Democratic Rep. Mark Pocan at a town hall meeting in Eau Claire, with a chair for Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden who represents the 3rd Congressional District that includes Eau Claire. The chart behind Pocan shows most of the tax cuts passed by House Republicans go to those in the highest income brackets. | Photo by Frank Zufall/Wisconsin Examiner

“Is Derrick here?” asked U.S. Rep.  Mark Pocan, the Democratic congressman representing Wisconsin’s 2nd Congressional District, which includes  Dane County. Pocan was in Eau Claire, the 3rd Congressional District represented by Derrick Van Orden, a Republican, on Saturday, May 31, at a town hall organized by Opportunity Wisconsin, a coalition of grassroots groups, at the Pablo Center at the Confluence, Eau Claire’s performing arts center.

Van Orden was invited to attend the event but declined.

Pocan is one of several congressional Democrats who have begun holding town hall meetings in Republican districts where Republican representatives have been reluctant to meet their constituents who are upset about  budget cuts that threaten access to Social Security, Medicaid and federal food assistance. 

Pocan focused on what President Dondald Trump (R) has called “the Big Beautiful Bill” that was recently passed by the House of Representatives, and which  Pocan called “the worst bill I’ve ever seen introduced by anyone, by any political party.”

He chided Republican supporters for cutting  Medicaid benefits  for nearly 14 million Americans,  raising the premiums for the Affordable  Care Act (ACA), and cutting food assistance to 11 million mostly low-income children through Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

The Republican budget reconciliation package  also extends  tax cuts passed in 2017 for America’s top earners, resulting in a nearly $5 trillion national deficit over 10 years.

A May 20 Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis of the GOP budget bill projects it would increase the national deficit by $3.8 trillion and decrease Medicaid spending by $698 billion and SNAP spending by $267 billion.

A May 22 CBO projection notes the bill would reduce SNAP participation by “roughly 3.2 million people in an average month over the 2025–2034 period.”

There are different projections on how many people would experience a Medicaid cut, with estimates ranging from 7.5 to 10 million.

Van Orden sent out a release after Pocan’s appearance in Eau Claire:

“What Mr. Pocan is doing is absolutely despicable – continuing to fearmonger our vulnerable populations, including seniors, veterans, hungry children, individuals with disabilities and pregnant women. This bill protects Medicaid and SNAP for those most in need and prevents a 25% tax hike on Wisconsin families. Anyone telling you anything different, including Mr. Pocan, is lying to you.”

Van Orden also disputes  the CBO’s analysis, stating that the CBO has been wrong in the past and tends to be overly critical of Republican-sponsored legislation.

“There are not cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, veteran benefits, SNAP and WIC (Women, Infants and Children program) are not being cut,” Van Orden told a local TV station after the House passed the bill.

But Pocan said Van Orden has been corrected even by other Republicans who admit the bill would reduce spending on Medicaid.

“83% of the benefit goes to the top 1% of the people,” Pocan said of the tax cuts, “so they are taking from the pockets of pretty much everyone in this room and putting it into the pockets of Elon Musk and Donald Trumps and others.”

Pocan added that  only 5% of the tax cuts in the bill will go to working people, including those who won’t have to pay taxes on tips,  seniors and to offset interest payments on car loans. And, he noted, those cuts will  sunset, while the much larger tax cuts for top-earners, which account for  83% of the cost of the bill, are permanent.

“The single largest cut to health care in American history is in this bill, 13.7 million people are estimated would lose access to health care because of the cuts to Medicaid,” Pocan said. “But what doesn’t get as much coverage is they also cut some of the premium assistance for the Affordable Care Act. So it’s a $700 billion cut to Medicaid, but also a $300 billion cut to the Affordable Care Act. We don’t even have the estimates of the numbers yet, but millions more will pay increased premiums.”

Pocan said Republicans have said the Medicaid cuts are really about setting work requirements in exchange for benefits and not a straight cut.

“Two-thirds of the people who get Medicaid are working poor,” Pocan said. While they shouldn’t be affected by the new work requirements, the red tape involved in proving their work history will help push people off Medicaid.

