‘Escape poverty’: Millions more food stamp recipients required to work under new House GOP proposal

FIRST ON FOX: House Republicans are eyeing reforms to federal benefits that would impose work requirements on a wider swath of Americans.

Rep. Dusty Johnson, R-S.D., chair of the right-wing pragmatist Main Street Caucus, is planning to introduce the “America Works Act of 2025,” Fox News Digital has learned.

The bill would mandate that single, able-bodied Americans on the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) – colloquially known as food stamps – between the ages of 18 and 65 take on at least 20 hours per week of work or work-related education.

Adults with a dependent child under age 7 would be exempt, according to a summary provided to Fox News Digital.

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A new House GOP bill would make millions more Americans eligible for SNAP work requirements. (AP/Getty/Fox News Digital illustration)

“Able-bodied people who can work should work if we want to continue to have our welfare programs be pathways out of poverty,” Johnson told Fox News Digital in an interview. “There is no reliable path out of poverty that doesn’t have work, training and education at its core.”

It comes as House Republicans get ready to negotiate on how to meet spending cut targets in their plans to move President Donald Trump’s agenda via the budget reconciliation process.

By leveling the threshold for passage in the House and Senate at a simple majority, reconciliation allows the party in power to pass budgetary or other fiscal priorities in a massive piece of legislation with zero support from lawmakers on the opposing side. The threshold for passage in the Senate is otherwise two-thirds for most items.

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GOP lawmakers are looking to accomplish a wide swath of Trump policies, from more funding for the border wall and detention beds to eliminating taxes on tipped and overtime wages.

To offset the cost of that spending, the House’s reconciliation framework directs several committees to find areas for spending cuts. The House Committee on Agriculture, which oversees SNAP, must aim to cut at least $230 billion in spending.

The new bill gives the Department of Agriculture (USDA), which oversees food stamps, the ability to exempt people who live in counties where the unemployment rate exceeds 10%.

Two sources familiar with discussions told Fox News Digital that Johnson’s bill closely resembles what will end up in Republicans’ reconciliation bill.

Rep. Dusty Johnson is leading the bill. (Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

When asked about cost projections, however, Johnson emphasized that his bill was motivated by social rather than fiscal change.

“It would be expected to be a major cost-savings, and while I think that’s important, my primary motivator is how much work requirements have proven to improve lives as opposed to how much money they save,” he said. “I want people to escape poverty.”

Currently, adults aged 18 to 54 can receive three months of SNAP benefits in three years at most before a requirement kicks in to work at least 80 hours per month.

Johnson’s bill would also strip present exemptions for young adults who recently aged out of foster care and for veterans. Those were included during bipartisan negotiations on raising the debt limit in 2023, as part of the Fiscal Responsibility Act.

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“The concessions we had to make in the Fiscal Responsibility Act to get things done were not helpful changes,” Johnson said when asked about the change.

“It was just telling all veterans and all young adult former foster kids that the work requirements didn’t apply to them, and that’s not actually helpful to getting them to a better financial path.”

He pointed out there would still be exceptions for pregnant women, people with disabilities, people living in high-unemployment counties, and others.

“My bill would go back to the way it was before, which is the same eligibility requirements applied to veterans and foster kids are applied to everybody else,” he said.