Sponsors (3)
Introduced March 27, 2025 by Josh Brecheen · Last progress March 27, 2025
The bill improves measurement and transparency of poverty and SNAP outcomes—potentially leading to better-targeted policy—while raising privacy, administrative, and food-security risks that could harm low-income households and strain state budgets.
Low-income people, researchers, and policymakers will get more accurate, standardized, and transparent poverty statistics because the Census will count 40+ federal benefits, produce alternative PCE-based measures, publish yearly comparison tables, and a Commission will standardize noncash-benefit valuation.
State governments and taxpayers will have clearer, state-by-state five-year SNAP employment and training outcome data within a year, improving oversight and program evaluation of SNAP work programs.
Married parents with children over age 6 may face a lower combined work-preparation hour requirement because spouses' combined hours are capped at the single head-of-household requirement, reducing work-prep burden for some families.
Low-income households (including children) face higher risk of benefit loss and increased food insecurity because the bill narrows the statutory definition of covered 'food', tightens work and cooperation requirements, authorizes stricter EBT-user limits with automatic suspensions, and increases retailer compliance that may reduce access.
Individuals' sensitive personally identifiable tax and program data will be transmitted across agencies, raising privacy and misuse risks and creating liability concerns because the bill also imposes strict criminal penalties that could deter legitimate data use by agency staff.
State governments and taxpayers will face increased administrative and fiscal burdens from recurring reporting requirements, new data-sharing and processing costs, and rising state matching requirements for SNAP administrative funds (starting at 10% and rising to 50%), which could strain state budgets and program administration.
Based on analysis of 5 sections of legislative text.
Tightens SNAP rules (work requirements, "food" definition, spouse-hour cap), adds precise poverty-memeasurement definitions, and requires a one-year SNAP outcomes report to Congress.
Changes SNAP rules to emphasize employment, healthy marriage, and self-sufficiency; narrows the statutory definition of what counts as "food" for SNAP, revises work requirement mechanics (including adding in-person supervised job search, changing geographic and hours thresholds, and capping combined hours for married couples with children), and requires a one-year report to Congress on program outcomes. Also creates detailed statutory definitions for a wide set of federal benefits and for income categories to be used in Census/American Community Survey verification and poverty-measurement work.