 “It’s not about trying to have any accountability,” he said. “It’s to just make it harder for people to get health care.” Pocan pointed to a state work requirement for Medicaid recipients in  Arkansas, where people who lost coverage were actually eligible for care. The work requirements did not boost employment, researchers found and many of those who lost coverage had trouble accessing the online reporting system. 

Pocan also noted that the projected increase in the deficit under the House proposal would trigger a sequestration requirement, resulting in automatic cuts to Medicare of nearly $500 billion.

SNAP cuts would mean a loss of $314 million for Wisconsin.

 Pocan also criticized Trump’s “on again, off again” practice of announcing tariffs, which had created a climate of uncertainty for businesses.

“Not only did Donald Trump not reduce costs like he promised in November, but the tariffs are actually a tax on all of us,” he said.

Pocan criticized Van Orden for not coming to town hall meetings to defend his vote for the Republican budget bill.

Van Orden has said he prefers telephone town halls where the meeting isn’t dominated by people he describes as leftwing critics, and he also has said that his family has received death threats and is vulnerable in an in-person setting.

Pocan acknowledged death threats should be taken seriously, but also stated he and many others in Congress have received death threats, and he criticized Van Orden’s telephone town halls for only allowing his supporters to talk.

Pocan also criticized Van Orden for going back on his promise never to cut Medicaid or reduce SNAP.  Van Orden has claimed  the bill doesn’t reduce Medicaid and that Medicaid and  SNAP payments will continue as usual for recipients if they meet the new work requirements.

A registered nurse who attended the town hall in Eau Claire said many of her clients are on Medicaid and Medicare, with several living in nursing homes, and she asked what would happen to them if the House budget bill became law.

State Sen. Jeff Smith (D-Brunswick) who came to the town hall with Pocan,   said approximately 55% of people in long-term care in Wisconsin are on Medicaid and if Medicaid funding is cut it will also impact the other 45-50% who have private insurance  because facilities will close due to lack of funding.

Pocan also responded to questions about cuts to Social Security Administration staff, saying, “When you cut thousands of people who work for Social Security, you make it harder for people to get access to their money.”

Speaking more generally of federal cuts under Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, he added, “They fired the people who worked on avian flu, bird flu, which was affecting us greatly recently, and they had to rehire them at the Department of Health and Human Services.” 

Pocan said he believed Trump won in November because the cost of living was high and noted that in other countries incumbents  also lost because of a backlash caused by global  inflation.

“So that was the No. 1 thing going for Donald Trump in November, but today it’s the No. 1 thing that’s taking him down the polls, because he said he would address it. He’s done nothing,” said Pocan.

Asked how Democrats could encourage younger people to vote, Pocan said, “The good news is younger people absolutely agree with more progressive public policy and not conservative policy.” But people “want to fight back, you want something to happen,” he added.

He encouraged Democratic leaders to hold more town hall meetings in Republican districts.

 “We should be going into many more Republican districts,” he said.

Pocan also encouraged attendees to meet Van Orden whenever he is in Eau Claire and ask to talk to him directly, and invite the press to be there for the interaction.

He encouraged the crowd of 100-plus to become active.

“You happen to be in this very unique position of having a member that is in a purple district,” Pocan  said of Van Orden, who  won in 2024 by one of the smallest majorities for a Republican in Congress. He “could lose his seat if he doesn’t listen to you.” 

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At a farm market in St. Petersburg, Florida, SNAP recipients were able to use their Electronic Benefits Transfer cards for food. (Photo by Lance Cheung/USDA).

The massive tax and spending bill passed by U.S. House Republicans would likely result in 3.2 million people losing food assistance benefits, and saddle states with around $14 billion a year in costs, according to a new analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Democrats have argued the bill, which the House passed, 215-214 early Thursday without any Democrats in support, would cut programs for the needy to fund tax breaks for high earners.

The CBO document, issued late Thursday, responded to a request to the office from the top Democrats on the Senate and House Agriculture committees, Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Rep. Angie Craig, both of Minnesota, and somewhat bolsters that claim. The panels oversee federal food aid programs.

