SNAP is what most people still call food stamps. It is the program that stands between a bad year and an empty refrigerator.
In July 2025, Congress cut it by $187 billion through 2034 — roughly 20% of the program. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities called it the largest cut to SNAP in history, and that is not a figure of speech. Nothing bigger has ever been done to it.
Every Republican below voted for that bill, or built on it. What makes them worth naming is not the vote. It is what each of them said about hunger before casting it.
Tracey Mann relaunched the Hunger Caucus, then voted for the deepest cut in the program's history
Tracey Mann is the Kansas congressman who led the relaunch of the bipartisan House Hunger Caucus. He says growing up on a Kansas farm taught him "the sacred responsibility of feeding people."
Then he voted to pass the House budget bill that the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities described as the deepest SNAP cut in the program's history, and voted for it again on final passage in July.
In his own district, 17,306 households rely on SNAP, according to USDA data — including 7,127 households with children and 7,424 with someone over 60.
A hunger caucus whose chairman votes for the deepest cut in the program's history is not a caucus. It's a letterhead.
Brad Finstad chairs the subcommittee that writes SNAP policy
Brad Finstad chairs the House Agriculture Subcommittee on Nutrition and Foreign Agriculture. That is the subcommittee that writes SNAP policy. Nutrition is the first word in its name.
He voted for the $187 billion cut anyway. 21,145 households in his Minnesota district count on that food assistance.
His stated philosophy is that lawmakers should offer "people a hand up, not just a handout."
"A hand up, not a handout" is a fine slogan. What the 2025 law actually added was not a ladder — it was new work requirements, tighter eligibility, and a lot more paperwork to sign up or renew.
Jim Pillen turned down $18 million to feed Nebraska kids, and said why out loud
Governor Jim Pillen didn't need a vote in Congress to take food away from children. He just declined to accept it.
In December 2023, the federal government offered Nebraska money for Summer EBT — grocery benefits for low-income kids during the months school meals aren't available. Pillen said no, turning down $18 million that advocates said would have fed 150,000 low-income Nebraska youths.
Asked at a news conference to defend it, he gave the shortest possible answer:
He reversed himself in February 2024 — after Nebraska Appleseed delivered a petition with 6,144 signatures from 230 communities, and after, in his own words, "you sit down with kids who are living it."
The program he tried to block then delivered nearly $24 million in grocery benefits to 121,855 Nebraska families in its first summer alone.
It took hungry children in a room with him to change his mind. That is the standard of proof he required.
Gabe Evans told people a food bank agreed with him. The food bank said no.
Gabe Evans voted to cut SNAP and Medicaid, then told the public that the Weld Food Bank in his Colorado district had told him "we need to cut down on the line" of people needing food — the clear implication being that the food bank was on his side.
The food bank corrected him publicly. Their meeting with him had been "strictly informational," and the cuts, they said, "will make the line longer, not shorter."
They were right. The Weld Food Bank's emergency food program is now running at about "30,000 visits a month, up about 230%", against a $700,000 shortfall.
More than 28,000 households in his district — better than one in ten — rely on SNAP.
Mike Lawler voted for the biggest cut, then introduced a bill about paperwork
Eight weeks. That is the gap.
On July 3, 2025, Mike Lawler voted for the bill — what CBPP called "the largest cut to SNAP in history."
Eight weeks later he introduced a bipartisan bill to make SNAP paperwork easier for seniors, on the grounds that they "shouldn't have to fight through mountains of paperwork just to put food on the table."
He is right about the paperwork. He is also describing the consequence of the law he had just voted for — the exact machinery that knocks eligible people off the rolls without anyone ever formally deciding they don't qualify.
More than 18,000 households in his New York district rely on SNAP.
Lauren Boebert's argument for work requirements was her own résumé
When Congress debated expanding SNAP work requirements, Lauren Boebert defended them by pointing at herself:
"I worked with a three-month-old. So I mean, I think work requirements should be there anyway."
She voted for the cuts. 19,715 households in her Colorado district rely on SNAP to buy groceries.
"I did it, so they can" is not a policy. It's an anecdote used to end the conversation.
Tom Cole called it "an extraordinary piece of legislation"
Tom Cole's Oklahoma district has 43,177 households on SNAP — about 13.5% of every household in it, including 22,770 households with children.
After voting for the cuts, he called the bill "an extraordinary piece of legislation."
Oklahoma Watch reported, in the same piece, that 25,000 households in his district alone are at risk of losing SNAP benefits.
Extraordinary is one word for it.
Clay Fuller wasn't there for the vote. He wrote a bill to go further.
Clay Fuller wasn't in Congress in 2025, so he didn't cast that vote. He introduced his own bill instead.
On July 14, 2026, Fuller introduced H.R. 9667, the SHIELD Citizens Act as lead sponsor, and announced that it "ensures that illegal aliens are ineligible for our welfare system."
In the very next sentence, he widened it: "Non-citizens should not have access to welfare programs funded by American tax dollars."
Three days later, only the wider version was left: "Taxpayer-funded benefits should not be available to non-citizens, period."
Those are not the same group of people. "Non-citizens" includes refugees, people with green cards, and people here entirely legally. The bill names SNAP by statute.
In his Georgia district, 27,395 households rely on SNAP, including 14,302 with children.
The pattern
Read those eight together and the common thread isn't cruelty. It's the belief that nobody is checking.
The hunger caucus chairman assumed his caucus membership would be the thing people remembered, not his vote. The nutrition subcommittee chairman assumed the same about his gavel. Lawler assumed his paperwork bill would land as compassion rather than as an admission. Evans assumed the food bank wouldn't say anything.
They were all wrong, and the record is public in every case — the roll calls at clerk.house.gov, the USDA's household counts by district, the food banks' own numbers.
The cuts are not finished arriving, either. States begin picking up more of SNAP's administrative costs later this year, and Medicaid work requirements land next year on many of the same families. Pennsylvania has already lost about 220,000 people from its SNAP rolls in a single year, roughly half of it traced by the state to this law.
This November, these eight will be asking voters to send them back. The question worth putting to them is not whether they care about hunger. All of them say they do, and several have the committee assignment to prove it.
The question is what they did when it cost something.
Sources
- Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, "By the Numbers: Harmful Republican Megabill Takes Food Assistance Away From Millions"
- U.S. House Clerk, Roll Call 190, July 3, 2025
- USDA, SNAP Community Characteristics — Congressional District Dashboard
