Several former Republican governors in the Senate have sounded alarms over a controversial House GOP plan to help pay for the Trump megabill by pushing billions in federal food aid costs to states.
Now there’s a would-be governor raising similar concerns. Behind the scenes in recent days, Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama raised issues over the provision with GOP leaders and pushed for the plan to be scaled back, according to three Republicans granted anonymity to describe the conversations.
Tuberville, who announced a gubernatorial bid May 27, confirmed his worries in a brief interview Wednesday.
“Everybody that’s going to be in state government is going to be concerned about it,” he said. “I don’t know whether we can afford it or not.”
The House provision affecting the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program would financially hammer deep-red states like Alabama, forcing governors and state legislatures to foot billions in new costs or cut benefits to low-income families. The Republicans say Tuberville appears to be increasingly worried about a multi-billion-dollar bill hitting his desk should he be elected governor.
Tuberville, a staunch ally of President Donald Trump who supports the House bill’s strict new work requirements for SNAP, isn’t the only Republican who’s raised concerns about the House plan. At least two dozen other GOP senators have quietly raised concerns about how their states could be hit.
Senate Republicans involved in the talks have been surprised that current GOP governors have not raised more public concern about the House GOP plan. Many House Republicans assumed the Senate would strip the proposal out of the megabill, but the Senate GOP is now considering a host of options to scale down but not fully strip out the cost-sharing measure.
Senior Republicans have discussed one option to force every state to pay five percent of the cost of SNAP benefits for the first time, adding extra penalties for states with the highest payment error rates, according to three other Republicans with knowledge of the conversations.
“I think a lot of governors are saying the Senate is not going to do this to us,” said one Republican with direct knowledge of the conversations. “No, we absolutely might.”
Republicans involved in the talks say they will likely need to maintain some version of the provision in order to achieve the needed spending cuts while also paying for a $60 billion farm bill package in the House version of the bill. The Senate parliamentarian appears likely to nix one smaller source of savings from the Agriculture bill — a provision creating a national clearinghouse to crack down on duplicate benefits across SNAP, Medicaid and other programs.
Sen. Jim Justice, who served as West Virginia’s governor until January, said both current and future governors need to “analyze this very, very, very seriously” and “voice their opinions.”
“Because if you’re asleep at the switch, and you miss what the cost is going to be … you can put a state in a tough spot,” he said.
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