House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries holds a press conference May 13, 2025, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — Democrats Tuesday criticized House Republicans for their efforts to pass “one big, beautiful” bill to extend Trump-era tax cuts that would require potential cuts to food assistance and Medicaid.

“The American people do not support this extreme and toxic bill, and we’re going to hold every single House Republican who votes for it accountable,” said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York, during a press conference.

As House Republicans push forward with the last three bills of their reconciliation package in committee this week, Democrats slammed the proposed work requirements for Medicaid, extending the 2017 tax cuts enacted during President Donald Trump’s first term and overhaul of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, in order to pay for the megabill.

The complex reconciliation process skirts the Senate filibuster and Republicans plan to pass the bill through a simple majority, meaning input from Democrats is not needed. 

Several House Democrats, such as Rep. Steven Horsford, Democrat of Nevada, called the legislation a “scam.”

Horsford, who sits on the Ways and Means Committee, said during a separate press conference with the advocacy group Popular Democracy that extending the 2017 Trump tax cuts would “gut Medicaid.”

Medicaid is the state-federal health care program for people with low incomes and certain people with disabilities, and has 71.3 million enrollees. 

“This would be the largest cut to health care in the history of our country,” Horsford said.

Rep. Judy Chu, Democrat of California, said only the ultra wealthy, such as billionaires, would benefit from reconciliation through tax cuts.

The cost of the tax proposal has not yet been released, but government deficit watchdogs estimated a wholesale extension would cost roughly $4 trillion over the next decade.

SNAP costs shifted in part to states

The House committees on Agriculture, Energy and Commerce and Ways and Means met Tuesday to debate and pass their bills.

The Agriculture panel seeks to hit as much as $290 billion in cuts by passing part of the costs of SNAP to states through a sliding pay scale, based on error rates.

States with the lowest error rates for SNAP benefits would only pay for 5%, while other states with higher rates could pay as much for 25% of food benefits. More than 42 million people rely on SNAP, which is currently completely funded by the federal government.

The Energy and Commerce bill would cut federal spending by $880 billion, such as by instituting work requirements for Medicaid for some able-bodied adults ages between 19 and 65.

House committees have already signed off on eight of the 11 bills that will make up the sweeping reconciliation legislation before the Budget Committee rolls the bills into one package. If all Republicans get on board, the House is on track to approve the entire package before the end of May.

Warnings of rising premiums, hospital closings

Senate Democrats slammed potential cuts and changes to Medicaid.

“Not only will millions of Americans lose coverage — for many others, their premiums will skyrocket,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said at a press conference Tuesday.

“Hospitals — rural, urban and in between — will close,” the New York Democrat said. “Many, many people will lose their jobs, and many more will lose their health coverage. States will scramble with their budgets, and American families will be left out to dry.”

Oregon Democratic U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden also blasted the proposed cuts.

“What the Republicans do in their health care provisions in the reconciliation package is walk back health security for millions and millions of Americans,” he said.

“We’re for a tax code that gives everybody in America the chance to get ahead, that’s something that we’re going to battle for in this process,” said Wyden, the top Democrat on the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance.

Senate GOP

Some Republicans have also raised concerns about cuts to Medicaid, such as Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, who wrote in an opinion piece in the New York Times that any cuts to Medicaid would be “both morally wrong and politically suicidal.”

But Senate Majority Leader, John Thune of South Dakota, said Tuesday that he feels “very good” about where House Republicans are on their bill and “where, ultimately, we are going to be on that bill as well.”

“We are coordinating very closely with our House counterparts at the committee level, at the leadership level, and we know they have to get 218 votes,” he said.

Thune said House Republicans will “do what it takes to get it done in the House, and when it comes over here, we will be prepared for various contingencies, obviously, one of which could be taking up the House bill and then offering a Senate substitute, but we’ll see what ultimately they’re able to get done.” 

Boxes of sugary cereal, including those from General Mills, fill a store's shelves on April 16, 2025, in Miami, Florida. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

The U.S. House Agriculture Committee’s portion of Republicans’ massive taxes and spending bill would partially shift to states the costs of the country’s largest food assistance program, which some experts and Democrats predicted will lead to major cuts in the program — and possibly even an end to it in some states.

The measure will be taken up by the panel Tuesday night and is expected to be voted on late Tuesday or early Wednesday, after which it will be folded into a larger reconciliation package with 10 other bills passed out of committees and sent to the floor. The entire House is set to vote on the legislation before Memorial Day.

The federal government currently pays for all Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits. A provision in the Agriculture Committee’s piece of Republicans’ “big, beautiful bill” to enact President Donald Trump’s agenda would transfer between 5% and 25% of that cost to states, depending on each state’s payment error rate, starting in 2028.

