On Monday, the Trump administration’s updated rules for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) officially went into effect — and one of the biggest changes is the long-overdue return to real work requirements. After years of loopholes, exemptions, and state-level gamesmanship that turned SNAP into a no-strings-attached benefit for far too many able-bodied adults, the administration is finally tightening the reins.
It’s certainly a step in the right direction:
President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act raised the age limit from 54 to 64 for people who must work, train or volunteer at least 80 hours per month in “qualifying” activities to receive assistance from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The new rules apply to those just joining SNAP or at their next recertification.
The size and scope of SNAP, which supports more than 40 million Americans, came under renewed scrutiny during the government shutdown, as funding for the sweeping food assistance program neared a funding lapse.
The new work requirements are a modest baseline — especially for recipients who are healthy and fully capable of holding a job. With more than 40 million Americans enrolled in SNAP, and years of controversy over lax oversight and widespread fraud, tightening the standards was long overdue.
Under the updated rules, all SNAP recipients will now be required to recertify their eligibility, a move aimed at ensuring the program is serving those who truly need it rather than those who simply take advantage of it:
In FY2024, SNAP served an average of 41.7 million participants per month — about 12% of Americans — costing taxpayers roughly $99 billion.
The Congressional Budget Office projects the new requirements will reduce the average monthly number of SNAP recipients by about 2.4 million over the next 10 years.
Just cutting back on the fraud and waste will save taxpayers a substantial amount of money — but let’s be honest, it’s only a start. Work requirements and recertification are necessary steps, but the bigger problem is the incentive structure. Right now, the incentives are upside-down. The system makes it easy to stay on benefits and far too easy to spend those benefits on things no taxpayer should be footing the bill for.
The next logical move is to strictly limit what can and cannot be purchased with SNAP funds. If the goal is to help families meet basic nutritional needs, then the benefit should reflect that. A weekly ration of staples — rice, beans, chicken or turkey, cheese, pasta, and other nutrient-dense foods — would go much further toward addressing food insecurity than allowing purchases of candy, soda, or junk with zero nutritional value. No one is saying people can’t buy treats; they just shouldn’t be using taxpayer-funded assistance to do it.
And SNAP is not the only program where the Trump administration is finally scrutinizing how taxpayer dollars are spent:
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent posted Friday on X that his department is set to block illegal immigrants from accessing federal benefits.
Bessent said his department will issue proposed regulations clarifying that the refunded portions of certain individual income tax benefits are no longer available to illegal and other non-qualified aliens, including the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Additional Child Tax Credit, the American Opportunity Tax Credit and the Saver’s Match Credit.
A solid start — and predictably, the left is already gearing up to denounce every bit of it, including the completely reasonable idea that taxpayer-funded benefits shouldn’t be handed out to illegal aliens. It shouldn’t even need to be said, yet here we are: government assistance, including refundable tax credits, should be strictly limited, temporary, and reserved for American citizens. Not for people who broke our laws to get here.
Democrats and their loyal partners in the legacy media (but I repeat myself) will fight these reforms tooth and nail. To anyone with enough sense to pound sand, it’s obvious that rewarding illegal immigrants with government benefits is insane public policy. And yet, in 2025, that’s exactly the hill the left has chosen to die on.
