The fight over food assistance: For a Washington Senator—It’s personal

The U.S. Senate is expected to take up the budget passed by the U.S. House in the coming days—a budget that a Washington U.S. Senator said will hit the most vulnerable, in our state, right in the pantry.

The House budget cut $286 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps.

“I’m not going to be quiet as they take food from our kids’ mouths,” stated a defiant Washington U.S. Senator Patty Murray in a post on social media.

Murray called the SNAP program an investment in people.

“My family relied on food stamps briefly when I was a kid,” she said. “Our country had our backs, and all seven of us kids grew up to give back to our communities in different ways.”

We should NOT cut food assistance in America so that Trump can pad the pockets of billionaires and giant corporations.

If Republicans won’t listen to common sense and common decency—then we are going to get a megaphone and shout it from the rooftops:

HANDS OFF SNAP. pic.twitter.com/KwleBrnmzd

— Senator Patty Murray (@PattyMurray) May 27, 2025

But is SNAP actually being cut? GOP says no

On CBS’s Face the Nation, House Speaker Mike Johnson insisted, “We have not cut SNAP. What we’re doing is working on fraud, waste, and abuse.”

The Government Accountability Office determined that in 2023, about $10.5 billion in SNAP benefits were improper.

But not all of that was likely fraud. It could include underpayments as well as overpayments, or instances when regulations weren’t followed to the letter.

Johnson explained that’s why the House budget requires states to shoulder more of the costs of SNAP.

“The states are not properly administering this, because they don’t have enough skin in the game, so what we’ve done in the bill is add some—just modest state sharing component so that they’ll pay attention to that so that we can reduce fraud,” he said.

How is Washington impacted?

The left-leaning Center for American Progress (CAP) estimates the states, collectively, would have to pay an additional $2.5 billion a year to fill the gap.

And CAP stated, under expanded paperwork and other requirements, 2.7 million American Households would lose more than $3,000 per year.

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a progressive think tank, 888,300 Washington residents receive SNAP benefits. More than half of the recipients are families with children, and most have incomes that put them below the poverty line.

Is this about funding tax cuts for the wealthy?

Supporters of the budget, from the Republican controlled House, say the goal is to cut waste and fraud from SNAP in order to make the program stronger for those who need it.

Critics, like Murray, see a more nefarious goal: to help fund President Donald Trump’s desired tax cuts.

“We should not be cutting off food assistance so Trump can cut his fellow billionaires a massive check,” Murray said.

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