By the Numbers: Harmful Republican Megabill Takes Food Assistance Away From Millions of People
The harmful Republican megabill, enacted on July 4, will dramatically raise costs and reduce food assistance for millions of people by cutting federal funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by $187 billion through 2034 (about 20 percent), according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) — the largest cut to SNAP in history. These cuts will increase poverty, food insecurity, and hunger, including among children. The Republicans’ harmful law will cause widespread harm by making massive cuts to SNAP and Medicaid, raising costs on families and making it much harder for them to afford the high cost of groceries and health care.
Here are some of the impacts on food assistance:
- Cuts to SNAP in the Republican megabill will affect all of the more than 40 million people who receive basic food assistance through SNAP each month, including some 16 million children, 8 million seniors, and 4 million non-elderly adults with disabilities.
- Based on our analysis of CBO's projections, about 4 million people, including children, seniors, veterans, and individuals with disabilities, will see the food assistance they need to afford groceries terminated or cut substantially.
- And the law adds $66 billion in new spending for farm programs paid for by taking more food assistance away from people with low incomes.
Cuts Federal Funding, Shifts Costs to States
The Republican budget reconciliation law includes a major structural change that will cut billions in federal funding for most states’ basic food benefits and then require those states to backfill for the federal cut.
- Most states will be required to pay 5 to 15 percent of food benefits. If a state can’t make up for these massive federal cuts with tax increases or spending cuts elsewhere in its budget, it will have to cut its SNAP program (such as by restricting eligibility or making it harder for people to enroll) or it could opt out of the program altogether, terminating food assistance entirely in the state.
- States will respond to this deep cut in federal SNAP funding by collectively reducing or eliminating SNAP benefits for about 300,000 people in a typical month, CBO estimates.
- This will be the first time in the modern history of SNAP that the federal government no longer ensures that the lowest-income families with children, older adults, and people with disabilities in every state have access to the food assistance they need. (Details and data on how much each state could be required to pay can be found here.)
- Children who receive SNAP are automatically eligible for free school meals and summer EBT. CBO estimates that 96,000 children in an average month will also see cuts in these benefits because of losing the automatic eligibility that comes from receiving SNAP.
- The cuts to SNAP and child nutrition benefits could be far larger than CBO’s estimates if more states deeply cut or terminate SNAP in response to the reduction in federal funding. The risk of such cuts would rise during recessions, when state budgets are even more stretched.
Takes Food Assistance Away by Expanding Work Requirement
More than 5 million people — about 1 in 8 SNAP participants — including 800,000 children and over half a million adults who are aged 65 or older or have a disability, live in a household that will be at risk of losing at least some of their food assistance because someone in their household is subject to the significant expansion of SNAP’s already harsh, ineffective, and red tape-laden work requirement under the enacted harmful Republican megabill. (See state data on the number of people at risk here.)
CBO estimates that about 2.4 million people in total will be cut from SNAP under the provision in a typical month, including 800,000 adults aged 55-64 who do not live with children; 300,000 parents, grandparents, and other caregivers living with children aged 14 and older; roughly 1 million people who live in areas where jobs are scarce; and more than 300,000 veterans, people experiencing homelessness, and former foster youth. Expanding the work requirement will cut SNAP by about $69 billion through 2034, CBO estimates.
- Under prior SNAP rules, most non-elderly, non-disabled adults without children in their homes couldn’t receive benefits for more than three months out of every three years if they didn’t document they were working at least 20 hours per week or prove they qualify for an exemption.
- The law expands this restriction to older adults aged 55-64 and to parents whose youngest child is at least 14 years old, while also significantly limiting waivers for areas with poor economic conditions.
- The law also strips exemptions from the work requirement for veterans, people experiencing homelessness, and former foster youth that were agreed to in the Fiscal Responsibility Act in 2023 and previously scheduled to expire on September 30, 2030.
- Evidence shows that these work requirements do little to nothing to improve employment outcomes and instead result in many people who already work or who should be exempt losing food assistance due to red tape.
Takes Food Assistance Away From Many Immigrants Living Lawfully in the U.S.
The law denies food assistance to many people who are immigrants living lawfully in the U.S. who have been granted humanitarian protections by the U.S. government.
- Those affected would include refugees, people granted asylum, certain survivors of domestic violence and certain victims of sex or labor trafficking. (People who lack documentation already are ineligible for SNAP.)
- The final law continues to allow U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents (after a five-year waiting period, if applicable), people granted Cuban or Haitian entrant status, and people who live in the United States under a Compact of Free Association (COFA) to qualify for SNAP.
- CBO estimates that 90,000 people living lawfully in the U.S. will lose an average of $210 per month in food assistance in a typical month under the enacted law.
Cuts the Amount of Food Benefits Low-Income Families Receive
- The law will cut food benefits by an average of $100 per month for about 600,000 low-income households by eliminating an administrative simplification for calculating utility expenses for many households. We estimate that more than 500,000 children live in these households.
- Over time, the law will also cut food assistance 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 by restricting future updates to the Thrifty Food Plan, the basis for SNAP benefits. CBO estimates that SNAP households’ average benefit will be about $14 per month lower by 2034 as a result.
Increases Child Poverty and Hardship
- Based on CBO estimates, we estimate that about 1 million children will see food assistance to their families cut substantially or terminated under the law’s expanded work requirement, elimination of eligibility for many lawfully present immigrants, and other benefit cuts.
- In addition, the law puts all children at risk of losing some or all of their benefits based on how states react to the deep cut in federal funding and the requirement to either backfill for those cuts, cut their program to reduce state costs, or terminate their program entirely. And all children in the program will see their benefits cut over time as a result of the cut to the Thrifty Food Plan.
- By slashing federal funding and requiring states to pay a share of benefits, the law paves the way for states to restrict eligibility, which could cut millions of working families with children off from SNAP entirely.
- Even when a family continues to receive SNAP, the cuts could be very large. For example, a mother with one child whose benefits get cut due to the work requirement would see the family’s food assistance fall from a maximum of $536 per month to $292 per month — a loss of $244 and not nearly enough to afford food for two people. This would cut their benefit to $4.87 per person per day. (These are benefit figures for 2025.)
- The law walks away from a 50-year commitment to ensure that low-income children in every community — in rural Alabama, in North Dakota, and in New York City — have access to the food assistance they need to grow and thrive.