“This report is truly devastating,” Craig said in a Friday statement to States Newsroom. “As a mother and someone who at times relied on food assistance as a child, these numbers are heartbreaking. It is infuriating that Republicans in Congress are willing to make our children go hungry so they can give tax breaks to the already rich.”

A provision in the bill to tighten work requirements, including by excluding single parents of children older than 6 and by raising the age of adults to whom the work requirements apply, of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, would result in 3.2 million people losing access to the program in an average month, the CBO report said.

Of those, 1.4 million would be people who currently have a state waiver from work requirements that would be disallowed under the bill and 800,000 would be adults who live with children 7 or older, the report said.

In a Friday statement, Ben Nichols, a spokesman for the House Agriculture Committee led by Pennsylvania Republican Glenn ‘GT’ Thompson, said the proposed change would be more fair to the people SNAP is supposed to help and noted the program is the only state-administered entitlement program that is paid fully by the federal government.

“No one who is able-bodied and working, volunteering, or training for 20 hours a week will lose benefits,” Nichols wrote.

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

Toll on states

The cost-share changes, which would require states for the first time to pay for a portion of SNAP benefits, would also limit participation and add a massive line item to state budgets, according to the CBO.

Starting in 2028, states would be responsible for paying 5% to 25% of SNAP benefits, with a state’s share rising with its payment error rate. The federal government currently pays for all SNAP benefits.

Under the House bill, which will likely undergo substantial changes as the Senate considers it in the coming weeks, states collectively would be responsible for just less than $100 billion from 2028 to 2034, about $14 billion per year.

States would respond in a variety of ways, CBO Director Phillip Swagel wrote, including potentially dropping out of the program.

“CBO expects that some states would maintain current benefits and eligibility and others would modify benefits or eligibility or possibly leave the program altogether because of the increased costs,” he wrote.

The office took a “probabilistic approach to account for a range of possible outcomes” to determine what the effect on households would be and estimated that 1.3 million people would lose benefits because of state responses to the new cost-share.

Nichols, with the House Agriculture Committee, disputed the CBO’s estimate regarding the cost share change. The lowest state cost-share of 5% would be available for states with error rates below 6%. Every state has hit that mark at some point in the last decade, he said.

With that favorable of a cost-share, the Republican committee members did not believe states would drop out of the program, he added.

“We reject the hypothetical assumption that some states may not chip into 5 percent of a supplemental nutrition program,” Nichols wrote. “Every state is capable of paying for a portion SNAP… Federal policy should encourage states to administer the SNAP program more efficiently and effectively, and this bill does just that.” 

CBO’s forecasters determined the impacts of the work requirements and cost-share provisions separately, meaning some people potentially losing benefits could have been counted in both categories.

Move to the Senate

The House vote Thursday sent the measure to the Senate, where the debate over SNAP benefits may fall along similar party lines.

Republicans who hold control in that chamber are planning to employ the budget reconciliation process, which allows them to skirt the Senate’s usual 60-vote requirement for legislation.

During the House Agriculture Committee’s debate over its portion of the legislation, Republicans on the panel said the work requirement and state cost-share measures were needed reforms to SNAP that would protect the program for those it was meant to serve, while limiting the costs associated with benefits to adults who were able and unwilling to work or in the country illegally.

In a Friday statement, Sara Lasure, a spokeswoman for Senate Agriculture Committee Chair John Boozman, an Arkansas Republican, also said the panel would seek reforms to the program but did not offer specifics.

“The Senate Agriculture Committee is in the process of crafting its budget reconciliation package and will work as good stewards of taxpayer dollars to make commonsense reforms to SNAP that encourage employment,” she wrote in an email.

Klobuchar, in a statement after House passage Thursday, blasted the House bill and indicated she would oppose efforts to cut SNAP benefits.

“House Republicans are pulling the rug out from under millions of families by taking away federal assistance to put food on the table,” she said. “They’re doing that even as President Trump’s tariff taxes raise food prices by more than $200 for the average family, all to fund more tax breaks for the wealthy. That’s so very wrong —and we will fight against it in the Senate.”