The program provided about $100 billion in food assistance to nearly 42 million Americans last year, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Eligibility currently depends on tests related to income, assets, work requirements and more.

But the change in cost structure could lead states to opt out entirely, said Ty Jones Cox, vice president for food assistance at the left-leaning economic think tank Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, leading some needy families unable to pay for groceries.

“The language is unclear, but it could end SNAP entirely in some parts of the country if states decide the new state funding requirements are impossible for them to meet,” Cox said in a statement late Monday after the bill’s release. “The bill’s massive cuts disguised as ‘cost shifts’ pass the buck to states – but ultimately would leave families holding an empty grocery bag when states aren’t willing or able to backfill for lost federal funds.” 

Republicans plan to use the reconciliation package to permanently extend the 2017 tax law, increase spending on border security and defense by hundreds of billions of dollars, overhaul American energy production, restructure higher education aid and cut spending.

“Our budget reconciliation text restores SNAP to its original intent—promoting work, not welfare—while saving taxpayer dollars and investing in American agriculture,” House Committee on Agriculture Republicans said on X on Monday night.

Funding tied to error rate

Under the bill, states’ responsibility would rise with the broadly defined error rate of payments, which includes fraud as well as paperwork mistakes by a beneficiary or caseworker.

States with an error rate of 6% or less would be responsible for paying 5% of benefits, and those with an error rate higher than 10% would shoulder one-quarter of the cost of benefits.

Two other intermediate categories would exist for states with error rates between 6% and 10%.

Based on current data, more than half of states would fall into the highest category of error rates. The national average is 11.7% and more than two dozen states and territories have rates higher than 10%.

The states are: Alaska, Arizona, California, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia. The District of Columbia also has an error rate over 10%, as do Guam and the Virgin Islands.

Alaska’s nation-leading 60% error rate would be nearly impossible to bring under 10% by the time the provision goes into effect, Jones Cox said in a Tuesday interview.

Only seven states — Idaho, Iowa, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Wisconsin and Wyoming — would qualify for the lowest state cost-share.

$290 billion in cuts overall

The measure would incentivize states to control the $13 billion per year in erroneous payments, a House Agriculture Committee summary of the legislation said. The bill as a whole would cut $290 billion in federal spending over a 10-year budget window, according to the summary.

While congressional Republicans can claim they are not cutting benefits with the bill, the program would shrink with a lower federal cost-share, Jones Cox said.

“They can say it’s not a cut, because they’re going to say it’s just shifting those costs to the states,” she said. “But it is a cut because states, if they cannot fill the gap… that brings down the program, period.”

The changes would force state budget officers to choose from among a host of unattractive options: cutting SNAP, offsetting costs with corresponding cuts to other programs or raising revenues through taxes or other measures.

States “have a few options,” Jones Cox said. “None look good.”

Republicans are using the complex reconciliation process to move the package through Congress with simple majority votes in each chamber, avoiding the Senate’s 60-vote legislative filibuster, which would otherwise require bipartisanship. 

Reconciliation measures must address federal revenue, spending, or the debt limit in a way not deemed “merely incidental” by the Senate parliamentarian. That means the GOP proposals must carry some sort of price tag and cannot focus simply on changing federal policy.

Democrats slam bill

On a press call Tuesday, Democratic officials and an anti-hunger nonprofit blasted the proposal.

Sen. Peter Welch, a Vermont Democrat, expressed skepticism that U.S. DOGE Service head Elon Musk could find a more efficient use of the $2 per meal SNAP provides during the call with other Democratic senators, Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek and the nonprofit, Hunger Free Vermont.

“This is not a waste, fraud and abuse deal,” Welch said. “This is really about taking away basic nutritional security that is so absolutely essential to the well-being of our families and our kids in Vermont and in every single state across the nation.”

Kotek, who started her political career as a policy advocate for the Oregon Food Bank, said she saw firsthand the effect of food insecurity. More than 700,000 Oregonians receive benefits from SNAP, and every dollar spent on SNAP generates another $1.50 to $1.80 in economic activity at grocery stores, farmers’ markets and other local businesses, Kotek said.

“When you cut SNAP, you’re not cutting bureaucracy,” she said. “You’re cutting a child’s dinner. You’re cutting their breakfast. You’re cutting their family’s dignity.”

One in four New Mexicans rely on SNAP, said Sen. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M. The farmers and ranchers he represents also plan their farming season based on what grocery stores and food banks will need, and farmers already planted seeds with the idea that those vegetables will be used for school lunches and other food programs.

“The way to look at this is it’s not fiscally responsible,” Luján said. “It’s taking away from the hungry across America to make billionaires and millionaires even wealthier, and it’s going to even explode the deficit.”