erect unnecessary barriers to accessing benefits and increase paperwork for states and families, including by eliminating other widely used state options to streamline program administration or adding punitive and stigmatizing requirements for participants.

While these proposals are often billed as ways to “close loopholes” or “reduce fraud,” many are entirely untested. Other proposals, such as requiring photo ID on electronic benefit transfer cards or mandating cooperation with child support enforcement efforts, exist as state options but are deeply unpopular because they increase administrative expenses, don’t offer any clear benefits, and make it harder for low-income people to access the benefits they need to afford food.

Congress Should Reject Harmful Cuts and Changes and Instead Focus on Opportunities to Strengthen SNAP

SNAP reduces poverty and food insecurity. It should be protected this year from cuts and harmful policy changes, ensuring that low-income families will continue to be able to access the healthy food they need. And it should be and strengthened in some areas to do even more to combat food insecurity and hunger.

First, it’s critical that Congress ensure that benefits are adequate to purchase a healthy diet, including by protecting both the 2021 revision to the Thrifty Food Plan and the ability of future TFP updates to keep SNAP benefit levels aligned with the cost of a healthy, realistic diet.

It’s also important to address the significant barriers that certain populations face in accessing SNAP, including program rules that exclude some low-income, food-insecure people entirely, such as the ban on people with drug-related felony convictions and the exclusion of Puerto Rico and certain other U.S. territories from participating in the regular SNAP program. Due to historical racism and ongoing discrimination in areas including employment, education, and the criminal legal system, these barriers and exclusions disproportionately affect low-income people of color and contribute to the long-standing racial disparities in rates of food insecurity.^[34]

Restoring SNAP eligibility to people re-entering their communities after a drug-related felony conviction and transitioning Puerto Rico into SNAP both have bipartisan support.^[35] Congress should enact these policies without paying for them by making harmful changes to other aspects of the program that would restrict other participants’ access to benefits or ability to afford an adequate diet.