The Biden administration didn't think people were receiving enough SNAP benefits, so it jiggered the benefits' calculation, adding $300 billion to the program over the next decade.
Couple that with the outright cheating by many blue states that issue waivers to recipients for the work requirement, and the U.S. is now faced with a gigantic mess that only promises to grow worse unless Congress does something.
One plan gaining favor among many in Congress would force the states to pick up some of the tab for the SNAP program. The cost-sharing would be phased in beginning in 2028 and would hit states with higher payment errors while decreasing the costs for states with fewer errors.
There are also proposals that will increase the age of recipients who need to complete work requirements to receive food aid, adding able-bodied adults with children aged 7 and older. Other proposals include limiting future increases in benefits to families.
Biden fiddled with the Thrifty Food Plan (TFP) that serves as the basis of SNAP benefits, increasing benefits up to 28%. The GOP wants it so that only Congress can make changes to the Thrifty Food Plan.
Biden's changes to the TFP resulted in an out-of-control spending spree.
Economic Policy Innovation Center:
In 2021, the Biden Administration conducted another TFP re-evaluation. This time, however, the USDA was not cost neutral and instead increased the TFP well above inflation, costing taxpayers hundreds of billions in expanded welfare spending. This was the largest expansion in the history of the food stamp program, and it was implemented via executive action in violation of congressional intent to maintain cost neutrality.
As a result of the TFP re-evaluation and soaring inflation, the maximum food stamp benefit in fiscal year (FY) 2024 is 50.6 percent higher than in FY 2020, providing up to $3,924 more in welfare benefits per year for a family of four.
Putting the program back on track to fiscal sanity will involve pain for recipients. Taking benefits away from people is never politically popular. It's also difficult to explain to people that they never should have received the increase in benefits in the first place.
Biden knew this. He must be having a good laugh at the GOP's expense. As with Medicaid expansion, telling several million people they lost their benefits will be politically damaging, and there's no escaping it. Democrats are going to make political hay out of the necessary retrenchment of the SNAP program, and there's no way to avoid it.
The bill will also crack down on what Republicans say are largely blue-state abuses of waivers that skirt current SNAP rules, including waivers of certain layers of work requirements. And it will end a so-called internet utility loophole from the Biden administration and another loophole associated with the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program that Republicans argue allows states to skirt a standard utility deduction in the SNAP program.
The Agriculture panel is also planning to fit a raft of farm bill program funding into its portion of the megabill, with the goal to pass a smaller, slimmed-down farm bill later this year without major fights over mandatory funding.
House Republicans are hardly united in cutting SNAP funding, controlling Medicaid spending, and instituting the cuts made by the Department of Government Efficiency. Speaker Mike Johnson has set a goal of Memorial Day to pass Trump's "Big, Beautiful Bill."
Time's a-wasting.
