Senate Republican Leaders’ Proposal Risks Deep Cuts to Food Assistance, Some States Ending SNAP Entirely

Like the original version released a few weeks ago, the revised reconciliation proposal released by Senate Agriculture Committee Chair John Boozman would radically alter the structure of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by requiring most states to pay a portion of food benefit costs for the first time.^[1] The updated version includes only minor changes to this provision to rectify the Senate parliamentarian’s ruling that the original version did not meet the criteria allowing legislation to pass the Senate by a simple majority vote. These changes do not undo the harm that this provision would cause for low-income households and state budgets.

States, which must balance their budgets every year, would struggle to absorb these substantial new costs.^[2] If a state cannot fully pay its required share, it would have two main options: significantly reduce the number of people receiving food assistance to the point where the state can afford its required share of benefits for the remaining households, or terminate the state’s SNAP program entirely.

Cost-Shift Proposal Would Cause Deep Harm

• Despite revisions, states would still face large and highly volatile costs. Under the Senate Agriculture Committee plan, the amount a state would owe would depend on its combined payment error rate, which measures the over- and under-payments its SNAP program makes in a year. Most of the errors are unintentional mistakes by state agencies or families, and most reflect the wrong amount of benefits going to households with low incomes and that are eligible for benefits.^[3]

  Error rates fluctuate, sometimes significantly, from year to year. There is also a substantial lag between the end of a fiscal year and when error rates for that year are finalized. Under SNAP law, the Department of Agriculture (USDA) publishes error rates for a particular fiscal year by the end of the subsequent June. USDA published error rates for fiscal year 2024 on June 30, 2025.^[4]

  The year-to-year volatility means a cost-shift linked to a state’s error rate is inherently unpredictable and difficult for states to plan and budget for. The revised Senate plan seeks to mitigate this by giving states 15 months, rather than the three months provided in the original version, to budget for their required share of SNAP food benefit costs before the start of the applicable federal fiscal year.

  Under the revised plan, states could choose whether to use their fiscal year 2025 or 2026 error rate to determine the cost-shift for fiscal year 2028, the first year the requirement would be in effect. Thus, states would know the maximum cost-shift percentage they would be required to pay for 2028 when 2025 error rates are published in June 2026. In subsequent years, the cost-shift for a particular fiscal year would be based on the state’s error rate from three years prior. For example, the cost-shift for fiscal year 2030 would be based on fiscal year 2027 error rates, which would be published in June 2028.

  However, this revision does not address the unpredictability of how much a state may be required to pay year to year, especially for the 20 states that budget on a biennial basis. The tiered cost-shift penalty structure in the Senate plan, which requires states to pay 5, 10, or 15 percent of food benefits if their error rate exceeds certain thresholds, means even a small increase in a state’s error rate could require the state to pay tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars more than in the prior year. (See Table 2.) If this cost-shift plan were currently in effect, roughly one-quarter of states would owe a higher share of SNAP food benefit costs based on their fiscal year 2024 error rate than they would have based on their fiscal year 2023 error rate, even though SNAP’s national error rate fell.

  This volatility would make it difficult for states to plan for the cost-shift in their budgets over the long term and could increase the likelihood that a state would be unable to pay the full amount.

• Nearly all states would likely face a cost share in some or all years over the next decade. States with error rates of 6 percent or above would have to pay between 5 and 15 percent of the cost of SNAP benefits. All but one state has had an error rate of 6 percent or higher between 2003 and 2024 (the most recent year available). Table 1 below shows each state’s 2024 error rate as well as its lowest and highest error rate since 2003.
• The Senate’s proposal makes clear that the federal government cannot pay more than its share. This is the case even if a state pays less than what would be required to meet the cost-share requirement for its full caseload. But the Senate proposal and the underlying SNAP law also don’t provide authority to states to cut benefits below the amount specified in the statute. If the federal benefit formula makes a family eligible for $300 in SNAP benefits, federal law and the Senate proposal would set the family’s benefit at $300.

How Could States Meet the Requirement?

States must balance their budgets each year.^[5] If a state must pay between 5 and 15 percent of the cost of SNAP benefits, it would be forced to choose among three options:

• Cut other state spending or raise taxes to fully meet the requirement.
• Find a way to cut the number of eligible low-income households receiving SNAP so that it can afford to pay the state share of the federal benefit for all households that remain in the program.
• Opt out of SNAP entirely.

A state that can afford to pay some — but not all — of its required cost share would have to take away SNAP benefits from a large number of eligible households. Suppose a state’s cost share in a year is projected to be $200 million. If the state decided it could only afford to contribute $100 million, it would have to terminate food assistance to about half of its caseload.

States have limited options on how they can cut their SNAP caseloads. They would largely have to rely on adding red tape — like making more people travel in person to an office to access benefits and requiring additional unnecessary paperwork— to cut people from SNAP. These kinds of access barriers often fall hardest on households who are working (because they can’t take time off of work to go to SNAP offices in-person) and people who are ill, disabled, or older.

Many states’ budgets are already strained and states could face even greater difficulties making up for federal cuts if their economies sour. Other cost shifts in the Senate Agriculture Committee plan, including cuts to administrative funding and new costs to implement expanded and expensive work requirements, and cost shifts in Medicaid that the Senate Finance Committee may propose could make it more difficult for states to fill in for the retreat in the federal commitment to combatting hunger.

The following tables help show how states could be affected by this new cost shift.

Table 1 provides data on each state’s error rate in 2024 and its lowest and highest error rate over the 2003-2024 period. Error rates remained elevated in 2024 due to lingering post-pandemic issues, but were lower than in 2023 in 30 states and nationally. All but one state had an error rate at or above 6 percent over the last couple of decades.

Table 2 illustrates how much states are projected to have to pay to fully meet their cost share obligation if they are hit with a 5, 10, or 15 percent cost share. If a state cannot pay this amount, it would have to significantly reduce the number of households getting food assistance or opt out of the program entirely.

Table 3 provides some comparisons between the SNAP costs states could newly face and other items in their state budgets. This helps put the amount of money states could be required to come up with into context.