Changes a U.S. House bill makes to the federal program known as FoodShare in Wisconsin would increase costs for the state, the state Department of Health Services (DHS) reports. (Getty Images Creative)

Food and nutrition cuts in the reconciliation bill that passed the U.S. House early Thursday would cost Wisconsin taxpayers at least $314 million if they are signed into law, a state health official said Thursday.

A requirement for the state to pick up some of the costs of the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, a provision penalizing the state for errors in distributing benefits, expanded work requirements for recipients and the elimination of a nutrition education program will all contribute to that cost, said Bill Hanna, Medicaid director at the Department of Health Services (DHS) in a briefing for reporters Thursday afternoon.

The SNAP program is known as FoodShare in Wisconsin and administered by DHS.

SNAP currently includes a work requirement for adults ages 18 to 54 without children to receive benefits. The legislation would raise the upper age to 65 and add the requirement to adults with children who are 7 or older.

Wisconsin has an employment and training program to help FoodShare recipients meet the existing work requirement. With the increase in people who would have to meet the requirement, “We estimate that would cost another $44 million a year,” Hanna said.

Currently the federal government funds 100% of the food benefits under SNAP. The new bill requires states to pick up a portion of the cost, which is tied to a state’s error rate, Hanna said. Errors include the payment of more benefits than a person qualifies for or the payment of fewer benefits than they qualify for.

“When errors are identified, we correct them, meaning if there was an overpayment to a member, that is recouped on future benefits, or if there’s an underpayment, we fix that and back pay those payments,” Hanna said.

Wisconsin’s error rate is low enough to require the state to submit only a 5% match for SNAP funds under the House Republican proposal, he said. But another change — which would allow zero tolerance even for errors that in the past have not counted against state programs — would boost the state’s required match to 15%.

DHS estimates based on the proposed new requirements the state would have to pay about $207 million a year in benefit costs, he said. If the state is able to reduce its error rate to qualify for the 5% match, it would still need to pay $69 million a year.

A higher state share of administrative costs in the bill would add $51 million to the state’s costs for SNAP, Hanna said.

The state would also lose the $12 million it receives for SNAP-Ed, a program that provides education to SNAP participants on healthier food choices.

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The U.S. House Budget Committee votes on Friday, May 16, 2025 on a massive reconciliation package. The vote failed, 16-21. (Screenshot from House webcast)

WASHINGTON — Republicans suffered a major setback to their “big, beautiful bill” on Friday, when amid conservative objections the U.S. House Budget Committee failed to approve the measure, a crucial step in the process.

In a 16-21 vote, Reps. Andrew Clyde of Georgia, Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma, Ralph Norman of South Carolina, Chip Roy of Texas and Lloyd Smucker of Pennsylvania broke from their GOP colleagues to block the bill from moving toward the floor, demanding changes to several provisions.

The breakdown over the 1,116-page bill marks an escalation in the long-running feud between centrist Republicans, who have been cautious about hundreds of billions in spending cuts to safety net programs, and far-right members of the party, who argue the changes are not enough.

The committee is scheduled to reconvene Sunday at 10 p.m. Eastern. House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana has said he wants the package on the floor prior to the Memorial Day recess.

Speedier work requirements

Norman said he remains a “hard no” until new work requirements for Medicaid recipients phase in more quickly. As the bill is written, the requirements won’t begin until 2029.

“To phase this in for four years — We’re telling a healthy-bodied, a healthy American that you got four years to get a job. No, your payment stops now,” Norman said.

Brecheen criticized the bill for not going far enough to repeal wind and solar energy tax credits, which he contends are “undermining natural gas jobs.”

“We have to fix this,” he said.

Clyde denounced the measure for not adhering to President Donald Trump’s promise of “right-sizing government,” as Clyde described it. The Georgia Republican also pleaded for lower taxes on firearms and stronger cuts that would put Medicaid on a “sustainable path.”

“Unfortunately, the current version falls short of these goals and fails to deliver the transformative change that Americans were promised,” Clyde said.

