More than 3.1 million jobless working-age adults without disabilities or dependents receive food stamp benefits, in part due to a Soros-funded nonprofit group that collaborates with states to secure federal work requirement waivers. That same group is now falsely claiming that homeless people, veterans, and former foster youth will lose access to food stamp benefits under the Republican reconciliation bill.

The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), a progressive think tank backed by billionaire financier George Soros, boasted to Minnesota state officials in 2016 that it works closely with "the majority of states" to secure wide-ranging food stamp work requirement waivers, emails obtained by the Washington Free Beacon show. Nearly 75 percent of the 4.2 million able-bodied adults without dependents currently enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) don’t work at all, with major liberal states including California, Illinois, Washington, and New York securing federal waivers for nearly every county in their respective states, according to the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA).

Now, the Soros-backed group is making false claims about the efforts from President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans to tighten food stamp work requirements for able-bodied adults in their "big, beautiful bill." The CBPP says the homeless, veterans, and former foster youth would lose access to food stamp benefits if the GOP gets its way—but the bill specifically exempts pregnant women, individuals who are "currently homeless," veterans, and former foster children age 24 or younger.

House Agriculture Committee spokesman Ben Nichols said the CBPP is "fear mongering" about GOP’s food stamp proposals, noting that House Agriculture Committee chairman Rep. Glenn Thompson (R., Pa.) has made clear that those exemptions will remain in place. Instead, the bill would close the sorts of loopholes leveraged by the CBPP as it helped states secure work requirement waivers for able-bodied adults with no disabilities or dependents.

Emails obtained by the Free Beacon show the CBPP has been instrumental in helping states secure work requirement exemptions from the federal government. In 2016, the group touted its connections to the Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) in an email thread with Minnesota state officials, saying it was "confident" the federal agency would waive food stamp work requirements for its residents if it submitted the group’s draft application.

"CBPP prepares waivers for the majority of states, at state request. FNS is aware of the quality of our product," then-CBPP vice president for food assistance policy Stacy Dean wrote in a 2016 email to Minnesota state officials. CBPP has received substantial funding from Democratic megadonors, including over $5.6 million from Soros and the Democracy Alliance since 2016.

"We have every confidence that FNS wants to support MN to continue its waivers and that they will expedite the review of this request," Dean wrote. "I apologize if we are being too forward with this note. Because we draft so many waivers, we have the capacity to turn a request like this around very quickly."

Wide swaths of Minnesota were exempt from food stamp work requirements in late 2024 according to a study by the FGA, which found that nearly 75 percent of able-bodied adults on food stamps are exempt from work requirements because the states they live in "have used gimmicks and loopholes" to waive such requirements, even in areas of low unemployment.

Dean’s connections at FNS paid her dividends during the Biden administration. Biden appointed her as deputy undersecretary of food, nutrition, and consumer services in January 2021, a post she held until June 2024 when she left to take a position at George Washington University. As Biden’s food stamp chief, Dean worked closely with the CBPP to draft food stamp policy, the Free Beacon reported. Dean held the post in 2021 when the Biden administration sidestepped Congress and adopted a $256 billion food stamp extension by changing the way the federal government calculates SNAP benefits.

The House Agriculture Committee said the CBPP was instrumental in bringing about the 2021 Biden food stamp extension.

The CBPP did not return a request for comment.