Senate Republicans Reprise Push to Pay for Tax Cuts by Slashing Food Stamps

Politics|Senate Republicans Reprise Push to Pay for Tax Cuts by Slashing Food Stamps

Senate Republicans said on Thursday that they would forge ahead with a plan to slash federal food assistance to the poor, after they devised a workaround that would allow them to cut the program to help pay for their sprawling package of tax cuts.

The proposal, which would force states to shoulder new costs for providing food stamps, is part of a larger set of changes targeting federal safety net programs that may result in millions of lower-income Americans losing access to aid.

For decades, the federal government has shouldered the primary financial burden for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or S.N.A.P., which provides about 42 million low-income Americans on average with monthly food benefits. Its supporters say the payments are essential, with roughly one in seven Americans reporting inconsistent access to food in 2023, government data show.

But Republicans insist S.N.A.P. is riddled with waste, fraud and abuse, and they have sought to scale back its benefits as part of the package of tax cuts they are crafting with the input and support of President Trump. The House version of that measure, which party lawmakers adopted in May, aimed to impose new work requirements on recipients while seeing states finance a potentially significant portion of the program.

A similar push in the Senate quickly ran into procedural roadblocks, after the chamber’s parliamentarian ruled last week that the proposal to cut S.N.A.P. did not comport with the special budgetary rules that allow Republicans to fast-track their domestic policy legislation. That, in effect, meant it could not be included in the bill.

But Senate Republicans said on Thursday that they had retooled some of the mechanics of their plan, ultimately earning the parliamentarian’s approval.