U.S. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., speaks to reporters as he leaves a news conference following a House Republican Conference meeting at the U.S. Capitol on April 8, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
The U.S. House Republican budget bill could spell significant losses for low-income families in Ohio, specifically those in need of food assistance and those on Medicaid.
Advocates for Medicaid and anti-hunger leaders have said reductions and eliminations connected to the two programs would negatively affect Ohioans as a whole, as well as the state’s economy and spending power.
Only one Republican U.S. representative from Ohio voted against the congressional budget bill, passed early Thursday with a vote of 215-214. U.S. Rep. Warren Davidson, posted on X, formerly Twitter, Thursday morning that he supported “many things in the bill,” but that “deficits do matter and this bill grows them now.”
“The only Congress we can control is the one we’re in,” he wrote, alongside a bar graph showing the Congressional Budget Office’s analysis of the bill’s deficit effect. “Consequently, I cannot support this big deficit plan.”
U.S. Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, stood with all other Democrats in voting against the bill, saying in a statement after the vote that the bill is “a cruel and catastrophic budget that rips health care, food and opportunity from Ohioans and millions of other Americans just to bankroll bigger and better tax breaks for billionaires.”
Medicaid
Beatty’s statement said the bill, which now moves to the U.S. Senate, includes “the largest cut to Medicaid in American history,” at $698 billion, and $267 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) over the next decade.
“In Ohio, that means potentially substantial new costs shifted onto our state, and fewer hospitals, fewer nursing homes, fewer services for our most vulnerable neighbors,” according to Beatty. “It’s not just bad math – it’s moral failure.”
Ohio would see direct impact from the bill in its own state operating budget, currently being drafted by the General Assembly.
The Ohio House’s version of the bill kept a provision proposed by Republican Gov. Mike DeWine in his executive budget to eliminate the state’s Medicaid expansion group if the federal government reduced the contribution it makes to the program.
Currently, the federal government pays 90% of the Medicaid funding in Ohio, with the state covering the other 10%.
In the Ohio House’s version of the budget bill, Ohio would eliminate Group VIII — another name for the Medicaid expansion group that covers more than 700,000 Ohioans who live above the income requirements for traditional Medicaid but are still in need of assistance — if the federal government’s share of the funding dips below 90%.
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Medicaid advocates and experts have said losing this expansion group would cause Ohio’s uninsured rate to go up, and those dropped from the program to seek self-pay medical options, or skip care all together, causing the health of the state to suffer.
According to Ohio child advocacy group Groundwork Ohio, nearly 48% of Ohio children younger than six rely on Medicaid for health coverage, and the program covers about 50% of all births in the state.
The Center for Community Solutions found in a recent study that Medicaid covers 2 in 5 children in the state, as well as 1 in 5 working-age adults, and 1 in 10 adults aged 65 and older. The largest group covered in Ohio’s Medicaid program, 53.2% of cases, is families and children.
SNAP funding
The national Food Research & Action Center said the cuts would represent a nearly 30% reduction in SNAP funding, and would increase each state’s share of spending for the food assistance.
“The bottom line is this bill would end up costing America,” wrote Crystal FitzSimons, president of FRAC, in a statement. “Rural communities would be disproportionately impacted. We would see higher rates of hunger and poverty, increased health care costs, reduced academic outcomes, less productivity and an economy that will be hit hard.”
The Congressional Budget Office said the cuts, particularly to Medicaid and SNAP, would create a 2% decrease in household income nationwide in 2027 for the 10% of Americans in the lowest income brackets, going to 4% by 2033. Households in the highest income brackets, however, could see raises.
The loss of SNAP funding, along with Medicaid, would reduce access to services that “are vital for everyday Ohioans in every Congressional district,” according to Joree Novotny, executive director of the Ohio Association of Foodbanks.
Novotny said the current proposal would shift nearly $500 million in SNAP costs per year onto the state of Ohio.
“That’s about the same as all the state general revenue spent to operate the entire Ohio Department of Job and Family Services each year,” Novotny said.
The food banks and other anti-hunger advocates are already asking the state to support bipartisan legislation that would create supplemental benefits for SNAP participants in Ohio.
Ohio House Bill 178, which has received two hearings in the House Community Revitalization Committee, would require the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services to provide “supplemental benefits to households receiving (SNAP) benefits if the household includes a member who is 60 years of age or older and receives a monthly SNAP benefit that is less than $50.”
The supplements would cost the state $12.5 million in fiscal year 2026, and $21.4 million in 2027, according to a fiscal analysis of the bill.
In supporting the bill, Hope Lane-Gavin, director of nutrition policy and programs for the state association of food banks said the average SNAP benefit in Ohio is $171 per month per person, or less than $6 per person per day.
The federal minimum SNAP benefit is $23 per month, according to Lane-Gavin. There are about 70,000 households with adults 60 or older as the head of them in which the household receives less than $50 per month.
“Access to SNAP benefits can reduce food insecurity, increase medication adherence and contribute to health care savings,” she told the committee.
If SNAP funding changes drastically, food banks will not be able to fill the gap, even as they served more than 230 million meals in 2024, according to Novotny. The language in the budget would force state governments including Ohio’s to “make impossible choices.”
“This cost shift wouldn’t just hurt families, it would impact local grocery stores, farmers and food suppliers, threatening jobs and access to fresh food in communities across Ohio,” Novotny said.
