Some in GOP want big cuts to food assistance in Trump's tax bill. Committee chairs say no. [View all]
Source: Washington Post
May 1, 2025 at 8:07 p.m. EDT
The Republican leaders of the House and Senate agriculture committees say they will not advance legislation that cuts food assistance benefits for needy families, a position that threatens to upend the party’s budget goals in what President Donald Trump has called the “big, beautiful bill” on taxes, immigration and defense.
House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn Thompson (R-Pennsylvania) told The Washington Post that his panel would not force SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program formerly known as food stamps, to overhaul its benefit formulas to claw back billions of dollars in spending. Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman John Boozman (R-Arkansas) echoed Thompson’s stance, telling The Post that he is “not in favor of reducing benefits.”
Those declarations could scramble Republicans’ bid to extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts while slashing trillions of dollars in spending from the federal budget. The GOP is working to pass the legislation through a process called “reconciliation” to allow the Senate to bypass a Democratic filibuster.
But to remain within the rules that govern that process — and to appease hard-line conservatives who demand their party reduce federal spending — lawmakers must achieve a certain amount of budget cuts. Thompson said he doesn’t think his House committee can achieve the $230 billion in savings called for in the budget framework Republicans passed last month. “I think it may have to be less than that,” Thompson said.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/05/01/snap-cuts-trump-tax-bill/
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SNAP is covered under the Farm Bill, which itself is a 5-year appropriations package. It has been delayed several times since 2013 and the 2023 version was nothing but an extension of the 2018 one (re-upped as part of some C.R.s).
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