Republicans’ Fast-Track Budget Process Ignores Families Losing Help Affording Groceries

At least 1.5 million fewer children — and more than 4.5 million fewer people overall — are receiving SNAP food assistance after congressional Republicans and President Trump enacted unprecedented cuts last year, despite no appreciable improvement in the economy and high food prices. This is a crisis unfolding in plain sight. Despite this, House Republicans have started a budget process that ignores the urgent need to help low-income families and children who are losing SNAP and can't afford groceries.

Many people who have lost SNAP are in groups that weren’t intended to be the target of the eligibility restrictions in last year’s Republican reconciliation law, like children. That means many struggling families are losing SNAP because they can’t navigate new bureaucratic obstacles, or they are going without the help they need as additional red tape pushes understaffed state agencies to their breaking point. The results are stark: an ill grandmother raising teens can’t get her SNAP reinstated despite being eligible, and parents are skipping meals to save food for their children. Families who have had their food assistance taken away are turning to overburdened food banks, which cannot fill the gap.

House Republicans are looking past this emergency in their budget legislation — while using it to help farmers struggling with high costs due to Trump’s tariffs and oil prices driven up by the war in Iran.

Congress could help both farmers and families. At a minimum, they need to slow down the hasty implementation of the massive shift in SNAP costs to states. How much each state will have to pay is based on its error rate — a flawed measure of benefit errors, most of which are unintentional mistakes by state agencies or households. With little time to bring down their error rate before the cost shift is locked in and unavoidable, now in a matter of weeks, states are erecting access barriers to SNAP, causing millions of children and families to lose SNAP and leaving them unable to afford food. (Because of how the error rate formula is determined, eligible families denied SNAP and those unable to navigate endless red tape don’t count as errors, but eligible families who receive somewhat more or less than they are owed do.)

The damage from the SNAP cuts could worsen quickly as some states are considering ending their SNAP programs entirely as soon as October 2027, when the cost shift takes effect. States unable or unwilling to pay the costs they incur will have no choice but to end the program.

Last year’s reconciliation law delayed the cost shift for a handful of states to give them more time to lower their error rates; policymakers should extend that delay to all states to keep eligible families from losing the help they need affording groceries.

It’s a relief that House leadership and the Trump Administration have not sought further cuts to SNAP to pay for the $12 billion in farm aid despite calls for cuts from some Republican members. Policymakers should reject any calls for more cuts to SNAP if the process moves ahead.

But “no new cuts” isn’t the right yardstick when more than 1.5 million children, and more than 4.5 million people overall, have already lost SNAP since the cuts were enacted last year.

People across the U.S. consistently say they want Washington to focus on affordability, especially the cost of food. Mitigating last year’s cuts to SNAP and staunching the number of families and children losing SNAP would be a good place to start.