Editor’s note: CHN sent the letter below on May 13, 2025 to the U.S. House of Representatives asking Members to vote “No” on the Agriculture Committee reconciliation text.

May 13, 2025

Dear Representative:

The Coalition on Human Needs strongly urge you to vote NO on the reconciliation text before the Agriculture Committee this evening.

The Coalition on Human Needs is made up of human service providers, faith groups, policy experts, and civil rights, labor, and other organizations concerned with meeting the needs of people with low incomes.We are concerned about the overall budget reconciliation package, which makes deep cuts to basic needs programs and will take assistance away from people with low incomes, seeking harsh reductions in SNAP, Medicaid, higher education, and other human needs programs.

The House Agriculture Committee proposal will cut $290 billion from SNAP, the largest cut to SNAP in history, as part of a budget package that guts basic needs programs. Millions are at risk of losing SNAP.

At a time that many in communities across the country are struggling with the high cost of living, SNAP provides many of our neighbors with vital food benefits to purchase groceries from local food retailers. It serves people of all ages, staves off hunger, promotes well-being, and serves people in every Congressional District (see also state numbers including the numbers of children and people in rural areas who participate in the program). SNAP provides much more than just food assistance: It is a critical support system that promotes economic well-being and better health outcomes. The program plays a vital role in addressing hunger, reducing health care costs, and improving the long-term prospects of households with low incomes, including the one in five beneficiaries who are children. SNAP has been shown to improve student performance and allows families to maintain healthy diets, which in turn leads to long-term positive health outcomes for children and adults alike.

The Coalition on Human Needs is alarmed about the inclusion of a new and radical proposal to shift the cost of SNAP benefits to the states for the first time – at a minimum of 5% but likely much larger for most states. The loss of part of federal funding for SNAP for your state could be devastating for state and local budgets – we urge you to consider how much state policymakers would need to make up in federal dollars between FY2026 to 2034 if facing a mandate to cover 10% of SNAP benefits, for example – knowing that requirement could be higher for your state based on SNAP Payment Error Rates via the Food and Nutrition Service. This violates a longstanding and bipartisan tradition in our country of meeting the needs of our most vulnerable populations by ensuring basic nutrition programs like SNAP can respond no matter which state or county that child or adult may live in – instead, many states will be forced to remove participants in the program given this huge shift in costs to the states.

We also oppose penalizing adults without children and those with school-aged children in every Congressional District (and their families) facing job losses by taking away SNAP benefits through harsher work requirements – even though making it tougher for people to meet their basic nutrition needs makes it more difficult for people to find work, especially in a tough economy. Making SNAP’s existing and harmful time limits even more stringent will ensnarl people in bureaucratic red tape, and harm families with new time limits for families with children as young as 7. In addition, people with conditions like severe pain, fatigue, or mental illness may not qualify as ‘disabled enough’ to be exempted from these new work requirements. Many families are being squeezed by rising prices — and this gets worse if we unexpectedly fall on tough times. We know that the cuts and even harsher paperwork requirements proposed will deny food assistance along with health care and other basic needs to people who need it. When families face economic reverses, smart, targeted support can keep people in their homes, children fed and in school, disabled veterans cared for, and workers on the job.

Many of our coalition partners are alarmed at the new proposal to limit eligibility for SNAP to only citizens and Legal Permanent Residents/green card holders (Section 10012). Current policy limits eligibility for SNAP to “qualified immigrants” as defined under PRWORA. Adults who are qualified immigrants are generally subject to a five year waiting period before they can access SNAP, but the five year bar does not apply to children, refugees and certain other humanitarian immigrants. The bill would limit eligibility for SNAP to citizens and LPRs/green card holders. The five year bar for adults would remain. All other immigrants, including humanitarian immigrants, would be ineligible – which could impact an estimated 434,000 refugees and others such as asylees, across the country.

In addition, we are concerned about proposals to cut SNAP by restricting future updates of the Thrifty Food Plan — which is used to determine SNAP benefit amounts — which would hurt 41 million people per year. SNAP benefits now average only $6.20 per person per day. Making it harder to adjust SNAP benefits based on the cost of food in local grocery stores will make it even tougher for families to put food on the table.

Overall, reduced SNAP benefits would hurt the broader economy, could lead to a loss of jobs in your state, and harm retailers in every county in your District. Food retailers, including grocery stores and farmers’ markets, depend on SNAP dollars to stay afloat. In areas where food retailers are already struggling, any reduction in SNAP benefits would have a harsh impact on businesses and the local economy. Food banks, pantries, and soup kitchens are reporting high demand for assistance. We all know the cost of food is high. While emergency food programs help, they only provide one meal for every nine meals that SNAP supplies. These emergency food providers cannot make up for the scope of this SNAP cut. Some of the proposals to set limits to the SNAP program could result in waiting lists while further straining food banks.

Many in our networks are concerned about rising costs—and with the combination of uncertainty with tariffs and deep cuts to food assistance and health care, we worry that many more families will struggle to make ends meet, facing the loss of jobs, rising prices, and signs of economic downturn. Families are frightened they will lose their ability to feed their children through deep cuts to SNAP in the Agriculture Committee, while they face the largest cut to Medicaid in history and deep cuts in the Education and Workforce Committee could put higher education out of reach for them because they will lose financial assistance. In addition, cuts to Medicaid and SNAP impact access to school meals along with access to WIC. These cuts to SNAP and other basic needs programs will be used partly for border enforcement, detention and deportation of immigrants, many of whom have legal status the Trump Administration is now attempting to overturn. These new policies are wasteful, inhumane, and destructive to our communities and economy. In other words, families will feel the combined impact of cuts to SNAP and other health assistance along with other basic needs programs – making the combined budget package even more reckless.

And we note that millions of people with low incomes will lose access to basic needs programs all to give tax breaks to the wealthy and corporations. We cannot keep allowing the passage of these unfair tax policies that disproportionately benefit the wealthy while making low-income and vulnerable communities suffer, including by taking food assistance away from millions. That’s not good for our society or economy. Now more than ever, it’s critical that Congress protect health care, nutrition, and other essential services that help millions of families meet their basic needs. We should strengthen support for these programs — not taking them away.

A vote for the Agriculture Committee reconciliation bill is a vote for extreme and damaging cuts to Medicaid and other health assistance, inflicting unprecedented harms. We strongly urge you to vote no on the proposal before you in committee later today.