President Donald Trump celebrated his landmark legislative package and its tax-and-spending cuts Friday with a ceremonial bill signing punctuated by B-2 bombers flying over the White House.
But child welfare experts and advocates for children and families predict the impact on the ground will create new survival challenges for millions of the most vulnerable Americans who fail to qualify for lifeline food and health benefits under strict new enrollment rules.
Among many other complex provisions in the nearly 900-page bill cementing the Trump administration’s agenda, non-disabled low-income parents and older foster youth exiting the system will have to meet new reporting requirements, and be able to prove they are working, in school, volunteering or training for work in order to qualify for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP. Similar rules will apply to Medicaid for parents with children over the age of 13.
In an op-ed published today in The New York Times, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers echoed other analysts asserting that the new paperwork hurdles will block even eligible workers from enrolling, and produce the steepest spending cuts to the social safety net in the nation’s history.
The Republican-championed legislation followed months of contentious debate and final votes that split Congress almost entirely along party lines. It includes $4.5 trillion in new and extended tax cuts that primarily benefit the wealthy and increases spending on immigration enforcement and the military. More than $1 trillion in savings will be achieved through the new restrictions on Medicaid and the food stamp program, and cuts to higher education and renewable energy investments.
A series of provisions is designed to boost take-home pay for some working class families, such as an increased adoption tax credit, a temporary program creating $1,000 savings accounts for newborns, and a permanent $200 boost to the annual maximum child tax credit. Trump touted the latter during his Independence Day signing ceremony, while downplaying new restrictions on food and health care benefits.
“We’re adding things like the biggest tax cut in the history of our country, a child tax credit,” he said. And despite the megabill’s more than $1 trillion in spending cuts “you won’t even notice it,” he told the nation, because “just waste, fraud and abuse” were targeted.
Democrats and advocates for children and the poor fiercely dispute that assertion. They cite the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, and researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and Yale University. Their forecasts predict that the full impact of the tax cuts and credits — combined with reduced spending on health care, student aid and food stamps — will benefit the wealthy, but leave low-income Americans worse off financially.
“It is bad and brutal in its gutting of essential programs children and families rely on for their day-to-day needs,” stated a Thursday press release from the Children’s Defense Fund.
“In my lifetime, I cannot think of a bill that is worse for kids,” Bruce Lesley, president of First Focus on Children wrote in a Monday newsletter. The leader of the Washington, D.C., advocacy organization described the bill as an “unprecedented betrayal” that “enriches the wealthy” and “puts children last.”
SNAP served more than 41 million Americans last year, who received an average of $187 per person each month, according to federal data. Medicaid covered 71 million Americans as of March, all of whom were living near or below the poverty line. The vast majority of families involved in the child welfare system are low-income, and enrolled in one of those programs, studies have found.
Every six months, non-disabled former foster youth as young as 18 and parents with children over age 13 will have to prove they were employed, in training or enrolled in school to be eligible for more than three months in SNAP. While there’s no start date for that provision in the new law, congressional staff this week told The Imprint and other outlets it would apply immediately, and could impact SNAP payments as soon as next month. The bill is explicit with the timing of the Medicaid changes: Starting at the end of 2026, non-disabled parents and caregivers of children 14 and up will also have to prove they’ve been working or otherwise “community engaged” 80 hours a month. The poorest families will remain exempt from the Medicaid work reporting rules.
Requiring work in exchange for government benefits is popular in opinion polls, but when applied to SNAP and Medicaid, there’s little evidence such policies have pushed people into jobs. Instead, many analysts have found, extra paperwork burdens lead to broad reductions in benefits and enrollment – even among applicants who are employed, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
In recent weeks, the threat of Medicaid cuts prompted a handful of prominent Republican lawmakers from around the country to issue rare rebukes of their own party’s signature legislative initiative.
The Imprint contacted the leaders of eight state child welfare agencies with requests for comment on the impact of the changes. None provided a public comment.
But a spokesperson for one southern state’s child welfare system requested anonymity in order to speak candidly about Trump’s bill, which is supported by their Republican governor.
“Hell yeah, we are concerned about almost $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts will mean for the families we serve,” he said.
Tom Rawlings, former director of the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services, has warned of “hidden costs” for states, since so many adults in the child welfare system rely on Medicaid, and require substance abuse or mental health services to keep their families intact. Parents most in need of services, he wrote in the policy analysis blog Child Welfare Wonk, are also those most likely “to go without coverage as a result of the Medicaid work requirements.”
The just-departed director of South Carolina’s child welfare system said in an interview with The Imprint last week that “stripping Medicaid for non-compliance could be devastating” for families with children 14 and older, who will now face the new paperwork hurdles.
Nevertheless, some of Congress’ leading Republican advocates for legislation supporting foster youth spoke in favor of the bill’s tax cuts in recent days, and defended the new work requirements for government benefits.
In a floor speech two weeks ago, Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, co-founder of the Senate’s Caucus on Foster Youth, called the work requirements “common sense.”
Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska — who has supported such causes as stricter enforcement of the Indian Child Welfare Act and the Supporting Tribal Families Act — agreed.
“The benefits of the bill outweigh any concerns here,” Bacon said in an email sent to The Imprint last week. “Folks will pay 20% less in taxes, overtime pay tax-free, tips tax-free and child tax credit is doubled.”
