WASHINGTON — Republicans have made some progress on replacing one part of their tax and spending cut bill as other parts collapse under scrutiny from the Senate rules referee.
Sen. John Boozman (R-Ark.) announced the Senate parliamentarian on Thursday had approved a new version of the so-called Big Beautiful Bill’s cut to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as SNAP.
“This paves the way for important reforms that improve efficiency and management of SNAP while encouraging responsible use of taxpayer dollars,” Boozman said in a statement on Thursday.
The proposal would require states to share the cost of federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits in what would be a major change to the program’s structure, with the cost-sharing burden creating a strong incentive for states to kick people off the program.
The parliamentarian said a previous version of the SNAP change ran afoul of Senate rules for the “budget reconciliation” maneuver Republicans are using to get their bill through the Senate with just 51 votes instead of the usual 60.
The SNAP cut’s replacement shows a way forward for Republicans after the parliamentarian tanked several of the bill’s major Medicaid cuts in a separate ruling on Thursday, a major setback imperiling plans to pass the bill by July 4. GOP leaders are scrambling to rewrite the Medicaid provisions and get approval from the parliamentarian’s office on that language before beginning to vote on the bill ahead of a self-imposed July 4 deadline next week.
According to Boozman, the changes to the SNAP proposal were merely technical. The idea is that states with high rates of erroneous SNAP payments should have to pay a share of benefits, with a bigger share for states with higher error rates. Boozman said the new version of the proposal merely gave states more flexibility for deciding the reference period for their error rates.
As for Medicaid, even if Republicans ultimately succeed in replacing their Medicaid cuts, it’s not clear if they will have enough support to begin votes on the bill. Several GOP senators have expressed concerns with the Senate’s version of the legislation, preferring instead the bill the GOP-controlled House passed earlier last month.
“My position is that cuts, and especially drastic cuts, to Medicaid have to be avoided,” Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) wrote in a post online. “The Senate bill cuts Medicaid too much.”
More than 20 million households receive SNAP benefits monthly for groceries. The cuts to SNAP and Medicaid are meant to offset part of the cost of around $4 trillion in tax cuts that represent the heart of the massive budget bill.