By Jacob Fischler, Florida Phoenix
(Source: Miami Times)
Democrats on a U.S. House subcommittee on food and nutrition policy warned Tuesday that big changes to the major federal nutrition assistance program in Republicans’ spending and tax cuts law this year will lead some states to cut benefits.
The law that President Donald Trump championed and that Congress passed this summer without any Democratic votes made major alterations in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, that increased the burden on state budgets.
Members of each party on the U.S. House Agriculture Subcommittee on Nutrition and Foreign Agriculture disagreed during a hearing about the effects of those changes on states.
Democrats said the changes would undermine the anti-hunger program’s fundamental goals, while Republicans said they would shore up the program’s long-term health.
States predicted to give up on SNAP
A panel of three expert witnesses, including the director of the Wyoming department that oversees that state’s SNAP benefits and a Franklin County, Ohio, administrator, said states that could not meet new funding requirements would stop offering the program altogether.
“As currently written, if a state cannot meet the benefit cost-sharing and the (administrative) cost-sharing, they would not be able to operate a SNAP program,” Chloe Green, a manager for food programs at the nonpartisan American Public Human Services Association, a trade group that represents state officials overseeing social programs, said in response to a question from Alabama Democrat Shomari Figures.
Figures also directed the question to Joy Bivens, the deputy county administrator for health and human services in Franklin County, Ohio, and Korin Schmidt, the director of the Wyoming Department of Family Services. Both said they agreed with Green.
“What this bill did was create the potential for SNAP programs to no longer exist in any shape, form or fashion, in terms of providing SNAP benefits in states that could not afford to or chose not to for whatever reason, meet the cost-share,” Figures said.
The three witnesses all said that was an accurate assessment of the law.
New cost-share
Provisions of the law make states responsible, for the first time, for paying a share of SNAP benefits.
The share that states will be responsible for depends on a state’s error payment rate — the percentage of benefit payments that are more or less than the amount that should be paid — with the federal government covering all benefit costs for states that record error rates below 6%. States with higher error rates will be responsible for more funding.
Democrats argued the changes would cripple state budgeting efforts.
The law also cuts funding for states to administer the program, which Angie Craig, the ranking Democrat on the full committee, said created “a perfect storm.”
Reduced federal funding and expanded reporting requirements make errors more likely, while increased errors lead to even less funding, she said.
“In effect, Republicans cut their resources and then punished them when overworked staff made more errors administering an increasingly complicated program,” Craig, of Minnesota, said of states. “None of these changes help reduce hunger in our communities.”
Republicans defend SNAP decisions
Republicans downplayed the impact of the law, saying that some Democrats were “fear-mongering” and that the changes would help the program’s long-term health.
“Congress can no longer turn a blind eye to states that mismanage federal funds at the expense of vulnerable families,” subcommittee Chairman Brad Finstad, a Minnesota Republican, said.
Wisconsin Republican Derrick Van Orden said he grew up on food stamps and wanted to see the program succeed. Requiring states with higher error rates to pay a share of the benefits was about effectively managing the program, he said.
“The purpose of that is not to get people off the programs,” Van Orden said. “The purpose of that is to encourage responsible bureaucracy.”
States face planning difficulties
States’ error rates in the next fiscal year, which begins on Oct. 1, will determine their cost-share for SNAP for up to two years.
But states have not received guidance from the U.S. Department of Agriculture on how to navigate the new system, Green said.
That has contributed to confusion for states that are looking at funding SNAP benefits for the first time.
“We have heard significant concerns from our members across the country about their states being able to fill the (costs) that have been shifted to them,” she said.
Several states that budget on a two-year cycle face the additional challenge of trying to project into the future without knowing what their costs would be, North Carolina Democrat Alma Adams said.
“States are being asked to budget now for costs that they won’t even know until October 2027,” she said. “Combined with other new cost-share responsibilities for Medicaid cuts in the one big, ugly bill, it puts states in an impossible position.”
Wyoming success scalable?
Schmidt told the panel that a tool known as front-end eligibility allows her agency to reduce errors. The procedure allows investigations into fraud and other improper paperwork before a payment is issued, reducing the cost of chasing down improper payments after the fact.
Wyoming, which Schmidt described as small and conservative, has little room for error.
“It’s not a good use of our small staff to have to go chase down but rather looking at potential fraud at the beginning of the case and then making the decision about whether or not that case should be considered for benefits,” she said.
Republicans on the panel asked Schmidt questions about how Wyoming, which had among the lowest error rates in the nation, at 3.27% in fiscal 2024, was able to run its program with so few errors.
But Massachusetts Democrat Jim McGovern, took issue with the example, saying Wyoming’s model was not sustainable for larger states. Wyoming, which has fewer residents than virtually all U.S. House districts, spends more per person on SNAP than any other state, he said.
“I’m glad someone from Wyoming is here to talk about how to reduce error rates,” McGovern said. “Wyoming spends $100 a person on administering SNAP. That’s the most in the nation. So if the point of this hearing is to imply that other states should have the same error rate as Wyoming, you’re going to need to double or triple how much this country spends on food assistance, not slash food assistance like you did in this big, ugly bill.”
