This story was updated with additional numbers from the state.
Federal proposals to cut food stamps would jeopardize food assistance for 27,000 Kansans, Gov. Laura Kelly’s office estimated.
That number was accurate as of Wednesday afternoon, before congressional Republicans proposed additional changes to the cuts.
Congressional Republicans are trying to pass President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The sweeping proposal would cut things from electric vehicle tax credits to stabilization funds for rural hospitals, and it has the largest cut to the food assistance program ever.
Takeaways
- Proposed federal SNAP cuts would shift significant costs to Kansas without the funds to cover it, risking benefit losses for residents.
- The proposed cuts could impact vulnerable populations. Nearly half of SNAP recipients in Kansas are children.
- Food insecurity would worsen under the bill, Democrats warn, as local food banks can’t fill the gap left by reduced federal aid.
The bill wants states to pay part of the cost of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP. Kansas is currently expected to pay around 15% of the cost of SNAP. The bill is changing as lawmakers try to pass it by July 4 to meet Trump’s demands, making it hard to pin down the exact cost states could pay until a proposal passes.
That would cost Kansas $63 million a year in benefits and comes with an additional $15.5 million in annual administrative costs, the state estimates.
The cuts to food assistance are pitched as ways to save taxpayers money, but Kelly said that the cost shift is too much. The state won’t be able to add money back into the program, and people will lose benefits.
“The idea that states will respond to massive cuts of federally appropriated dollars by backfilling with state resources is total bunk,” Kelly said. “We don’t have the money.”
State lawmakers spent the last legislative session finding cuts to the Kansas budget. Months of work ended with a projected $700 million budget shortfall by 2029. SNAP costs also rose after the COVID pandemic.
In 2019, Kansas received $265.3 million in SNAP benefit costs. That jumped to $488.5 million in 2021.
The current federal proposal also requires states to pay a larger portion of SNAP benefits if they have an error rate of 6% or more. Kansas had a 12% error rate as of 2023. Error rates are improperly made payments, which include paying too much in benefits or not enough.
Kelly asked federal lawmakers to reject the bill, and she was joined by U.S. senators and governors from other states.
Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, a Democrat, said she knows a grandmother who will lose $200 a month in food assistance. The grandmother is raising her grandson, and cuts to SNAP would force her to “make a decision about whether she’s gonna pay for her grandson’s school supplies, be able to pay rent or buy groceries.”
She knows another 61-year-old-man who was recently laid off and has diabetes. He’s trying to find a job, but that’ll become more complicated if he can’t find healthy food to manage his illness.
In Kansas, 46% of people on SNAP were children, according to state data.
Local food banks won’t be able to meet the demand. For every meal a food bank provides, SNAP benefits provide nine. That’s in addition to cuts to food banks earlier this year.
People are also healthier with SNAP. They miss fewer days of work because of illness, pregnant mothers give birth to fewer low-weight babies, elderly people on SNAP are 30% less likely to take prescription medication, and children who got food assistance were 16% less likely to be obese as an adult, a National Institutes of Health study said.
U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, said the currently proposed cuts would take away food assistance from 4 million Americans and reduce benefits for tens of millions of additional Americans.
“The bill would affect every single one of the 42 million Americans who come on SNAP to put food on the table,” she said.
Congressional Republicans originally pitched larger cuts in the bill. About $41 billion in cuts were struck down in a Senate rule-making process, but congressional Republicans are rallying to put more cuts back in.
U.S. Rep. Glenn Thompson, a Pennsylvania Republican, told Fox News that the cuts to SNAP are about restoring integrity to the program. That includes work requirements, for example, which would ensure only the neediest people are getting the assistance — though Kelly blasted the work requirements.
“We’ve achieved something we haven’t been able to do in a very long time,” Thompson said in May, “and that is restoring the intent of Congress, not by cutting or taking people off the roll for the nutrition programs, but restoring program integrity.”