Smucker initially voted ‘yes,’ but then joined his four colleagues to oppose the measure.

Trump wrote on his social media platform shortly before the committee voted that “Republicans MUST UNITE behind, ‘THE ONE, BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL!’”

“We don’t need ‘GRANDSTANDERS’ in the Republican Party. STOP TALKING, AND GET IT DONE! It is time to fix the MESS that Biden and the Democrats gave us. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

‘A wrecking ball to Medicaid’

Democrats, who as expected unified in voting no against the bill, slammed it as “ugly,” “cruel” and a “betrayal.”

“This bill takes a wrecking ball to Medicaid, on which 1 in 5 Americans and 3 million Ohioans depend for medical care — children, seniors in nursing homes,” said Rep. Marcy Kaptur, who represents northern Ohio. “Please come with me to visit the nursing homes. … Perhaps too many on the other side of the aisle have not had to endure a life that has major challenges.”

Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota said the proposed cuts to safety net programs would be “devastating.”

“Their changes will kick millions of Americans off their health care and nutrition assistance. That means more untreated illnesses, more hungry children, more preventable deaths,” she said.

Republican-only bill

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.

Republicans are using the package to 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.

The 11 House committees tasked with drafting pieces of the legislation have all debated and approved their measures along party lines.

The Agriculture Committee, Energy and Commerce Committee and Ways and Means Committee all completed their work earlier this week, amid strong objections from Democrats.

Proposed changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, could shift considerable cost-sharing onto states for the first time, presenting challenges for red-state lawmakers who need to explain the bill back home.

More than $600 billion in federal spending cuts to Medicaid during the next decade could also cause some difficulties for moderate Republicans, some of whose constituents are likely to be among the millions of Americans expected to lose their health insurance.

Republicans also have yet to reach an agreement on the state and local tax deduction or SALT, a priority for GOP lawmakers from blue states like California, New Jersey and New York.

The Budget Committee’s role in the process was to package together all of the bills and then send the one massive bill to the Rules Committee, the last stop before floor debate for major legislation.

That won’t be able to happen until after GOP leaders get nearly all the Republican lawmakers on the panel to support the package. 

U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden tours Gilbertson's Dairy in Dunn County. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

When he was campaigning for Congress in western Wisconsin, Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden talked about growing up “in abject rural poverty,” raised by a single mom who relied on food stamps. As a result, he has said, he would never go along with cuts to food assistance. 

“He sat down in my office when he first got elected and promised me he wouldn’t ever vote against SNAP because he grew up on it, supposedly,” Democratic U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan said in a phone interview as he was on his way home to Wisconsin from Washington this week.

But as Henry Redman reported, Van Orden voted for the Republican budget blueprint, which proposes more than $200 billion in cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in order to make room for tax cuts for the very wealthy.

Still, after that vote, Van Orden issued a public statement warning against reckless cuts to SNAP that place “disproportionate burdens on rural states, where food insecurity is often more widespread,” and saying it is unfair to build a budget “on the backs of some of our most vulnerable populations, including hungry children. Period.”

Van Orden sits on the House Agriculture Committee, which was tasked with drawing up a specific plan to cut $230 billion from food assistance to pay for tax cuts. Van Orden reportedly balked at a cost-sharing plan that shifted 25% of the cost of the program to states, saying it was unfair to Wisconsin.

But then, on Wednesday night, Van Orden voted yes as the committee passed an unprecedented cut in federal funding for SNAP on a 29-25 vote.

Van Orden took credit for the plan, which ties cuts to state error rates in determining eligibility and benefit amounts for food assistance. According to WisPolitics, he declared at a House Ag Committee markup that “states are going to have to accept the fact that if they are not administering this program efficiently, that they’re going to have to pay a portion of the program that is equitable, and it makes sense and it is scaled.” 

But states, including Wisconsin, don’t have money to make up the gap as the federal government, for the first time ever, withdraws hundreds of millions of dollars for nutrition assistance. Instead, they will reduce coverage, kick people off the program and hunger will increase. The ripple effects include a loss of about $30 billion for farmers who supply food for the program, Democrats on the Ag Committee report, and damage to the broader economy, since every $1 in SNAP benefits generates about $1.50 in economic activity. Grocery stores, food manufacturers rural communities will be hit particularly hard. 

