Expanded Work Requirements in Senate Agriculture Committee Proposal Would Take Away Food Assistance From Millions: State Estimates
One of the harshest cuts in the Senate Agriculture Committee reconciliation proposal would take food assistance away from people — including, for the first time ever, parents with children over the age of 9 and adults aged 55 to 64 — who don’t meet a red-tape-laden and ineffective work requirement. The requirement also applies to grandparents, aunts and uncles, older siblings, and foster parents.
Adults subject to the requirement 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, about 8 million people — about 1 in 5 SNAP participants, including about 2.5 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]
While the threshold age of dependent children allowing caregivers to qualify for an exemption is even lower in the House bill (age 6, versus age 9 in the Senate), the Senate bill would still put millions of school-aged children at risk of hunger and food insecurity, which can have lasting consequences for their physical, cognitive, and social development and their educational success.[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 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 and putting everyone in the family at greater risk of hunger. For example, if a mother with a 10-year-old is cut off SNAP, her family’s benefit would fall from a maximum of $536 per month to just $292, based on this year’s benefit levels. That’s far too little to afford food for two people. In a small number of cases, an adult being cut off SNAP would end eligibility for their entire household.
The 8 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 proposal, would be stripped of their current exemptions from the work requirement; and people living in areas with high unemployment, as the Senate proposal makes it harder for states to seek a waiver from the work requirement based on local economic conditions.
People in every state are at risk of losing their food benefits. For state data, see the following table.
| TABLE 1 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
Millions at Risk of Losing Food Assistance Under Senate Proposal to Expand SNAP’s Work Requirement to Older Adults & Caregivers of Children as Young as 10 | ||||
| In addition to the 1.6 million adults nationwide who would be at risk of losing SNAP because of restrictions on states’ ability to request waivers of the harsh work requirement, estimated average monthly number of: | ||||
| Adults at Risk of Losing SNAP | Total People at Risk of Losing Some Amount of SNAP | |||
| Ages 55 to 64 with no children, no disability | Ages 18 to 64 with school-age children aged 10 and older, no disability | In households with adults ages 55 to 64 with no children, no disability | In households with adults ages 18 to 64 with school-age children aged 10 and older, no disability | |
| Alabama | 22,000 | 36,000 | 28,000 | 86,000 |
| Alaska | 2,000 | 3,000 | 3,000 | 7,000 |
| Arizona | 37,000 | 37,000 | 44,000 | 83,000 |
| Arkansas | 8,000 | 14,000 | 11,000 | 35,000 |
| California | 201,000 | 192,000 | 243,000 | 428,000 |
| Colorado | 23,000 | 36,000 | 28,000 | 81,000 |
| Connecticut | 12,000 | 23,000 | 14,000 | 50,000 |
| Delaware | 5,000 | 9,000 | 6,000 | 21,000 |
| District of Columbia | 7,000 | 5,000 | 7,000 | 10,000 |
| Florida | 113,000 | 123,000 | 151,000 | 275,000 |
| Georgia | 50,000 | 95,000 | 58,000 | 218,000 |
| Guam | 2,000 | 2,000 | 2,000 | 4,000 |
| Hawai‘i | 7,000 | 7,000 | 8,000 | 14,000 |
| Idaho | 2,000 | 4,000 | 3,000 | 12,000 |
| Illinois | 65,000 | 119,000 | 75,000 | 264,000 |
| Indiana | 18,000 | 33,000 | 23,000 | 73,000 |
| Iowa | 10,000 | 12,000 | 11,000 | 29,000 |
| Kansas | 5,000 | 9,000 | 7,000 | 22,000 |
| Kentucky | 19,000 | 31,000 | 24,000 | 69,000 |
| Louisiana | 23,000 | 51,000 | 28,000 | 123,000 |
| Maine | 4,000 | 8,000 | 4,000 | 18,000 |
| Maryland | 26,000 | 37,000 | 29,000 | 76,000 |
