The Republican Party has spent years stigmatizing the food stamp program while trying to cut benefits or make them harder to get. In last month’s farm bill, conservative lawmakers thought they had imposed an $8 billion cut in the program. In the last few weeks, though, it has become clear that that cut isn’t going to materialize, thanks to a few states more generous than Congress. And this has infuriated a party that doesn’t believe that poor families should get public assistance in buying groceries.

The cut involved the so-called heat-and-eat program, in which food stamp benefits are increased for those who qualify for a small amount of state heating assistance so that they do not have to choose between heat and food. Several states were providing only a token amount of fuel aid, as little as $1 a year, to prompt the extra benefits of $90 or so a month, and many lawmakers saw that as gaming the system.

So negotiators on the farm bill agreed that states would have to pay a minimum of $20 a year in fuel aid to prompt the benefits. Republicans thought this would save more than $8 billion over a decade, because they assumed the states wouldn’t want to pay $20. Democrats went along because it was better than the original Republican plan to cut $40 billion from food stamps.

But to the shock of Republicans, at least eight states decided to do the right thing and raise their heating-aid payments to $20. New York and Connecticut were first, followed by Rhode Island, Oregon, Massachusetts, Vermont and Montana. Even Gov. Tom Corbett, Republican of Pennsylvania, agreed to go along.