Posted on Thursday, May 15, 2025
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by Outside Contributor
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The House Agriculture committee released budget reconciliation text this week and scheduled a full committee markup. As part of the budget framework passed earlier this year, the Agriculture Committee was tasked with identifying cuts of $230 billion over 10 years. Nutrition programs account for the bulk of spending under the committee’s jurisdiction, with the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) making up the vast majority of nutrition expenditures.
SNAP now costs taxpayers approximately $100 billion per year and serves 12 percent of the US population, with caseloads and spending increasing steadily, irrespective of broader economic conditions. The reconciliation text released by the Agriculture Committee makes several important changes to address the program’s tremendous cost growth in recent years, while prioritizing employment and state accountability. These reforms will put SNAP on a more sustainable path, while refocusing the program on its core principles—helping low-income households afford food and supporting employment.
Controlling Costs
The reconciliation text includes two important, long-overdue provisions aimed at controlling SNAP costs. The first is to ensure that any future reevaluations of the Thrifty Food Plan are administered in a cost neutral way, only increasing benefit levels for inflation. The Thrifty Food Plan sets maximum SNAP benefit levels, intending to represent the cost of a “nutritious, practical, cost-effective diet” for home consumption. President Biden’s US Department of Agriculture (USDA) broke precedent in 2021 by increasing the cost of the Thrifty Food Plan beyond the historical norm of adjusting benefit levels for inflation only. This questionable action increased SNAP benefit costs by 25 percent on top of increases for inflation. This, combined with participation increases, increased SNAP benefit cost 36 percent in constant dollars since 2019 ($76 billion in 2019 compared to $103 billion in 2024, in today’s dollars).
The reconciliation text maintains SNAP benefit levels at current levels, but ensures that the USDA cannot increase the cost of the Thrifty Food Plan beyond inflation in future years. This will ensure that SNAP benefit costs are predictable and consistent across time, and that only Congress can adjust SNAP benefit levels.
Another proposed cost-control measure is to increase the share of benefit and administrative costs that states must cover. Currently, the federal government pays 100 percent of SNAP benefit costs and 50 percent of administrative costs. This arrangement encourages states to expand their caseloads, as doing so brings in more federal funding. It also gives states little incentive to enforce work requirements and reduce errors and improper payments, or to manage overall program costs efficiently. The reconciliation bill changes this financial arrangement; states will be required to fund five percent of benefit costs and 75 percent of administrative costs. Moreover, states’ will be incentivized to ensure that benefits are going into the right hands; as states’ improper payment rates increase, their expected financial contribution to benefits increases, further incentivizing states to administer SNAP with care.
Prioritizing Work
The reconciliation text appropriately prioritizes employment. Congress added “assisting low-income adults in obtaining employment and increasing their earnings” to SNAP’s purpose in 2023. The reconciliation text furthers this purpose by strengthening the work requirement for able-bodied adults without dependent children, also called ABAWDs, expanding the requirement to adults up to age 64 (from 54), and extending the requirement to parents when the youngest child is school-age. The text eliminates the ability of states to waive work requirements unless they can demonstrate an unemployment rate above 10 percent. These provisions reflect the reasonable expectation that non-disabled adults with minimal caregiving responsibilities should engage in work or community service activities at least part-time as a condition of receiving SNAP benefits.
Other Changes, and What Remains
The reconciliation bill makes several other necessary changes to close loopholes, improve accountability, and reduce redundant programming. A few key areas left unaddressed in the reconciliation bill text involve establishing nutrition standards in SNAP, addressing benefit cliffs, and eliminating the use of broad-based categorical eligibility by states to expand SNAP income eligibility.
The House Agriculture Committee will have another opportunity to advance these reforms later this year during consideration of a Farm Bill, which reauthorizes SNAP. In the meantime, passing the reconciliation text is a crucial first step toward restoring accountability and imposing meaningful constraints within the program.
Reprinted with permission from AEI by Angela Rachidi.
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.
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