Wisconsin will start out with a bill for 5% of the costs of the program in Fiscal Year 2028, according to a bill explanation from the Agriculture Committee. But as error rates vary, that number shifts sharply upward — to 15% when the error rate goes from the current 5% to 6%, to 20% if we exceed an 8% error rate, and so on.  

And there are other cuts in the bill, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) points out, including stricter eligibility limits, work requirements that cannot be waived in times of economic hardship and high unemployment, and reductions in benefits that come from eliminating deductions for utility costs. 

More than 900,000 children, adults, and seniors count on Wisconsin’s SNAP program, known as FoodShare, according to an analysis of state health department data by Kids Forward. The same analysis found that covering the costs of just 10% of SNAP benefits would cost Wisconsin $136 million. 

Alaska and Texas have higher error rates than Wisconsin, and so they — and their hungry kids — are stuck with the biggest cuts. Even if you accept that that is somehow just, the people who are going to pay for this bill in all the states, including ours, are, as Van Orden himself put it, “the most vulnerable populations, including hungry children. Period.”

“He says one thing and does another,” Pocan says of Van Orden’s flip-flopping on SNAP. “He’s gone totally Washington.”

That’s too bad for the people left behind in rural Wisconsin, who will take the brunt of these unnecessary cuts. 

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A “SNAP welcomed here” sign is seen at the entrance to a Big Lots store in Portland, Oregon. (Getty Images)

The U.S. House Agriculture Committee approved, 29-25, Wednesday evening its portion of Republicans’ major legislative package that includes a provision that would shift to states some of the responsibility to pay for a major nutrition assistance program.

The bill would require states, for the first time, to cover part of the cost of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits that provide $100 billion per year to help 42 million Americans afford groceries. The measure would also shift more of the administrative cost to states and increase work requirements for recipients.

Republicans are planning to combine the measure with legislation from 10 other committees in a budget reconciliation package that allows the Senate to avoid its usual 60-vote threshold.

House Agriculture Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson said the panel’s bill and its estimated $290 billion deficit savings over a 10-year budget window were necessary for the larger legislative package to extend tax cuts and increase border security and defense spending.

 The package would “prevent the largest tax increase in American history on our families, farmers and small businesses, and (would) deliver critical funding necessary for the Trump administration to continue their work keeping Americans safe,” the Pennsylvania Republican said in an opening statement.

“Our reconciliation instructions provide the opportunity to restore integrity to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, to make sure that this essential program works for the most vulnerable and functions as Congress has intended.”

Republicans on the panel said throughout a marathon committee meeting, which started Tuesday night and wrapped up more than 26 hours later following an overnight break, that the added work requirements and accountability measures for state governments were overdue reforms.

The panel’s GOP majority approved the bill over unified opposition from Democrats, who argued that the measure would unfairly cut benefits to needy families to pay for tax cuts for high earners, undermine the panel’s bipartisan tradition of fusing crop subsidies with nutrition assistance and overburden state governments that can’t afford to take on the additional cost.

Ranking Democrat Angie Craig of Minnesota called the measure “the largest rollback of an anti-hunger program in our nation’s history” which would be felt deeply across a broad swath of recipients.

“We will see children going to bed without dinner, more seniors skipping meals to afford their medicine, more parents sacrificing their own nutrition, so their kids can eat,” Craig said. “Every single one of us knows (the cuts) will take food away from families at a time when working folks are struggling with higher costs.”

State contributions

The bill would make states pay for up to 25% of SNAP benefits, which are currently entirely covered by the federal government, starting in 2028.

States would be required to pay at least 5%, with the rate rising with a state’s payment error rate. The highest state cost-share would be triggered by a state reaching a 10% or higher error rate.

Even at the lowest state cost-share, the provision would add $4.7 billion overall to annual state obligations, according to an analysis published Wednesday by the center-left think tank Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.

