The budget reconciliation bill’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 House Agriculture Committee’s budget reconciliation proposal is enacted, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), America’s most important anti-hunger program, will experience its largest cuts in history.  This cut to SNAP would eliminate more than 25% of all federal spending on the program for the next 10 years. 

People from all backgrounds would have their lives upended. SNAP helps more than 42 million low-income Americans, with children and older adults being the largest group of people benefiting from the program. Among those who rely on SNAP to help pay for food are 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 very high rates of labor force participation.. In 2023, Latinos were 10% more likely than non-Hispanic whites to be in the labor force; 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 proposed SNAP cuts, which are at least $290 billion, would be much higher than any previous SNAP cuts ever signed into law. In laws passed since 1980, eight budget reconciliation bills and three Farm Bills have been scored by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) as cutting SNAP spending. Due to differences in the number of years covered by the Congressional Budget Office’s ‘scoring window’ for each bill, the total SNAP cuts in past legislation can’t be directly compared to the 10-year cut to SNAP expenditures estimated under the budget reconciliation bill. However, two metrics make a reasonable comparison possible, despite scoring windows of different sizes: average annual SNAP cuts during the applicable scoring window, in constant dollars; and the percentage of total SNAP spending cut by the legislation during the entire scoring window.  

Using either metric, the current budget reconciliation bill would make history’s largest cut to the SNAP program (Table 1): 

• In real dollar terms, the $29 billion average annual SNAP cut under the current budget reconciliation bill would be more than three times the size of any prior cut. The largest previous cut, using this metric, was a $6.67 billion average annual SNAP cut under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Budget Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA), updated to March 2025 dollars. 

• The 26% drop in projected SNAP spending under the current budget reconciliation bill would exceed, as a proportion of projected SNAP spending, any cut enacted by prior legislation. Using this metric, the current cut is 40% higher than the largest previous cut, which was an 18.6% reduction made in 1996 by PRWORA.  

Table 1. Past SNAP cuts signed into law vs. SNAP cuts proposed in in budget reconciliation 

Notes: 
(1) Past savings estimates were updated from the month of the applicable CBO score to March 2025 dollars by using the BLS Inflation Calculator. 
(2) To estimate the impact of the budget reconciliation bill’s proposed $290 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 2025-2034. 
(3) 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. 
(4) 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 the revised cost estimates. Without access to the original CBO scoring document, we used the month of the bill’s introduction as the basis for adjusting savings estimates to account for inflation following the date of the cost savings estimate, again making that choice to overestimate the magnitude of past cuts. 
(5) 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. 
(6) 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]. 

The budget reconciliation bill’s enormous SNAP cuts, which are being recklessly rushed to passage, go far beyond reducing “waste, fraud and abuse,” as some claim. Even more than history’s largest past SNAP cuts — those in PRWORA, which were a major factor in 10 million people losing SNAP after the legislation’s enactment — the cuts made by the current legislation would reach muscle and bone. And the consequences would be serious.  

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.   

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  beginning to trend downwards, committing the country to huge SNAP cuts would foolishly gamble with America’s economic future.  

The American people, including Latino voters, 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. According to a major national poll fielded in April 2025, 62% of Hispanic voters opposed cutting federal funding for SNAP, including 45% who strongly opposed those cuts.   

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, and that Latino voters continue to believe today: 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 budget reconciliation proposal would cut this lifeline for 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.