(The Center Square) – After 16 hours of debate, the House Committee on Agriculture voted along party lines to advance the last bill set to become part of a massive package implementing President Donald Trump’s tax cuts and other goals.
The House Ways and Means Committee is set to compile the legislation with ten other committee bills Friday, assembling a policy megabill – currently estimated to cost between $3.3 trillion to $4.1 trillion over the next decade – through the budget reconciliation process.
The Republican budget reconciliation framework had instructed the Agriculture committee to find savings of at least $230 billion over the next ten years through changes to programs under its jurisdiction, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
The SNAP changes settled on by Republicans in the committee will save $300 billion if implemented, helping finance the permanent extension of Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
In a statement after the bill’s passage, Agriculture committee Chairman Glenn Thompson, R-Pa., said the reforms provide “commonsense solutions” to help root out SNAP program waste and build a “more resilient rural America.”
“Our section of the One Big, Beautiful Bill restores integrity to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, provides relief to farmers, invests in the future of rural America, and prevents the largest tax increase on American families,” Thompson said.
“We ensure that SNAP works the way Congress intended it to, by reinforcing work, rooting out waste, and instituting long-overdue accountability incentives to control costs and end executive and state overreach.”
Among other changes, the bill closes SNAP work requirement loopholes and incentivizes states to crack down on improper payments by making them shoulder a portion of the program costs.
Unlike with other federal entitlement programs, including Medicaid, states do not contribute anything to SNAP. The U.S. government spent $112.8 billion taxpayer dollars on SNAP in 2023, covering 100% of the cost of benefits and 50% of states’ administrative costs.
But the committee’s bill would change that, making states cover 5% of their benefit cost share in the SNAP program by fiscal year 2028, with their contribution increasing the higher the state’s payment error rate.
“Clearly, SNAP is not working as Congress intended,” Thompson said during the bill’s makeup. “We must ensure the proper incentives are in place for states to administer the program more effectively for those it serves, and this measure does just that – by aligning SNAP with other state-administered programs and requiring a minimal benefit cost share on the states.”
States had an average payment error rate of 11.68% as of 2023. Republicans’ plan would require states with error rates at or above 10% to pay a 25% share of their SNAP benefits cost.
The bill would also make all noncitizens, aside from legal permanent residents, ineligible for SNAP, as well as close “waiver gimmicks” used by states to exempt large numbers of able-bodied beneficiaries from work requirements.
Although the SNAP program has included 20 hour per-week work requirements for able-bodied adult beneficiaries without dependents since 1996, dozens of states have skirted work requirements for these people by manipulating data.
States will recategorize or manipulate unemployment data to claim that some or all geographic areas do not have a “sufficient number of jobs,” thereby obtaining work requirement waivers for all SNAP recipients in those areas.
Roughly 128 million people across the nation, or almost a third of the U.S. population, live in areas where SNAP work requirements are waived. California, Illinois, Nevada, and Washington, D.C., have universally waived SNAP work requirements, while 25 other states have waived work requirements in some parts.
This tactic has resulted in 16% of the roughly 3.6 million able-bodied adult beneficiaries without dependents fulfilling SNAP work requirements.
The ‘waiver states’ also have disproportionately more SNAP beneficiaries, and able-bodied ones, than their share in the overall U.S. population, according to the USDA and Economic Policy Innovation Center.
Committee Democrats lambasted the changes to SNAP, claiming they amount to “direct attacks” on the low-income Americans, state governments, and farmers that benefit from the program.
“Instead of making the program work better for seniors and parents of children as young as seven years old, the Republican bill adds paperwork requirements to make accessing food harder,” Ranking Member Angie Craig, D-Minn., said in a post-passage statement. “Instead of making SNAP more effective and efficient, the Republican bill cons states into slashing food assistance.”
Dozens of Democratic amendments proposed, including ones that would further increase federal funding for agriculture research, were shot down in committee. The bill that passed includes some investments in agriculture research, farm, ranch, and forestry programs that are normally included in the typical five-year Farm Bill.
The National Farmers Union applauded the investments, but echoed Democrats’ concerns that Republicans were simply using the reconciliation process to hold off on crafting an actual Farm Bill.
“We appreciate that the House Agriculture Committee recognizes the financial pressures facing family farmers and ranchers. Proposals to strengthen crop insurance, bolster the farm safety net, and maintain voluntary conservation programs are important steps toward securing the future of our food system,” NFU President Rob Larew said.
“But this is not the best way to produce a meaningful farm bill,” he added. “Our members know that the process matters. Pitting farm and nutrition priorities against one another creates unnecessary division and weakens the broader effort. A strong farm bill – however it comes together – must reflect the full scope of challenges facing agriculture and rural communities, and it must work for everyone it touches: farmers, ranchers, and families across the country.”
This article was originally published at www.thecentersquare.com
