In March 2025, a reporter for the Pennsylvania Capital-Star asked Glenn Thompson — the Pennsylvania congressman who runs the House Agriculture Committee — whether cuts to food stamps were on the table.
Thompson said no. "Absolutely no reductions in the nutritional benefits," he told them. Warnings about SNAP cuts were "a rumor that was started by folks who are anti-farming." They were "just misinformation."
Two months later, Thompson released the committee text that wrote the cuts.
This week the same newspaper went back and counted what happened next.
The number
A year ago, 1.96 million Pennsylvanians were on SNAP — food stamps. Today it is 1.74 million. That is a drop of about 220,000 people, roughly 11 percent of everyone in the program, in a single year.
Pennsylvania's own Department of Human Services estimates that about 98,000 of those losses — just under half — come directly from the new SNAP rules in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Trump's 2025 budget law.
That law did three things to SNAP: it created new work requirements, it limited eligibility for immigrants, and it demanded a lot more paperwork from people signing up or renewing.
The paperwork part is not a footnote. It is how a program sheds people who still qualify.
Who actually voted for it
On July 3, 2025, the House took its final vote on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The roll call is published by the Clerk of the House, name by name.
Nine Pennsylvania Republicans voted yes:
- Glenn Thompson (PA-15) — Chairman of the House Agriculture Committee
- Rob Bresnahan (PA-8)
- John Joyce (PA-13)
- Mike Kelly (PA-16)
- Ryan Mackenzie (PA-7)
- Dan Meuser (PA-9)
- Scott Perry (PA-10)
- Guy Reschenthaler (PA-14)
- Lloyd Smucker (PA-11)
One Pennsylvania Republican, Brian Fitzpatrick, voted no.
Across those nine districts, 427,510 households rely on SNAP, according to the USDA's own congressional district data. Not people — households. The heaviest are Reschenthaler's (60,518 households, about 18% of the district) and Bresnahan's (55,665, also about 18%).
These men did not cut a program that serves someone else's constituents. They cut the one their own districts lean on hardest.
What it looks like at the food bank
Anne Eagan runs the Allentown Area Ecumenical Food Bank, the only daily food bank in Lehigh County — which sits inside Ryan Mackenzie's district. It takes in about 15,000 pounds of food a week and gives out about a million pounds a year.
In the last two months alone, during what is normally the slow season, it has seen a 55% increase in new clients.
"The majority of [new clients] that we've spoken to and asked these questions are people who have had their SNAP either cut or taken away completely," Eagan told the Capital-Star. "Most of them are working, and they just can't make ends meet between their income and the price of gas."
Most of them are working. That is the part worth reading twice, because the law's headline feature was a work requirement.
In the 27 counties served by the Central Pennsylvania Food Bank — a stretch running from Lancaster County, which Lloyd Smucker represents, north to Tioga County on the New York line — about 40,000 fewer people had SNAP this April than a year before.
The food bank's chief strategy officer, Zach Zook, gave the Capital-Star the number that explains why charity can't cover this: the federal SNAP program provides nine meals for every one the Feeding America food bank network provides.
"A loss in SNAP benefits is really a very big deal," Zook said.
Around Pittsburgh, where Guy Reschenthaler's district sits, the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank counts 37,000 fewer people with SNAP access than last July. "Just looking at the numbers in cash value, that's a $5 million loss to our regional economy," said Colleen Young, the food bank's director of government affairs. The food bank ran $2.5 million over budget last year just buying enough food to keep up.
In Philadelphia, the Share Food Program saw about 7,000 new people in January, right after the stricter rules took effect. By July, after roughly 60,000 Philadelphians lost benefits, it was seeing 30,000 new individuals in a month.
Who is on SNAP in Pennsylvania
The state says 35% of Pennsylvania's SNAP recipients are under 18, and 25% are over 55.
So when nine congressmen voted to tighten work requirements on this program, the largest single group they were tightening them on was children.
The excuses don't survive contact with the receipts
The Agriculture Department told the Capital-Star that enrollment changes "should not be attributed to any one policy change" — people move into jobs, lose interest, or have their circumstances change.
Pennsylvania's Department of Human Services put a number on it anyway: 98,000. And the food banks are not seeing people who found jobs. They are seeing working people who lost their benefits and now need a food box.
Thompson's own defense is the weakest of all, because he is on record twice. He said in March that SNAP cuts were "misinformation." He released the text of the cuts in May. He voted to pass them in July. And his explanation for what he'd built was that SNAP had "drifted from a bridge to support American households in need to a permanent destination."
He's the Agriculture chairman. He didn't get outvoted. He wrote it.
It is about to get worse
Three things are already scheduled.
Later this year, states have to start paying a bigger share of SNAP's administrative costs — money Pennsylvania will have to find somewhere, most likely from the same budget that funds its farm-to-food-bank program.
Starting in late 2027, Pennsylvania can be penalized if its SNAP error rate isn't below 6%. The rate was 9.21% in 2025. It had already fallen from 16.61% in 2023, but not far enough, and the penalty comes out of the state's pocket either way.
Next year, work requirements arrive for Medicaid — which covers about 750,000 Pennsylvanians. That is the same paperwork machinery, aimed at health coverage. When medical bills go up, food budgets go down.
None of that is a forecast about what Republicans might do. It is a schedule they already voted for.
The part nobody in Washington has to see
"We continue to have to fill the gaps that could be eliminated tomorrow by the federal government," said George Matysik, executive director of the Share Food Program in Philadelphia. His food bank was also hit by $8 million in federal cuts that reduced the food coming into its warehouse by about 20%.
"There should be no reason that food banks like Share Food Program exist in the richest country in the history of the world," Matysik said. "We have enough food, we have enough resources to ensure that the working class doesn't have to starve just because of poor federal policies."
Nine Pennsylvania Republicans wrote those policies or voted for them. 427,510 households in their districts were on SNAP when they did it. About 220,000 Pennsylvanians have come off the rolls since.
Their names are on the roll call. It takes about ten seconds to look up.
Source
Ian Karbal, "Food banks across Pennsylvania are struggling to keep up in the face of SNAP cuts, economic pain", Pennsylvania Capital-Star, August 24, 2026. Photo by Ian Karbal / Pennsylvania Capital-Star.
