Republican senators have made no secret of their desire to moderate Medicaid cuts approved by the House in its bill to deliver President Trump’s agenda.
Now they are preparing to change a provision that would cut deeply into another central pillar of the nation’s safety net: the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps, which provides food benefits to low-income families.
Senators from states reliant on the program worry that the changes the House pushed through — particularly one that would have states assume some of the cost of assistance payments currently paid entirely by the federal government — will punt huge costs onto their states. And they worry that the changes could also result in the loss of free school meals for young low-income children.
It is yet another policy dispute between the two chambers that could complicate efforts to ultimately pass a final, compromise version of Republicans’ marquee legislation. Hard-liners in the House have said that they only reluctantly voted to pass what Mr. Trump refers to as his ”big, beautiful bill” and will not support legislation with fewer spending reductions.
But in the Senate, where Republicans represent entire states, not districts, the SNAP provisions have prompted alarm.
The two senators from West Virginia, Jim Justice and Shelley Moore Capito — both Republicans — have expressed concerns about how the House provisions will hit their state, where one in six residents receive food assistance through the program. Their governor, Patrick Morrisey, also opposes the plan.
Mr. Justice, the state’s former governor, has argued that Republicans can strike a better balance.
“We can’t cut to the bone and hurt people,” he said in a brief interview. “It’s legitimate to have concerns about what impact this will have in your state.”
“They’re in real need,” Mr. Justice said of his constituents. “That being said, I really believe that our states are going to have to be able to step up some, too. Now, we’ve got to watch — we just can’t overload our states too much.”
Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, who is running to be the state’s governor, told The Hill that states like his would “have a tough time picking up the bill on that.”
The measure approved by the House proposes to push some of the costs for the food aid program to the states. All states would be required to pay at least 5 percent of the benefit costs. They would have to pay more if they reported a certain error rate — the rate at which state agencies mistakenly underpay or overpay SNAP recipients.
States with an error rate of 6 percent or higher would need to foot the bill for between 15 percent and 25 percent. The average error rate in 2023, according to the Department of Agriculture, which oversees the program, was 11.68 percent.
“What this is going to force states to do is raise state taxes or cut food to hungry people,” said Joel Berg, the chief executive of Hunger Free America, a hunger and food security nonprofit group. “It’s not like Republican-run states want to take on more of these expenses. So it’s no shock that Republican senators are saying, ‘Hold on, are you really going to burden our states?’”
That helps explain why the Senate Agriculture Committee, which is in charge of writing the portion of the sprawling legislation dealing with nutrition assistance, has proposed to soften those provisions. In its proposal released on Wednesday night, states with a 6 percent error rate would not have to pay any costs. States with higher error rates would pay for between 5 percent and 15 percent of the costs, a lower share than set forward by the House proposal.
“A lot of people were concerned about the significant bill to the states,” said Senator John Boozman, Republican of Arkansas and the chairman of the Agriculture Committee. “This was an effort — it’s the best of both worlds.”
Democrats contend that the modifications do not go far enough.
“While some changes were made to the food assistance cuts, this bill continues to include an unprecedented cost shift, forcing tens of billions of SNAP costs onto state governments for the first time,” said Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, the top Democrat on the Agriculture Committee. “Because nearly every state has balanced budget rules, states will almost certainly have to cut SNAP eligibility, benefits or both, or choose between food assistance and other critical needs, like education, health and public safety.”
Some G.O.P. senators were also uncomfortable with a provision in the House-passed bill that would expand SNAP’s existing work requirements to cover food stamp recipients up to age 64, including those with children who are at least age 7. That would be a significant expansion of existing law, which currently requires only beneficiaries up to age 54 to work in exchange for SNAP, and excludes those with dependents.
Senators have privately worried that those changes will result in the loss of free school lunches for low-income children. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the changes could result in 420,000 children losing school nutrition benefits in an average month — either by being bumped from free lunch to reduced-price lunch, or losing access to school meals entirely.
Children who receive food assistance are automatically enrolled in school nutrition programs, and would need to apply separately if their family lost access to SNAP. Schools in poor neighborhoods also provide universal lunches to all schoolchildren if enough families are eligible for SNAP. If numbers fell below those thresholds, individual families would instead need to apply.
The version of the legislation that the Senate Agriculture Committee released on Wednesday would also change that provision, instead introducing work requirements for adults with dependents who are at least 10 years of age or older.
Margot Sanger-Katz and Emily Badger contributed reporting.
Catie Edmondson covers Congress for The Times.
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