Senate Official Rejects Food Aid Cuts Proposed by Republicans in Megabill

A top Senate official on Friday night rejected a bid by Republicans to slash federal food aid payments as part of their sweeping legislation carrying President Trump’s domestic agenda, sending party leaders scrambling to find another way to help offset the massive cost of the bill.

The measure passed by the House last month and on track to be considered in the Senate next week would cover part of the cost of extending and expanding large tax cuts by cutting social safety net programs including Medicaid and nutrition programs, including SNAP, formerly known as food stamps.

Republicans are moving the bill through Congress using special rules that shield it from a filibuster, depriving Democrats of the ability to block it. But to qualify for that protection, the legislation must comply with a rigorous set of budgetary restrictions meant to ensure that it will not add to the deficit. And the Senate parliamentarian, an official appointed by the chamber’s leaders to enforce its rules and precedents, must evaluate such measures to ensure that every provision meets those requirements.

Elizabeth MacDonough, the parliamentarian, ruled that the SNAP measure, which would push some of the costs of nutrition assistance onto the states, did not. That sent Republicans back to the drawing board to find another strategy for covering tens of billions of dollars of the bill’s cost.

She also said Republicans could not include a provision that would bar immigrants who are not citizens or lawful permanent residents from receiving SNAP benefits, according to Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, the top Democrat on the Budget Committee.

The House-passed bill would require all states to pay at least 5 percent of SNAP benefit costs, and more if they reported a high rate of errors in underpaying or overpaying recipients. That provision was estimated to save roughly $128 billion.

Senate Republicans were unsettled by that plan, arguing it would tee up insurmountable budget shortfalls for their states. They softened it, advancing a lower share for states to shoulder than that set forward by the House proposal. On Saturday, Senator John Boozman, Republican of Arkansas and the chairman of the Agriculture Committee, said G.O.P. senators would continue to try to find a way to cut food assistance that complied with Senate rules.

“To rein in federal spending and protect taxpayer dollars, the committee is pursuing meaningful reforms to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to improve efficiency, accountability and integrity,” Mr. Boozman said in a statement. He said he was looking at options “to ensure SNAP serves those who truly need it while being responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars.”

Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, the top Democrat on the Agriculture Committee, cheered the parliamentarian’s decision, saying she had “made clear that Senate Republicans cannot use their partisan budget to shift major nutrition assistance costs to the states that would have inevitably led to major cuts.”

Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic minority leader, echoed Ms. Klobuchar, calling the parliamentarian’s decision a “small but important win.”

“We’ll keep standing up to protect the programs that feed working families — not the tax breaks that feed billionaires,” he said in a statement.

Several fiscal hawks in both the House and Senate have complained that the legislation does not do enough to cut federal spending. With the parliamentarian’s ruling, Republicans will have to find another way to slash a huge sum of money that their members also feel comfortable voting for.

The ruling was just one piece of a broader review the parliamentarian is conducting of the Republican-written legislation. She was expected to work through the weekend evaluating the measure and instructing Republicans to strip out any provision she deems out of order. Should they fail to do so, Democrats could challenge the bill on the floor, forcing Republicans to muster 60 votes to advance it, which would effectively kill it since Democrats are solidly opposed.

The parliamentarian also will determine whether Republicans can keep a provision that would block states from regulating artificial intelligence for a decade, and whether they can use a budget trick that would make extending the 2017 tax cuts appear to be free.

Ms. MacDonough on Thursday struck several provisions in the bill that would reduce the power of financial regulatory agencies, including a proposal that would have effectively eliminated the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a financial industry watchdog.

Language put forward by Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the Republican chairman of the Banking Committee, would cap the bureau’s funding at zero percent of the Federal Reserve’s total operating expenses, essentially gutting it. Republicans have long sought to curb the agency’s power, arguing that its regulations are overly burdensome to banks and other businesses.

The parliamentarian also ruled against language that would reduce the pay of some Federal Reserve employees; cut funding for the Office of Financial Research, an independent bureau that is supposed to monitor risk on Wall Street; and eliminate the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, an auditing watchdog.

Michael Gold and Megan Mineiro contributed reporting.