Training and Nutrition Stability Act of 2025
The Training and Nutrition Stability Act of 2025 would amend the Food and Nutrition Act of 2008 to stop counting certain payments received by members of a household as income when determining eligibility for SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program). Specifically, the bill would exclude payments from most work, employment, and training programs, as well as veteran education programs, vocational rehabilitation programs, and refugee employment programs, from being treated as household income for SNAP purposes. There are notable carve-outs: payments from Post-9/11 veterans education improvements acts, the Colmery Veterans Educational Assistance Act, and the COVID-19 Veterans Rapid Retraining Assistance Program would not be excluded (i.e., they could continue to be counted as income). The bill also makes structural changes to the statutory text (removing a subsection and renumbering others) and adjusts cross-references accordingly. In short, the bill targets a broad range of employment- and training-related payments for exclusion from SNAP income calculations, potentially expanding eligibility or benefits for households participating in these programs, while preserving existing counting rules for certain veteran education programs and the VRAP program.
Key Points
- 1Excludes as income certain payments to household members from work programs when calculating SNAP eligibility, with carve-outs for specific veteran education programs and the COVID-19 VRAP program.
- 2Extends the income exclusion to payments from:
- 3- any employment and training program (as defined by the statute),
- 4- any vocational rehabilitation program under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA),
- 5- any refugee employment program under the Immigration and Nationality Act.
- 6Structural changes to the statute: removes subsection (l) of Section 5 and reorders/subsections (m) and (n) accordingly.
- 7Conforming amendment to cross-references: updates Section 6(s)(2) to reflect the renumbering and removal.
- 8The bill is titled the “Training and Nutrition Stability Act of 2025” and was introduced in the Senate on May 15, 2025 by Senator Gillibrand (with Senator Ricketts) and referred to the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry.