(The Center Square) — Republican lawmakers are prepared to defend their budget plan that shifts some of the costs of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to the states and better enforces SNAP work requirements.

Under the Republican budget reconciliation framework, the House Committee on Agriculture must find savings of at least $230 billion over the next decade through reforms to programs under its jurisdiction, such as SNAP.

Since 2019, the number of SNAP recipients has increased by 17%, going from roughly 36 million beneficiaries monthly to more than 42 million people monthly now.

The committee’s bill draft, which is subject to change and will undergo markup beginning Tuesday, complies with the reconciliation instructions mainly by closing SNAP work requirement loopholes and incentivizing states to crack down on improper payments.

The U.S. government spent $112.8 billion taxpayer dollars on SNAP in 2023, covering 100% of the cost of benefits and 50% of states’ administrative costs.

Unlike all other federal entitlement programs, including Medicaid, SNAP does not receive any contributions from states. But the committee’s bill would change that, making states cover 5% of their benefit cost share in the SNAP program by fiscal year 2028, with their contribution increasing the higher the state’s payment error rate.

States have an average payment error rate of 11.68% as of 2023. Republicans’ plan would require states with error rates at or above 10% to pay a 25% share of their SNAP benefits cost.

Among other reforms, the proposed bill would also make all noncitizens aside from legal permanent residents ineligible for food stamps and close “waiver gimmicks” used by states to exempt large numbers of able-bodied beneficiaries from work requirements.

Although the SNAP program has included 20 hour per-week work requirements for able-bodied adult beneficiaries without dependents since 1996, dozens of states have effectively waived work requirements for these people by manipulating data.

States will recategorize or manipulate unemployment data to claim that some or all geographic areas do not have a “sufficient number of jobs,” thereby obtaining work requirement waivers for all SNAP recipients in those areas.

Roughly 128 million people across the nation, or almost a third of the U.S. population, live in areas where SNAP work requirements are waived. California, Illinois, Nevada, and Washington, D.C., have universally waived SNAP work requirements, while 25 other states have waived work requirements in some parts.

This tactic has resulted in only 16% of the roughly 3.6 million of able-bodied adult beneficiaries without dependents fulfilling SNAP work requirements.

The ‘waiver states’ also have disproportionately more SNAP beneficiaries, and able-bodied ones, than their share in the overall U.S. population, according to the USDA and Economic Policy Innovation Center.

“For far too long, the SNAP program has drifted from a bridge to support American households in need to a permanent destination riddled with bureaucratic inefficiencies, misplaced incentives, and limited accountability,” House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn Thompson, R-Pa., said in a statement.

“This portion of the One Big, Beautiful Bill restores the program’s original intent, offering a temporary helping hand while encouraging work, cracking down on loopholes exploited by states, and protecting taxpayer dollars while supporting the hardworking men and women of American agriculture.”

But Democrats have called the budget plan “catastrophic” and pledged to oppose it.

“With American families feeling anxious about the economy and so much uncertainty in farm country, this is not the time to make reckless cuts to basic needs programs,” Ranking Member Angie Craig, D-Minn., said Monday. “We should make food assistance work better for those it was designed to protect — like children and moms — not cut it so Republicans can fund more tax breaks for those at the very top.”