I 
115TH CONGRESS 
1ST SESSION H. R. 1276 
To amend the Food and Nutrition Act of 2008 to require that supplemental 
nutrition assistance program benefits be calculated with reference to 
the cost of the low-cost food plan as determined by the Secretary of 
Agriculture, and for other purposes. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
MARCH 1, 2017 
Ms. ADAMS (for herself, Mr. MCGOVERN, Ms. FUDGE, Ms. DELAURO, Mr. 
EVANS, Ms. PLASKETT, Ms. DELBENE, Ms. NORTON, Ms. KAPTUR, Ms. 
LEE, Mr. LARSEN of Washington, Ms. VELA´ZQUEZ, Mr. HASTINGS, Mr. 
CICILLINE, Ms. MOORE, Mr. CONYERS, Ms. SHEA-PORTER, Mr. DEUTCH, 
Mr. GRIJALVA, Mr. MEEKS, Mr. NORCROSS, Ms. JACKSON LEE, Mr. 
BUTTERFIELD, Mrs. WATSON COLEMAN, Mr. RUSH, Mr. RICHMOND, Mr. 
COHEN, Ms. CLARKE of New York, Mr. LEWIS of Georgia, Ms. JAYAPAL, 
and Mr. LANGEVIN) introduced the following bill; which was referred to 
the Committee on Agriculture 
A BILL 
To amend the Food and Nutrition Act of 2008 to require 
that supplemental nutrition assistance program benefits 
be calculated with reference to the cost of the low-cost 
food plan as determined by the Secretary of Agriculture, 
and for other purposes. 
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 
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SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Closing the Meal Gap 
Act of 2017’’. 
SEC. 2. AMENDMENTS. 
(a) CALCULATION
OF PROGRAM BENEFITS.—The 
Food and Nutrition Act of 2008 (7 U.S.C. 2011 et seq.) 
is amended— 
(1) in section 3 (7 U.S.C. 2012)— 
(A) by striking subsection (u), 
(B) 
by 
redesignating 
subsections 
(n) 
through (t) as subsections (o) through (u), re-
spectively, and 
(C) by inserting after subsection (m) the 
following: 
‘‘(n) ‘Low-cost food plan’ means the diet required to 
feed a family of four persons, consisting of a man and 
a woman nineteen through fifty, a child six through eight, 
and a child nine through eleven years of age, determined 
in accordance with the Secretary’s calculations. The cost 
of such diet shall be the basis for uniform allotments for 
all households regardless of their actual composition, ex-
cept that the Secretary shall— 
‘‘(1) make household-size adjustments (based 
on the unrounded cost of such diet) taking into ac-
count economies of scale; 
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‘‘(2) make cost adjustments in the low-cost food 
plan for Hawaii and the urban and rural parts of 
Alaska to reflect the cost of food in Hawaii and 
urban and rural Alaska; 
‘‘(3) make cost adjustments in the separate 
low-cost food plans for Guam, and the Virgin Is-
lands of the United States, to reflect the cost of food 
in those States, but not to exceed the cost of food 
in the 50 States and the District of Columbia; and 
‘‘(4) on October 1, 2017, and each October 1 
thereafter, adjust the cost of the diet to reflect the 
cost of the diet in the preceding June, and round the 
result to the nearest lower dollar increment for each 
household size.’’, 
(2) in section 8(a) (7 U.S.C. 2017(a))— 
(A) by striking ‘‘thrifty food plan’’ each 
place it appears, and inserting ‘‘low-cost food 
plan’’, and 
(B) by striking ‘‘8 percent’’ and inserting 
‘‘10 percent’’, 
(3) 
in 
section 
16(c)(1)(A)(ii) 
(7 
U.S.C. 
2025(c)(1)(A)(ii))— 
(A) in subclause (I) by striking ‘‘for fiscal 
year 2014, at an amount not greater than $37’’ 
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and inserting ‘‘for fiscal year 2017, at an 
amount not greater than $50’’, and 
(B) in subclause (II)— 
(i) by striking ‘‘June 30, 2013’’ and 
inserting ‘‘June 30, 2017’’, and 
(ii) by striking ‘‘thrifty food plan’’ 
and inserting ‘‘low-cost food plan’’, and 
(4) 
in 
section 
19(a)(2)(A) 
(7 
U.S.C. 
2028(a)(2)(A))— 
(A) in clause (i) by striking ‘‘and’’ at the 
end, 
(B) in clause (ii)— 
(i) by striking ‘‘each fiscal year there-
after’’ and inserting ‘‘each of the fiscal 
years 2004 through 2017’’, and 
(ii) by striking the period at the end 
and inserting a semicolon, and 
(C) by adding at the end the following: 
‘‘(iii) 
for 
fiscal 
year 
2018, 
$2,650,000,000; and 
‘‘(iv) subject to the availability of ap-
propriations under section 18(a), for fiscal 
year 2018 and each fiscal year thereafter, 
the amount determined under clause (iii), 
as adjusted by the percentage by which the 
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