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Republican and Democratic leaders have either downplayed or overstated the estimated impact of the House reconciliation bill on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that due to work requirements in the bill, 3.2 million people would lose all of their SNAP benefits, which provide financial help to low-income people for groceries.
About 42 million people receive SNAP benefits, according to the latest preliminary monthly figures.
In a May 25 interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” House Speaker Mike Johnson claimed, “We are not cutting SNAP.” Johnson said the bill, dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, was addressing “elements of fraud, waste and abuse” in the federal program.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, meanwhile, at the California Democratic state convention on May 31, said that as a result of the bill, those who “rely on SNAP to put a little extra on the table, you and your kids and 11 million of our neighbors are going to be kicked off that vital lifeline.”
According to several independent analyses, there are indeed significant cuts to the SNAP program in the bill, contrary to Johnson’s statement. But Walz, the former Democratic vice presidential candidate, was incorrect when he said 11 million SNAP recipients would be “kicked off” the program. That figure comes from the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which said as many as 11 million are in households “at risk” of losing some or all of their SNAP assistance under the bill’s work requirement provisions.
What the House Bill Says About SNAP
The bill reduces federal funding of the SNAP program by about $286 billion over a 10-year period, according to the CBO, and it shifts the responsibility for covering 5% of the benefit costs and 75% of SNAP’s administrative costs to the states. The states would have to cover more of the benefit costs if their payment error rates — a measurement that includes overpayments and underpayments of benefits — exceed 6%. The federal government currently funds all of the benefit costs, and states cover half of the administrative costs of the program.
“The states are not properly administering this, because they don’t have enough skin in the game,” Johnson said in the May 25 interview. “So what we’ve done in the bill is add some — just a modest state-sharing component, so that they’ll pay attention to that, so that we can reduce fraud.”
The bill also expands work requirements to qualify for SNAP benefits. Under current guidelines, “able bodied” adults ages 18 to 54 without dependent children can only continuously receive SNAP benefits if they work 20 hours a week or are eligible for an exemption. If those adults don’t meet the work requirements, they can’t get benefits for more than three months over three years.
The House bill extends the age range to 64 and includes parents of children who are age 7 and older, all of whom must prove they are working or are in an educational or training program to qualify for benefits. There are exemptions to the work requirement, including for homeless people and veterans, which are already scheduled to expire in 2030, as well as for pregnant people and those who can’t work due to a physical or mental limitation.
The bill also caps annual increases to what’s called the Thrifty Food Plan, which determines maximum SNAP benefits, and eliminates internet costs as a household expense deduction for benefit calculations.
The Effects on SNAP Beneficiaries
The nonpartisan CBO has said that the work requirement provisions in the House bill “would reduce participation in SNAP by roughly 3.2 million people in an average month over the 2025-2034 period.”
The CBO also estimated that states “would reduce or eliminate benefits for about 1.3 million people in an average month” over the same period due to the increased cost-sharing for states. However, there may be overlap between that figure and those losing benefits under the work requirements.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said the bill is “by far the largest cut to SNAP in history.”
Katie Bergh, a senior policy analyst on the CBPP’s food assistance team, told us in an email that the CBO’s 3.2 million estimate accounts for “how many people would actually be cut off SNAP and would lose their food assistance entirely under the expanded work requirement in a typical month.” (Emphasis is Bergh’s.)
“CBO did not estimate how many of these 3.2 million adults’ household members would also see a reduction in the food assistance they receive as a result,” she said.
According to CBPP’s analysis, 11 million people “are at risk of losing some or all of their food assistance under the expanded work requirement,” Bergh said. (Emphasis is hers.)
While CBPP said that 11 million were “at risk” of losing at least some benefits under the work requirements, the think tank also said that the number who would lose some or all assistance under the bill overall would be more than 7 million.
“Under the House bill, the work requirement would for the first time apply to adults up to age 65 and to parents and other caregivers in households where all children” are age 7 and older. “The bill would also essentially eliminate states’ ability to request temporary waivers of the work requirement for areas with higher unemployment or insufficient jobs,” Bergh said.
The CBPP estimate of 11 million includes everyone who would be subject to the bill’s new work requirements, plus other members of those households. But, of course, not all of those people are expected to lose all of their SNAP benefits.
The CBPP’s estimate includes “about 6 million adults who would be newly subject to SNAP’s existing work requirement and thus are at risk of being cut off SNAP entirely,” Bergh said.
When adults lose access to SNAP because of the work requirement, “it also dramatically reduces the food assistance for everyone who lives with them,” Bergh said. “As a result, the roughly 5 million people who live with those 6 million adults would also be at risk of seeing their food assistance cut substantially.”
Another analysis also concluded that the work requirements in the House bill would affect millions of people.
The Urban Institute said the expanded work requirements to receive SNAP benefits “would be a major change to the program.” The institute estimated that “5.4 million people would be affected” and of those, “1.5 million families with 1.8 million people would lose benefits entirely.”
While the analysts’ estimates differ, all found that the changes to the SNAP program in the House bill would affect millions of recipients, contrary to Johnson’s statement. But Walz’s claim that 11 million will be “kicked off” SNAP is an exaggeration of the bill’s estimated impact.
The CBO did estimate that the bill would affect more than those who would lose coverage entirely. The average monthly benefit overall by 2034 would be about $15 below the expected level under current law, due to the bill’s cap on how maximum benefits are calculated. But CBO said it didn’t expect that reduction to change SNAP enrollment. And about 65% of households receiving SNAP benefits would see a decline in monthly benefits of about $10 on average, beginning in 2026, due to the change in counting internet costs as household expenses.
We asked Johnson’s office for information that supports his statement that the House bill is “not cutting SNAP,” and a spokesperson told us in an email: “Uncritically calling the [One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s] popular SNAP reforms … a ‘cut’ would be an incorrect characterization.”
The spokesperson also cited Johnson’s additional comments in the May 25 interview. “What we’re doing is strengthening Medicaid and SNAP so that they can exist, so that they’ll be there for the people that desperately need it the most, and it’s not being taken advantage of,” Johnson said. “In 2024, over $11 billion in SNAP payments were – were erroneous. I mean, that’s – that’s a number that everyone acknowledges is real.”
The Government Accountability Office reported that in fiscal year 2023, the Department of Agriculture “estimated 11.7% (or about $10.5 billion) of SNAP benefits that it paid were improper — meaning that payments were the wrong amount or otherwise should not have been made.”
But, as we said, the bill would reduce federal SNAP spending by $286 billion over 10 years.
We reached out to Walz’s office for information that supports his claim, but we didn’t get a response.
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