Congress is considering a number of bills to help improve the federal government’s welfare programs. The Debt Dispatch is pleased to present a special edition of the Welfare Digest, featuring ten bills moving through Congress that are worth following.
Rep. Moore (R-UT) and Sen. Husted (R-OH)’s Upward Mobility Act of 2026 (H.R. 6949) and (S. 3583)
Sen. Kennedy (R-LA)’s Poverty Statistics Enhancement Act (S. 3756)
Rep. Grothman (R-WI)’s Safeguarding Benefits for Americans Act (H.R. 7213)
Rep. Cline (R-VA)’s No Welfare for the Wealthy Act (H.R. 416)
Rep. Taylor (R-OH)’s SNAP Fraud Reporting Act (H.R. 8028)
Rep. Feenstra (R‑IA)’s Snap Back Inaccurate SNAP Payments Act (H.R. 762)
Sens. Wyden (D-OR), Cassidy (R-LA), and Fetterman’s (D-PA) Enhanced Cybersecurity for SNAP Act (S. 3949)
Rep. Kennedy (R-UT)’s Stop Childcare Funding Fraud Act (H.R. 7794)
Rep. McClintock (R-CA)’s Repeal Community Development Block Grants Act (H.R. 1133)
Rep. Arrington (R-TX)’s Eliminating Fraud and Improper Payments in TANF Act (H.R. 2242)
More details below:
Cross-Cutting Reforms
Giving States the Flexibility to Break Down Benefit Cliffs. As AEI scholars Matt Weidinger and Angela Rachidi point out, families on federal welfare programs often face benefit cliffs, where modest income gains trigger abrupt benefit losses that leave them financially worse off. One core reason is the “fragmented and poorly coordinated federal safety net,” with misaligned rules across a tangled web of more than 80 means-tested welfare programs. Representative Moore (R-UT) and Senator Husted (R-OH)’s Upward Mobility Act (H.R. 6949) and (S. 3583) would create a five-year pilot for five states that would consolidate funding from SNAP, TANF, Section 8 Housing, and other programs into a single Upward Mobility block grant. As Weidinger and Rachidi argue, this bill offers a cost-neutral experiment that “encourages states to test reforms addressing benefit cliffs and other impediments to recipients’ working and earning more.”
Creating a More Comprehensive Poverty Measure. As the Debt Dispatch has previously covered, the flawed Official Poverty Measure (OPM) excludes key components of anti-poverty policy since the 1960s, such as in-kind benefits from Medicaid, SNAP, and housing assistance, and tax credits like the EITC. According to a 2025 report by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), adjusting for these factors drops the average poverty rate from 1979 to 2021 from 13.3 percent to 3.5 percent. Senator Kennedy (R-LA)’s Poverty Statistics Enhancement Act (S. 3756) would instruct the Census Bureau to calculate a new poverty measure using CBO’s methodology in its annual poverty report. This, says Kennedy, would provide “a much clearer picture of a family’s ability to pay for its basic needs.”
Building a Wall Around the Welfare State. As Cato scholar Alex Nowrasteh points out, immigrant welfare use is a concern to many Americans. As his and Jerome Famularo’s research highlights, although “immigrants use less welfare than native-born Americans… policymakers should still seek to build a higher wall around the welfare state to prevent noncitizens from receiving benefits.” As the Debt Dispatch has previously highlighted, Representative Grothman (R-WI)’s Safeguarding Benefits for Americans Act (H.R. 7213) would accomplish this by barring all noncitizens from federal welfare and entitlement benefits. According to Nowrasteh and Famularo, this bill would save more than “$125 billion in the first year” alone.
SNAP
Closing the Loophole That Puts Millionaires on Food Stamps. As the Debt Dispatch has previously covered, 43 states and DC use broad-based categorical eligibility (BBCE), allowing them to extend SNAP benefits to households that don’t meet the program’s statutory income and countable asset limits. The Foundation for Government Accountability estimates that 5.9 million otherwise ineligible people—including people with six-figure assets, lottery winners, and millionaires—are on SNAP through BBCE. States’ use of BBCE to weaken verification protocols has also made it prone to improper payments, with one GAO report finding that households on SNAP through BBCE were nearly three times as likely to have payment errors as other households. Representative Cline (R-VA)’s No Welfare for the Wealthy Act (H.R. 416) would close this loophole and save up to $100 billion over 10 years by eliminating BBCE.
