10. Department of Agriculture · Notable
Eliminate the SNAP heat-and-eat loophole
Printed page 301 10. Department of Agriculture
“Eliminate the heat-and-eat loophole. States can artificially boost a household’s food stamp benefit by using the heat-and-eat loophole.”
What has happened
- Partially done
FNS put the implementing rulemaking on its agenda: the 2026 Unified Agenda carries RIN 0584-AF11, "SNAP: Revisions to Standard Utility Allowances and Treatment of Energy Assistance Payments", at proposed-rule stage with an NPRM scheduled for August 2026, expressly implementing the P.L. 119-21 changes and also revisiting the Biden-era SUA standardization rule. No NPRM had been published as of 2026-08-28, and a Federal Register full-text search for "heat and eat" across the window returns nothing.
- Partially done
Congress narrowed heat-and-eat sharply but did not eliminate it. P.L. 119-21 Sec. 10103 amends 7 U.S.C. 2014(e)(6)(C)(iv)(I) to insert "with an elderly or disabled member" after "households", so that a nominal LIHEAP payment can trigger the standard utility allowance only for households containing an elderly or disabled member, and makes the matching change to the treatment of third-party energy assistance payments in 7 U.S.C. 2014(k)(4). The device survives for that class of household, so this is a piece delivered rather than the elimination the Quote asks for.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
- The Quote’s own history — the 2014 farm bill’s $20 threshold and the unfinalized Trump-era standardization rule — is what Sec. 10103 and RIN 0584-AF11 between them pick up.
- done would need the LIHEAP-to-SUA link severed for all households, or the SUA standardization rule finalized in a form that removes it.
- Action
- eliminate
- Object
- SNAP heat-and-eat loophole
- ID
- 779