Democrats Push Back on Cuts to Medicaid, SNAP benefits

Suzan DelBene, democrat congresswoman from Washington and chair of the DCCC, says that potential cuts to Medicaid and nutritional assistance in the Trump tax bill could spur backlash and allow Democrats to retake control of the House in the midterm elections.

President Donald Trump’s allies love to talk about the food we’re eating here in the US: too sugary, too processed, too artificially dyed. What they’re not talking about, though, is how many Americans don’t have enough of it, whether it’s healthy or not. If the Republicans get their way, the number of them will only go up.

Exactly how the right-leaning majorities in the House and Senate will cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, more commonly known as SNAP, is being negotiated. But their intentions are clear: Shrink its reach, reduce the benefits of the people still on it, and leave it to the states to take the blame.

Versions of the plan laid out in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act include all variety of cuts, such as increasing work requirements, scrapping a major nutrition education program, eliminating eligibility for legally admitted immigrants and, perhaps most alarmingly, shifting a percentage of the costs, now entirely shouldered by the federal government, to the already strapped states. House Speaker Mike Johnson maintains that the changes being considered are an effort to reduce fraud and waste, not a cut to SNAP. It’s hard to see how he can say that with a straight face. They are proposing cutting it—and cutting it deep.

SNAP, a version of which was introduced as a pilot program under President Franklin D. Roosevelt before becoming permanent in 1964, is a safety net. As many anti-hunger advocates would tell you, it’s not only hugely important but also quite small relative to the need. More than 40 million people across the US relied on SNAP in 2024, or about 12% of the population, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, receiving only about $6 per person per day, give or take, or roughly $200 per month. That might not sound like a lot of money, but for many households, it is. Even modest cuts could mean, for instance, the difference between serving a family-wide dinner at the end of the month and serving one to only the children. Parents going without isn’t unusual, and with food prices expected to continue rising, smaller benefits will be felt even more acutely. There are more than 2 million children living in households that would lose at least some of their benefits under the House plan, according to the CBPP, calling it the “deepest SNAP cut in history.”

President Donald Trump is meeting with a faction of conservative lawmakers at the White House who have threatened to sink his signature tax legislation over its $3.4 trillion price tag as lawmakers cast doubt on whether it can pass by July 4.

The president’s ambitious timeline to pass the bill is encountering considerable opposition as moderate and ultraconservative Republican lawmakers threaten to defy him and perhaps frustrate his domestic agenda. House lawmakers returned to Washington Wednesday to vote on the Senate version of the measure, which passed the upper chamber 51-50 on Tuesday with Vice President JD Vance’s tie-breaking vote.

House leaders plan to hold a procedural vote to advance the legislation on Wednesday, with the goal of sending it to the president by Friday for his signature.

Several House lawmakers, including Texas Representative Chip Roy and Representative Ralph Norman of South Carolina, predicted the first procedural vote would fail. Members openly defying the president could inflame already-tense relationships between some Republicans and the White House.

That would also likely mean the House would not be able to move to a final vote on Wednesday. House Speaker Mike Johnson can afford to lose few Republican votes in the closely divided chamber.

--------

Watch Bloomberg Radio LIVE on YouTube

Weekdays 7am-6pm ET

Follow us on X

Subscribe to our Podcasts:

Bloomberg Daybreak

Bloomberg Surveillance

Bloomberg Intelligence

Balance of Power

Bloomberg Businessweek

Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app:

Apple CarPlay

Android Auto

Visit our YouTube channels:

Bloomberg Podcasts

Bloomberg Television

Bloomberg Originals