But only seven states would have qualified for the lowest cost-share in fiscal 2023, the most recent year for which data is available. The national error rate was 11.7% and more than two dozen states and territories had error rates higher than 10%.

That means in practice the costs to states would be much higher. The three most populous states — California, Texas and Florida — alone would have combined to owe more than $5.7 billion under their 2023 error rates and 2024 benefit amounts.

Republican members said the requirement would incentivize states to better manage their programs.

“Unlike every other state-administered entitlement program, SNAP benefit is 100% funded by the federal government, resulting in minimal incentives for states to control costs, enhance efficiencies and improve outcomes for recipients,” Thompson said.

Impact on state budgets

Democrats said states could ill afford to take on additional costs, meaning the bill would result in cuts to the program or other critical services.

“The massive unfunded mandate this bill forces on states just passes the buck onto state legislatures, forcing them to slash local programs and services, cut benefits, kick vulnerable people off SNAP or raise taxes,” Craig said. “We already know states can’t afford it.”

The change would force difficult decisions for states, several Democrats said.

In Ohio, the state would be on the hook for an additional $534 million annually, Democrat Shontel Brown said.

“That’s not to expand benefits or improve outcomes, that’s just to maintain the status quo.” she said. “To cover the costs, Ohio, along with every other state, is going to have to make brutal tradeoffs. It’s going to mean cutting K-12 education funding, scaling back opioid and mental health treatment programs, reducing Medicaid coverage or putting off critical infrastructure repairs.”

Republicans countered that the provision would bring much needed accountability to state administrators, which would make the program fairer overall.

Alaska had an error rate of nearly 60% in fiscal 2023. Without mentioning that state, Derrick Van Orden, a Republican whose home state of Wisconsin was among the few states with error rates under 6%, said the costs associated with such numerous errors shouldn’t be covered by states with lower rates.

“Overpayments, waste, fraud and abuse have plagued programs like SNAP,” he said. “There is a state that has a 59.59% overpayment rate and my Wisconsinites are not going to pick up that slack.”

States’ error rates include fraud, but it makes up a small share of a category that also includes inadvertent underpayments and overpayments, Michigan Democrat Kristen McDonald Rivet said.

SNAP has a fraud rate of less than 1% and work requirements already exist, McDonald Rivet said. Republicans’ efforts to target fraud and add work requirements wouldn’t reach the cost savings they sought, she said.

“Are there error rates in the states? Sure,” she said. “Should we address it? Absolutely. But the idea that we are going to find $300 billion of cuts — $300 billion of cuts — on that small percentage of people who are not working that are already required to or error rates in the states is just a flat-out lie. What we are really doing is cutting food for people.”

Administrative costs

The bill would also increase states’ share of the cost of administering the food assistance program.

Under current law, states and the federal government evenly split the cost of administering the program. The bill would have states shoulder 75% of administrative costs.

Democrats, including the ranking member of the panel’s Nutrition, Foreign Agriculture, and Horticulture Subcommittee, complained that would compound the problems created by the new cost structure for SNAP benefits.

“States will be forced to budget more for SNAP benefits with less for administrators,” Rep. Jahana Hayes of Connecticut said. “With fewer administrative staff, it is inevitable that errors will increase.”

Work requirements

Another section of the bill would expand the number of participants subject to work requirements to receive SNAP benefits.

The proposal would raise from 54 to 64 the age at which a person no longer has to meet work requirements. It would also lower from 18 to 7 the age at which caring for a child exempts a person from work requirements.

Democrats raised and introduced several amendments meant to address the provision, but were outvoted each time.

Kansas Republican Tracey Mann said the changes were not only about improving SNAP efficiency, but would make the program’s rules fairer for those it was meant to serve.

“It is wrong to jeopardize the benefits of the single mom taking care of kids too young to be in school or the disabled or elderly in order to subsidize someone who is perfectly capable of making an honest income but isn’t willing to join the workforce,” Mann said.

“These changes will ensure that individuals are served by the program as it was intended — not as a couch that you can sit on as long as you want, but as a true safety net that gets you back on the ladder of opportunity and back into a job.”

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.”