The House Agriculture Committee late Wednesday passed a reconciliation bill that would cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program by $290 billion over 10 years while adding $60 billion in farm program spending.

The vote was 29 to 25 along party lines. The bill now goes to the House Budget Committee to be merged with the reconciliation measures passed by other committees.

The overall reconciliation bill’s prospects in the House are still unclear, but if and when the bill passes, the Senate is likely to change the agriculture provisions. The Senate budget calls for cutting only $1 billion from the SNAP program. The House bill includes provisions to provide money to raise reference prices that trigger farm subsidies, deepen crop insurance premium subsidies but also increase spending on a wide range of other USDA programs. Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman John Boozman, R-Ark., has shown an interest in putting more money into what he calls “risk management” programs, which he defines as the reference price increases and crop insurance. Boozman has said he is determined to pass a broader farm bill this year. 

Over two days, Democrats on the committee offered many amendments to maintain current SNAP spending and to fund farm and nutrition programs that they favor, such as buying locally produced foods for schools and food banks and expanding agricultural research.

House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn Thompson, R-Pa., who had worked out the compromise on SNAP funding that included requiring the states to pay part of SNAP benefits in order to maintain current benefit levels, urged Republican members to vote against the Democratic amendments. The Republican members remained largely silent throughout the markup and voted against the amendments.

The Democrats were usually limited to five-minute speeches, but they made impassioned comments that they hope will convince people to vote Democratic in 2026.

After Thompson stopped the amendment process about 8:30 p.m., Rep. Angie Craig, D-Minn., who is a candidate for the Democratic nomination to succeed retiring Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., said she was disappointed because her members had filed 44 amendments that did not get considered. 

Individual roll call votes were held on the Democratic amendments, but they all failed on a party line vote of 25 Democrats in favor and 29 Republicans opposed. 

Thompson said in a news release, “Our section of the One Big, Beautiful Bill restores integrity to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, provides relief to farmers, invests in the future of rural America, and prevents the largest tax increase on American families. 

“We ensure that SNAP works the way Congress intended it to, by reinforcing work, rooting out waste, and instituting long-overdue accountability incentives to control costs and end executive and state overreach.

“We preserve the program’s ability to serve the most vulnerable long into the future. At the same time, we’re strengthening the farm safety net and delivering critical support to the farmers, workers, and communities that keep America fed.

“These common-sense solutions help build a stronger, more resilient rural America. I’m grateful to my colleagues on the committee for their hard work, and I look forward to passing this bill in the House and delivering results for families across the country.”

After the vote, Craig said, “While Democrats showed up to this two-day hearing ready to work, Republicans hardly showed up at all. When their seats weren’t empty, they were silent. And the silence was deafening. They know that you can’t cut $300 billion from food assistance for hungry children and seniors without taking their food away.

“Instead of making the program work better for seniors and parents of children as young as 7 years old, the Republican bill adds paperwork requirements to make accessing food harder. Instead of making SNAP more effective and efficient, the Republican bill cons states into slashing food assistance. And it does all of this to fund tax breaks for wealthy individuals and large corporations at a time where we should be investing in rural America and uplifting the middle class.

“This bill shatters the farm bill coalition, making the path to passing a full, five-year farm bill much harder because there will be no full farm bill to pass – the Republican bill tore off bits and pieces of it and left the rest at the wayside.

“Republicans voted to take food from families struggling to afford groceries and give more handouts to those at the very top,” Craig concluded.