On Valentine’s Day, during a hearing of the House Agriculture Committee, Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson, a Republican from Pennsylvania, proposed a funding framework for the Farm Bill that included a $30 billion cut in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits over the next decade.
The proposal would limit future updates to the Thrifty Food Plan, which is used by the United States Department of Agriculture to set SNAP benefits; in the ensuing months, Thompson has argued it’s not a “real cut” because average benefits would still rise incrementally alongside food inflation, but food insecurity experts have pushed back on that assertion, both because the costs of what constitutes a healthy diet may rise in the next decade for reasons other than inflation, and because America is already in the midst of a worsening hunger crisis. However, the proposal has already gained significant support from Republican lawmakers.
