House Agriculture Committee Republicans released their plan Monday night to overhaul the nation’s largest anti-hunger program to help pay for the GOP’s megabill central to enacting President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda.
The panel’s proposal will hit the $230 billion instructed savings target by forcing states to pay for part of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program using a sliding scale based on their payment error rates, beginning fiscal year 2028.
States with the lowest payment error rates would pay for 5 percent of SNAP benefits, while states with error rates above 10 percent are on the hook for 25 percent of benefits. That skews the financial burden to states like Alaska, South Carolina, Hawaii, Delaware and New Jersey in particular.
SNAP, which assists more than 42 million low-income people in the U.S. with buying food, is currently completely paid for by the federal government. House Agriculture Chair G.T. Thompson (R-Pa.) said the only way to save $230 billion is to either share SNAP costs with states or directly cut benefits — the latter of which has been a non-starter for many Republicans, including Thompson and the White House.
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