Fight Hunger and Defend the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) (UPDATED 7/1)

Updates

July 1, 2025: The Senate has passed H.R. 1 by a vote of 50-51, with J.D. Vance providing the tie-break YES vote. The bill still contains provisions anticipated to cause millions of Americans to lose access to food assistance. The legislation now moves back the House for final passage. If the House cannot whip the votes to pass the Senate-passed version of H.R. 1, the legislation will need to go to conference committee.

June 26, 2025: The Senate Parliamentarian has ruled that several of Senate Republicans' SNAP-related budget provisions, including shifting more costs to states and blocking non-citizens from benefts, violate the Byrd rule. Senate Republicans must now revise their bill or disregard decades of legislative precedent and override the parliamentarian's Byrd rulings.

June 12, 2025: The Republican-led Senate Agriculture Committee has released their proposed plan for SNAP cuts. While the bill softens some of the cuts proposed in the House version of the bill, it narrows work requirement exceptions, decreases federal funding for program administrative costs, and omits work requirement exemptions for homeless individuals, veterans, and young people who were previously in foster care.

June 4, 2025: Republicans have repeatedly claimed that slashing social safety net programs like SNAP will improve the nation's financial wellbeing. However, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has released a new analysis of H.R. 1 that estimates the bill will increase budget deficits by $2.4 trillion to finance trillions in tax cuts for the wealthy.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, also referred to as food stamps) is the nation’s biggest food assistance program, serving 42 million Americans each month, two thirds of whom are in households with children. The House-approved budget reconciliation bill, H.R. 1, finances tax cuts for the ultra-rich by slashing funding for essential social safety net programs, including $290 billion in SNAP funding.

H.R. 1 not only proposes cutting federal SNAP funding by about 30%—the largest food assistance cut in history—but also increases work requirements for SNAP participants. The Urban Institute estimates that these expanded work requirements could cause up to 5 million families to lose some or all of their monthly benefits. Research on SNAP work requirements has repeatedly shown that these requirements do not increase employment, but instead reduce program enrollment and remove a crucial safety net for struggling families.

Receiving SNAP benefits is associated with a range of positive outcomes, from reduced incidence of child abuse to better health outcomes and lower health care spending. H.R. 1’s proposed SNAP cuts will cause untold suffering, increase food insecurity, and force further cuts to SNAP benefits at the state level.

Urge your senators to reject these harmful cuts and protect food access.