The U.S. Department of Agriculture has proposed rewriting the rule that lets most states enroll families in food assistance without a separate asset test — a change that, by the department's own estimate, would end benefits for 6.3 million people.
The proposed rule, titled "Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program: Reforming Categorical Eligibility," went on public inspection at the Federal Register on November 10 under docket FNA-2026-0661. The public has 30 days to comment, a window that closes on or about December 10, 2026.
What the rule would change
Federal law sets the ordinary income ceiling for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) at 130% of the federal poverty guidelines, and applies a limit on the resources a household may hold. Broad-based categorical eligibility, known as BBCE, lets a state skip both tests for a household when every member already receives a benefit funded by Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) — including non-cash benefits and services.
The proposal would narrow that to households receiving TANF "assistance" as the term is defined at 45 CFR 260.31, which in practice means ongoing cash aid. It would also strike the language that currently counts a household as eligible if it is merely "authorized to receive" such a benefit, and would remove the state options that confer eligibility through in-kind TANF-funded services.
The policy is in wide use. As of December 2025, 46 states used BBCE, according to the department: 37 set gross income limits above the 130% threshold and 41 had eliminated resource limits entirely. The National Association of Counties notes that the 46 include all ten states where counties, rather than the state, administer SNAP.
The numbers in USDA's own estimate
The regulatory impact analysis attached to the proposal puts the effects at:
- 3.2 million households — 6.3 million people — no longer receiving SNAP in fiscal 2029, the first year of full effect, or about 16.9% of participating households.
- A reduction of about $44.649 billion in federal SNAP benefit spending from fiscal 2027 through fiscal 2031.
- A net reduction of about $5.243 billion in state benefit spending over the same five years.
- An estimate that 11.5% of participating households, around 2.5 million, hold resources above the SNAP limit today.
The department's case is that the policy drifted from what Congress wrote it for, which was to cut paperwork rather than widen the door. "It is irresponsible to Congress and the taxpayer to support regulations that permit this practice," the proposal says. It leans on a 2012 Government Accountability Office report that found a 17.2% payment error rate among BBCE households, against 6.7% among other SNAP households.
The 14-year gap between that error-rate finding and the rule citing it is worth noting: SNAP's eligibility systems, and its error measurement, have been rebuilt more than once since 2012.
Children, school meals and WIC
Because several other programs borrow SNAP's eligibility determination, the effects run past the grocery line. About 1.78 million children would lose categorical eligibility for free school meals; roughly 97% of them would still qualify on income through a separate application, and about 28,000 would move to paying full price. Some 42,000 children could lose Summer EBT benefits, beginning in the summer of 2029. About 5,500 participants in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) would lose eligibility, out of the 22,000 who currently qualify through BBCE.
A second rule, filed the same day
USDA sent a companion proposal for publication on November 10 covering work requirements for able-bodied adults without dependents. It would reshape the waiver states can claim for areas with unemployment above 10%: a waiver area could be only a single county or commuting zone rather than a group of contiguous counties, requests would rest on 12 months of unemployment data instead of three, no waiver could run longer than a year, and the secretary could deny one even where the economic conditions are met. Comments on that rule also close December 10.
The fight ahead
Crystal FitzSimons, president of the Food Research & Action Center, said the proposal misses its stated target. "Eliminating BBCE does nothing to reduce hunger, and it doesn't improve program integrity," she said in a statement on November 10. The group says more than 5.5 million people have already lost access to SNAP under the budget law known as H.R. 1.
This is the second attempt at the same change. The first Trump administration proposed restricting BBCE in July 2019, drawing more than 183,000 comments in opposition, by FRAC's count; the Biden administration withdrew it in June 2021.
Reporting from the Federal Register, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the National Association of Counties, the Food Research & Action Center and News4Jax.
