President Donald Trump’s budget bill transferred the cost of millions of dollars of food benefits onto states, but it also mandated that states take on a much larger share of the administrative burden as well.
“States aren’t going to be able to deal with this, and some states may choose to walk away from SNAP. And what this is going to do is increase food insecurity and hunger in this country,” Rep. Jim McGovern, a Democrat and longtime food-benefits advocate and member of the House Agriculture Committee, told NOTUS.
While potential cuts to food benefits in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program have been widely derided by Democrats, the shift of administrative costs have been discussed far less. Currently, the federal government covers half of those costs. Starting Oct. 1, 2026, the state share is set to increase to 75%.
That amounts to increases of millions — and in many states, tens of millions — in additional costs that states will have to shoulder.
Rep. Angie Craig, the ranking member of the House Agriculture Committee, hails from Minnesota: one of ten states where counties, as opposed to the state, directly administer food programs. The counties will have to come up with the extra money to foot these new bills. Craig said this would likely come in the form of a property tax hike.
“In 10 states across the country, including Minnesota, that actually shifts straight down to the county level, which means our counties are actually going to have to raise taxes on Minnesotans in order to cover the Republican policies,” Craig said. “The counties are pretty pissed off. I mean, they understand that they are going to have to raise taxes, issue levies against property owners, in order to pick up the cost.”
Republicans have said increasing the share of administrative costs to the states was put in to incentivize states to lower them.
“Part of the strategy was, you hold them a little more accountable,” said Rep. Glenn Thompson, who chairs the House Agriculture Committee. “Perhaps they’ll pay a little closer attention to being a little more efficient, a little more innovative, a little more creative on how they administer the program.”
Sen. James Lankford told NOTUS that his state, Oklahoma, would “have the same struggles every other state will have” but nonetheless stood by the policy.
“The states, for several years, have been trying to be able to push more and more to the federal government. This was a pushback to say ‘the federal government’s $2 trillion in overspending,’” Lankford said. “States have got to pick up their share.”
On the benefits side of things, states with error rates higher than 6% in their SNAP payments would be on the hook for a sliding scale of the cost of benefits, though they’ll have some time to try to lower the rates until then.
Already, states are scrambling to lower those error rates, projecting uncertainty in their ability to deliver. Republicans previously told NOTUS that lowering these rates was a state problem. But unlike fixing the benefit error rate, there’s no way for states to get out of an increase in administrative cost share.
Thompson held a similar attitude about the administrative costs and suggested a “root cause analysis” to evaluate “all the input costs and all the administrative costs and all the nuts and bolts of administering the program, and look for opportunities to be able to deliver the program, but reduce the cost burden.”
Democrats aren’t buying it.
Sen. Tim Kaine, a former Virginia governor, called the administrative cost shift “par for the course.”
“It’s not the only thing they’re doing. I think they’re trying to say they’re creating efficiencies and just creating problems for governors,” he told NOTUS.
Rep. Shomari Figures told NOTUS that states simply don’t have enough money to handle the change. “I think it’s a policy that does not reflect realities in terms of what states are and are not able to do and able to afford, and it’s something that should not have been done.”
It was a common sentiment among Democrats: that the Republican-led federal government is pushing cost after cost onto states, with the understanding that states can’t afford it — and each effort to do so compounding on the previous one.
“I was in the state senate and sat on the Appropriations Committee. I can tell you that all of these cost shifts that are coming, not just from SNAP but also with Medicaid, FEMA, different pieces across every single committee they’re trying to shift to the states, and the money isn’t there,” Rep. Kristen McDonald Rivet told NOTUS. “When you look at it from a SNAP admin perspective, and then you pile on all the other cuts to children’s nutrition, what we are going to have is a dramatically higher hunger rate in children and seniors.”
Rep. Don Davis said his state, North Carolina, was already dealing with expenses from Hurricane Helene and the new ones aren’t helping.
“Our state’s not sitting on all this money. I’ve been talking to some of the legislators, and there’s just not all these resources sitting around out there. So it makes a difference what we do up here,” he told NOTUS.
Davis also vehemently defended the local administrators of social services such as SNAP. He said that after having meetings back home, a major takeaway was “we have some very talented professionals out there who are in these communities, working with people and families in the communities, and they’re pouring their hearts and soul out every single day trying to help make sure there’s not fraud in the system, making sure that they render the best service possible.”
Republicans have defended the policy. Sen. Cynthia Lummis told NOTUS moving costs onto states is “a pretty consistent strategy that the federal government is using.”
“Most of the states, to be honest, are in better shape fiscally than the federal government, with the federal government spending more than it takes in every single year,” Lummis said. “It’s the federal government’s mismanagement of its own money that has made things like this happen, and probably more of it’s going to have to happen over time, and the states may have to carry more of the burden of these programs.”