| Massachusetts | 42,000 | 56,000 | 57,000 | 119,000 |
| Michigan | 39,000 | 79,000 | 52,000 | 175,000 |
| Minnesota | 11,000 | 19,000 | 14,000 | 45,000 |
| Mississippi | 8,000 | 26,000 | 10,000 | 63,000 |
| Missouri | 14,000 | 41,000 | 18,000 | 97,000 |
| Montana | 3,000 | 4,000 | 3,000 | 10,000 |
| Nebraska | 3,000 | 7,000 | 3,000 | 15,000 |
| Nevada | 19,000 | 26,000 | 22,000 | 57,000 |
| New Hampshire | 1,000 | 3,000 | 1,000 | 8,000 |
| New Jersey | 22,000 | 55,000 | 29,000 | 107,000 |
| New Mexico | 23,000 | 33,000 | 28,000 | 67,000 |
| New York | 125,000 | 158,000 | 158,000 | 341,000 |
| North Carolina | 47,000 | 91,000 | 58,000 | 219,000 |
| North Dakota | 1,000 | 3,000 | 1,000 | 6,000 |
| Ohio | 42,000 | 58,000 | 53,000 | 140,000 |
| Oklahoma | 18,000 | 38,000 | 25,000 | 82,000 |
| Oregon | 27,000 | 35,000 | 31,000 | 72,000 |
| Pennsylvania | 58,000 | 81,000 | 84,000 | 177,000 |
| Rhode Island | 4,000 | 5,000 | 4,000 | 11,000 |
| South Carolina | 17,000 | 27,000 | 22,000 | 69,000 |
| South Dakota | less than 1,000 | 4,000 | 1,000 | 9,000 |
| Tennessee | 21,000 | 36,000 | 26,000 | 82,000 |
| Texas | 107,000 | 200,000 | 123,000 | 416,000 |
| Utah | 4,000 | 8,000 | 5,000 | 17,000 |
| Vermont | 2,000 | 4,000 | 3,000 | 9,000 |
| Virgin Islands | 1,000 | 2,000 | 1,000 | 5,000 |
| Virginia | 22,000 | 52,000 | 28,000 | 119,000 |
| Washington | 26,000 | 32,000 | 29,000 | 68,000 |
| West Virginia | 13,000 | 20,000 | 18,000 | 44,000 |
| Wisconsin | 26,000 | 28,000 | 30,000 | 67,000 |
| Wyoming | less than 1,000 | 2,000 | less than 1,000 | 5,000 |
| Total | 1,400,000 | 2,100,000 | 1,700,000 | 4,700,000 |
Note: These estimates do not incorporate other proposals in the Senate Agriculture Committee’s draft reconciliation legislation that would significantly restrict states’ ability to request waivers of SNAP’s work requirement for areas with insufficient jobs and eliminate current exemptions for veterans, people experiencing homelessness, or youth who have aged out of foster care. The District of Columbia, Guam, and the Virgin Islands are considered states in SNAP. Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands are not included in this table because they receive a nutrition assistance block grant in lieu of participating in SNAP. Source: State estimates based on CBPP analysis of SNAP quality control data for fiscal year 2022. | ||||
Millions Would Lose Some or All SNAP/Food Stamp Benefits Under Ryan Budget
2025 Budget Impacts: House Bill Would Cut Assistance for Children, Raise Costs for Families
Other versions of this research note
- Jun 27, 2025
Policy Basics
Food Assistance
End Notes
[1] Joseph Llobrera, “Millions Would Lose Food Assistance Under Expanded Work Requirement, Including Households With Children,” CBPP, June 11, 2025, https://www.cbpp.org/blog/tracking-senate-action-on-tax-and-budget-reconciliation-plan?entry_uuid=d473e392-d18c-43e0-9a5f-23477c9a7457#entry.
[2] Lauren Bauer and Chloe N. East, “A primer on SNAP work requirements,” The Hamilton Project, April 2025, https://www.hamiltonproject.org/publication/paper/a-primer-on-snap-work-requirements. See also LaDonna Pavetti et al., “Expanding Work Requirements Would Make It Harder for People to Meet Basic Needs,” CBPP, March 15, 2023, https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/expanding-work-requirements-would-make-it-harder-for-people-to-meet.
[3] Erin Brantley, Drishti Pillai, and Leighton Ku, “Association of Work Requirements With Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Participation by Race/Ethnicity and Disability Status, 2013-2017,” JAMA Network Open, Vol. 3, No. 6, June 2020, https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2767673.
[4] CBPP, “2025 Budget Impacts: House Bill Would Cut Assistance for Children, Raise Costs for Families,” June 6, 2025, https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/2025-budget-impacts-house-bill-would-cut-assistance-for-children-raise.
[5] Bauer and East, op. cit.