The clock has started for states to reduce errors in how they disburse federal food assistance, or run the risk of having to cut benefits.
Republican lawmakers acknowledge their budget law put added pressure on their states. They’re just hoping their state-level counterparts will figure it out — even as officials project a lot of uncertainty and concern around whether they can meet the new requirements.
“If I was governor, I would do a thorough review of all the processes, all the technology, all aspects of that application process,” said Rep. Glenn Thompson, chair of the House Agriculture Committee. “But I’m just speculating what I would do. I am not the governor of Pennsylvania.”
That governor, Democrat Josh Shapiro, joined 20 other Democratic governors in a letter to congressional leadership last month, warning that “Congress is forcing states into an impossible ultimatum: either come up with new funding to backfill federal cuts or cut off families from essential food assistance.”
For the first time, starting in the fall of 2027, states will have to pay into the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program unless they reduce the rate at which they over- or underpay SNAP benefits. States with error rates below 6% will have no cost-share. Between 6 and 8% error will pay 5% of SNAP benefit costs, between 8 and 10% error will pay 10% of costs, and those with over 10% error will pay 15% of costs.
States have been raising the alarm about their concerns on funding cost-share. When the policy was first suggested in the House months ago, several state officials warned Politico that cost-share could result in a benefits cut. More recently, Louisiana Treasurer John Fleming, a former House lawmaker who is running for Senate, told Politico, “there could be a negative impact” on state SNAP recipients.
In Congress, Republican lawmakers, who overwhelmingly backed the policy, are largely leaving the specifics of how to prevent benefit cuts to the states.
Pennsylvania had a 10.76% error rate last year, falling into the highest bracket of cost-share. Thompson, nonetheless, thinks the time frame offered by the bill to cut error rates “was very generous” and told NOTUS the state had “gotten the message, there’s no doubt about that. And you know, it’s just a matter of just bucking up and doing their jobs in terms of administration.”
Oklahoma also falls into the highest bracket, with an error rate last year of 10.87%. Rep. Frank Lucas, who sits on the House Agriculture Committee, said he had “not had enough time to discuss with my state officials.”
“But in Oklahoma, we had an error rate before COVID of around 5%. Since COVID, we have an error rate of about 10%. I have faith that my officials can get back to where they should be, which is not 10%,” he told NOTUS.
Oklahoma had an around 8% error rate in 2019, around 7% in 2018, and about 5.5% in 2017.
Missouri also had a high error rate of 9.42% last year. Sen. Josh Hawley told NOTUS he was “talking to state officials constantly through this process.” He said the changes the Senate made from the House’s version “substantially reduced Missouri’s exposure and also gave us more time to comply. So I feel pretty good about where we are.”
But on actual steps to see the rate go down, Hawley said, “That’ll be up to them,” referring to state governance, “but, yeah, I know they’re working on it.”
Sen. John Hoeven, a Senate Agriculture Committee member and former governor of North Dakota, has “already talked to our governor” about the issue, he said. His state had a 7.91% error rate last year. “We definitely think we can get below the 6%, and he’s on board. He recognizes the importance of realizing the savings, and hopefully other states are doing the same thing.”
Hoeven said North Dakota, which needs to lower its rate by around 2 percentage points in order to avoid federal cost-share, has a slightly easier job than others.
“A large chunk of the error rate in North Dakota is actually folks not getting food stamps that they are entitled to,” he said. Figures released by the Department of Agriculture show that in 2024, 2.19 percentage points of the state’s overall error rate came from underpayments. “So that should be really easy.”
West Virginia Sen. Jim Justice, an Agriculture Committee member and former governor, was perhaps the least optimistic. His state had an error rate last year of 9.43%. The West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy estimated SNAP cost-share could run the state between $28 million and $84 million annually in new costs.
“It’s going to be really tough for us to get that down to a level where we pass scrutiny and everything before the cutoff,” he told NOTUS. He defended the policy, saying, “We’re doing the right thing and everything, and we’ll get through it,” but “it may cost a little bit of money.”
Democrats have broadly and widely derided the policy. Sen. Mark Warner, a former governor of Virginia, told NOTUS that part of the problem was SNAP costs were going to increase no matter what the error rate was. That’s because the domestic policy bill also makes states responsible for a larger share of SNAP administrative costs.
“What’s been crazy about this is they also stick the administrative costs on this state, which will cost a minimum 80, 90 million bucks more each year, regardless of error rate,” he told NOTUS.
Rep. Ritchie Torres’s Bronx district had a staggering 43.5% of households participating in SNAP in 2023. New York’s error rate is 14.09%, a far cry from the rates required to evade cost-share. While New York — lumped in with a carve-out from Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s reconciliation negotiations — has more time than many other states to get its error rate down, Torres didn’t sound optimistic.
“We’re in uncharted territory, so no one knows for sure” if New York can get the rates lowered in time, he told NOTUS. “But I’m treating it as a cut.”
“These provisions were designed in bad faith to defund states like New York. We are ground zero for food insecurity,” he added. “It’s going to affect not only SNAP recipients in places like the Bronx, but also the rural farmers who provide food to the households and families of the Bronx.”