On Sunday, Speaker Mike Johnson gave CBS’s Margaret Brennan what many considered to be a much-needed education on the House’s Big Beautiful Bill’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program reforms. However, on Thursday, PolitiFact’s Loreben Tuquero asserted that it was Johnson who was the “false” one, although she had to torch a straw man to do so.
Tuquero quotes Johnson claiming, “’We are not cutting SNAP,’ Johnson said in a May 25 episode of CBS News’ ‘Face the Nation.’ ‘We're working in the elements of fraud, waste and abuse. SNAP for example, listen to the statistics, in 2024, over $11 billion in SNAP payments were erroneous.’”
However, according to Tuquero, “the bill does more than tackle waste and fraud. Three detailed, independent analyses of the reconciliation bill found it would cut the number of program beneficiaries by millions of people.” 
Tuquero then cites Johnson’s response, “When asked for comment, Johnson spokesperson Griffin Neal referred PolitiFact to the speaker’s full "Face the Nation" comments, in which he also said, ‘What we're doing is strengthening Medicaid and SNAP so that they can exist, so that they'll be there for the people that desperately need it the most, and it's not being taken advantage of.’"
Those full comments would be important because Tuquero never cited them. Back at the top of the article, in the “If your time is short” summary, Tuquero claims, “The nonpartisan Urban Institute found that the work requirement expansion alone could lead to 5.4 million people losing some or all of their monthly SNAP benefits.”
According to the nonpartisan Media Research Center, Johnson acknowledged the work requirements, “What we're talking about, again, is able-bodied workers, many of whom are refusing to work because they are gaming the system, and when we make them work, it will be better for everybody, a win, win, win for all.”
In other words, Johnson is putting people who refuse to work in the “abuse” category of fraud, waste, and abuse even as Tuquero claims otherwise. Besides, the estimates of people losing benefits are simply projections that rely on the assumption that people will not comply with the bill’s basic work requirements.
Elsewhere in the article, Tuquero claims that freezing benefits is akin to cutting them, “It would also freeze increases to the Thrifty Food Plan. That plan establishes the average cost of a nutritious, home-prepared meal and is used as the basis for calculating households’ maximum SNAP benefit amounts. By not allowing increases to the Thrifty Food Plan, households’ SNAP benefits are less likely to keep pace with retail prices and inflation, and would in effect become cuts.”
That’s not the standard PolitiFact used for Joe Biden and wages. However, Tuquero also claims that “allowing only citizens and lawful permanent residents to participate in SNAP would reduce $4 billion in spending, the office estimated.”
PolitiFact has now moved the goalposts so far back that it is refusing to put benefits given to temporary foreign visitors in the “waste” category.
Tuquero’s final argument against Johnson was to suggest that even if Congress is not necessarily cutting SNAP, it might end up compelling the states to do so. She quotes the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:
It said that SNAP’s ‘deepest cuts’ would come from the federal government pulling back on its funding by 5% to 25% and demanding states supply that instead.
‘If a state can’t make up for these massive federal cuts with tax increases or spending cuts elsewhere in its budget, it would have to cut its SNAP program (such as cutting eligibility or making it harder for people to enroll) or it could opt out of the program altogether, terminating food assistance entirely in the state,’ the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ analysis said.
What makes this claim bizarre is that earlier, Tuquero reported, “It also gives states less leeway to waive work requirements in areas with high unemployment rates, and it requires that they pay a share of SNAP benefit costs beginning in 2028. SNAP is currently fully funded by the federal government; under the bill, states would have to fund from 5% to 25% of SNAP costs, depending on their payment error rates. Error rates are calculated based on how accurately states determine eligibility and benefits.”
Another provision to be put into either the “waste” or “fraud” bin.
Mike Johnson claimed that the House was focusing on waste, fraud, and abuse. PolitiFact said that was false because the bill does more than that, but every example Tuquero cited was an example of either waste, fraud, or abuse.
