The House Budget Resolution’s cuts to SNAP would be the largest in U.S. history

By Hannah Garelick, Policy Analyst, and Stan Dorn, Health Policy Director, UnidosUS 

If the pending House Budget Resolution passes and is implemented in Budget Reconciliation, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), America’s most important anti-hunger program, would experience its largest cuts in history.  

People from all backgrounds would have their lives upended by the Budget Resolution’s SNAP cuts. Nearly 40 million Americans rely on SNAP to feed their families at some point during the year, including 10 million Hispanics, half of whom are children.  

The Latino community would suffer particularly deep harm from the proposed SNAP cuts. That is because Hispanic families already experience hunger and food-related indebtedness at uniquely high levels:  

• Latinos earn less than Americans of other races and ethnicities, even though they have among the highest labor participation rates. In 2023, Latinos were 10% more likely than non-Hispanic whites to be in the labor force (67% vs. 61%); but median income was almost 25% lower for Latinos than for white adults ($915 vs. $1,196 a week). 

• As a result, Hispanic families are particularly likely to experience hunger. Nearly two in five Latinos did not have enough food to eat in 2023 — more than any other racial or ethnic group and significantly more than in the past.  

The House Budget Resolution’s unprecedented SNAP cuts, which are being recklessly rushed to passage in a matter of weeks, go far beyond reducing “waste, fraud and abuse,” as some claim. The Budget Resolution assigns $230 billion in cuts to programs within the Agriculture Committee’s jurisdiction. Most observers expect that SNAP will absorb the lion’s share of these cuts. But in truth, SNAP reductions are likely to exceed $230 billion. For Budget Reconciliation to lower tax revenues by the targeted $4.5 trillion amount, cuts must exceed, by $500 billion, the specific savings targets assigned to all committees. If each committee contributes its proportionate share to these extra $500 billion in cuts, the Agriculture Committee would need to make $306 billion in cuts. If more than 75% of that amount is taken from SNAP, it would result in SNAP being cut by over $230 billion.  

No previous legislation has made SNAP cuts of this magnitude. In laws passed since 1980, five budget reconciliation bills and three Farm bills have been scored by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) as cutting SNAP spending. Because of differences in the number of years for which CBO scored each bill — the so-called “scoring window” — one cannot simply compare the magnitude of total cuts in past legislation to the 10-year savings target in the House Budget Resolution. However, two metrics make a reasonable comparison possible, despite scoring windows of different sizes: average annual SNAP cuts during the applicable scoring window and the percentage of total SNAP spending cut by the legislation during the scoring window. 

Using either metric, the Budget Resolution’s SNAP cuts would exceed any past SNAP cuts ever signed into law (Table 1): 

• In real dollar terms, the $23 billion average annual SNAP cut under the House Budget Resolution would be more than three times the size of the largest previous cut ever made, a $6.61 billion average annual SNAP cut under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Budget Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA), updated to January 2025 dollars. 

Table 1. Past SNAP cuts made through Budget Reconciliation or Farm Bills vs. potential SNAP cuts proposed in House Budget Resolution

Notes:
(1) Past savings estimates were updated from the month of the applicable CBO score to January 2025 dollars by using the BLS Inflation Calculator.
(2) The $230 billion estimate for SNAP cuts under the House Budget Resolution assumes that: (a) the total Agriculture Committee savings target would grow from $230 billion to $306 billion to contribute a pro-rata share of the $500 billion in unspecified savings required for Budget Reconciliation to include $4.5 trillion in tax cuts; and (b) at least 75% of Agriculture Committee savings would be achieved through cuts to SNAP, rather than to other programs within the Agriculture Committee’s jurisdiction.
(3) To estimate the impact of the Budget Resolution’s proposed $230 billion SNAP cut, as a percentage of total SNAP spending over CBO’s 10-year scoring window, the cut was compared to baseline CBO projections for federal SNAP costs in FY 2025-2024.
(4) To estimate past laws’ impact, as a percentage of total federal SNAP spending, the savings estimate for each year was adjusted, based on the BLS Inflation Calculator, into the equivalent dollar amount in December of the year being estimated. The sum of SNAP cuts adjusted in that way was then compared to baseline federal SNAP spending as reported by the Food and Nutrition Service, except for the 2018 Farm Bill, as explained below.
(5) The original CBO score for the 1981 Farm Bill projected a SNAP cut of $0.23 billion, the amount shown in the table. However, the April 1983 report that provides this estimate also revises it to find that, on balance, that Farm bill increased rather than cut SNAP spending. To err on the side of overestimating the magnitude of SNAP cuts made in past legislation, we used the original rather than revised cost estimates. Without the original CBO scoring document, we used the month of the bill’s introduction as the basis for adjusting savings estimates based on inflation following the date of the cost savings estimate, again making that choice to overestimate the magnitude of past cuts.
(6) For the 2018 Farm Bill, we estimated the percentage impact on total SNAP spending using CBO’s April 2018 projections for SNAP outlays. We could not use FNS spending reports for this legislation, since its projected impact extended beyond 2024.
(7) For PRWORA, the number representing cuts to SNAP also includes cuts to the Commodity Distribution Program and therefore overestimates the legislation’s impact on SNAP in particular.

For additional information about the methodology used to develop these estimates, including methodological limitations, please contact Stan Dorn at UnidosUS, [email protected].

SNAP cuts would devastate hard-working families.

SNAP cuts increase poverty and hunger as well as household debt and financial insecurity. SNAP cuts also damage families’ physical and mental health, increasing overall health care costs.  

SNAP cuts would damage the economy.  

The proposed SNAP cuts would create economic havoc, at precisely the wrong time. SNAP cuts translate into reduced revenue for retailers and farmers, who in turn spend less on other goods and services. As a result, each $1 cut from SNAP eliminates $1.54 in total economic activity. With leading economic indicators recently beginning to trend downwards, committing the country to huge SNAP cuts would foolishly gamble with America’s economic future. 

SNAP cuts are deeply unpopular.

The American people overwhelmingly oppose SNAP cuts. 80% of all voters, including more than 70% of Republican voters, believe the country spends too little or the right amount on SNAP. Just 12% of voters, including fewer than one in five Republican voters, believe that federal funding for SNAP should be decreased. 

Congress must work to lower the cost of living.

With people already having trouble affording groceries, and food prices continuing to rise, Congress should not take away resources on which tens of millions of families rely to pay their food bills. Increasing families’ food costs by cutting SNAP would ignore the clear message that Latino and other voters sent last fall: the most important job of elected officials is to help families cope with the unaffordable costs of food and other necessities.  

SNAP is a crucial lifeline for the country, including the Latino community. But the House Budget Resolution would take this lifeline away from millions of Hispanic families and other everyday Americans. To help fund tax cuts that primarily benefit the wealthy, the legislation would increase hunger and poverty in America, undermine the U.S. economy and make it harder for working and middle-class people to afford the basic necessities of life. Latino and other voters will be watching carefully to see whether members of Congress support budget cuts that harm the daily lives of millions of struggling families.