Holding States Accountable for SNAP Fraud Reporting. As the Debt Dispatch has previously covered, USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins claimed that more than 500,000 people were receiving SNAP benefits in multiple states, and 186,000 deceased individuals were still on SNAP rolls—but this data covers only 28 states. Despite directing all state agencies to share SNAP data, as Rollins points out, others have failed to do so. Representative Taylor (R-OH)’s recently introduced SNAP Fraud Reporting Act (H.R. 8028) would require all states to submit five fiscal years of SNAP fraud data to the USDA within 180 days or risk losing administrative funding. As Cato scholar Romina Boccia has said, “Taxpayers deserve a clear accounting of how much of their money is being squandered.” Rep. Taylor’s bill is a “necessary first step toward improving transparency and holding states accountable for payment mistakes.”
Improving Error Payment Transparency in SNAP. SNAP made at least $10.5 billion in improper payments in fiscal year 2024. However, as the Debt Dispatch has previously highlighted, this is an underestimate, since SNAP’s Quality Control (QC) system excludes all payment errors below its error tolerance threshold ($58 in FY 2026). A GAO analysis found that errors below that threshold accounted for 38 percent of misspent SNAP dollars in the cases it reviewed in FY 2013. Representative Feenstra’s (R‑IA) Snap Back Inaccurate SNAP Payments Act (H.R. 762) would lower the QC threshold to $0, providing a more accurate measure of improper payments and incentivizing states to reduce errors.
Protecting EBT Cardholders from Benefit Theft. In January, the USDA Inspector General projected that $555 million in SNAP funds would be vulnerable to theft without cybersecurity upgrades. One common form of EBT theft previously highlighted by the Debt Dispatch is skimming. Since 2023, “more than 670,000 households have had their food stamp benefits stolen by criminals rigging checkout terminals with fake card readers,” as Cato scholar Chris Edwards writes. Although chip-enabled EBT cards would mitigate this, 41 states have shown no indication of making the switch. The Enhanced Cybersecurity for SNAP Act (S. 3949), introduced by senators Wyden (D-OR), Cassidy (R-LA), and Fetterman (D-PA), would strengthen protections against EBT theft by updating “SNAP’s long-outdated cybersecurity regulations and [requiring] chip-enabled cards for SNAP benefits.”
Child Care
Giving States Skin in the Game to Curb Child Care Fraud. The federal government spends $8 billion every year on the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG), a program intended to assist low-income working families. However, as Representative Kennedy (R-UT) points out, the program loses millions of dollars to improper payments each year. In Minnesota, for example, “fraudsters exploited the CCDBG to siphon off tens of millions of dollars through fake or ineligible providers.” Under current law, “states can misuse 1 in 10 federal child care dollars before they’re required to submit so much as a correction plan. And even then, there are no financial penalties.” Kennedy’s Stop Childcare Funding Fraud Act (H.R. 7794) would explicitly define improper payments for the program, require all states with improper payment rates above 6 percent (lowered from 10 percent) to submit a corrective action plan to HHS, and impose cost-sharing penalties on states that exceed the threshold.
Community Development
Moving Community Development Closer to Communities. The federal government distributes roughly $3 billion each year to the states for community and economic development activities through the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG). However, as Cato scholar Chris Edwards highlights, the CDBG “has become hugely complex and bureaucratic,” frequently “[lacks] the level of detail required to assess the program’s effectiveness,” and suffers from “poor performance in targeting aid to the neediest communities.” Portions of CDBG funding also flow to earmarked pork-barrel projects. Representative McClintock (R-CA)’s Repeal Community Development Block Grants Act (H.R. 1133) would eliminate this slush fund by repealing all CDBGs. As both Edwards and the Trump administration in its fiscal year 2026 budget request argue, programs like Community Development are better funded and administered at the state and local level. Eliminating CDBGs would be a good step toward that devolution.
TANF
Ending TANF's Improper Payment Blind Spot. As Cameron McWhirter, Dan Frosch, and Scott Calvert report for the Wall Street Journal, states have frequently used Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) as a “slush fund,” directing “hundreds of millions of dollars to programs with tenuous—or no—connections to TANF’s goals.” Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA) scholar Hayden Dublois estimates that “one in five TANF dollars, or about $6 billion” of the more than $30 billion in annual federal and state funding for the program, “is misspent every year.” But the true scope of the problem is unknown because HHS lacks the authority “to obtain the information it needs to estimate or report improper payment amounts” for TANF, as the Government Accountability Office (GAO) notes. Rep. Arrington (R-TX)’s Eliminating Fraud and Improper Payments in TANF Act (H.R. 2242) would require states to track and report improper payments in TANF, and for HHS to submit a plan to Congress to reduce them. As Arrington argues, “this legislation puts controls over states’ distribution of welfare dollars to ensure taxpayer money is not wasted.”