by Jacob Fischler, Arkansas Advocate
May 14, 2025

The U.S. House Agriculture Committee approved, 29-25, Wednesday evening its portion of Republicans’ major legislative package that includes a provision that would shift to states some of the responsibility to pay for a major nutrition assistance program.

The bill would require states, for the first time, to cover part of the cost of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits that provide $100 billion per year to help 42 million Americans afford groceries. The measure would also shift more of the administrative cost to states and increase work requirements for recipients.

Republicans are planning to combine the measure with legislation from 10 other committees in a budget reconciliation package that allows the Senate to avoid its usual 60-vote threshold.

House Agriculture Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson said the panel’s bill and its estimated $290 billion deficit savings over a 10-year budget window were necessary for the larger legislative package to extend tax cuts and increase border security and defense spending.

 The package would “prevent the largest tax increase in American history on our families, farmers and small businesses, and (would) deliver critical funding necessary for the Trump administration to continue their work keeping Americans safe,” the Pennsylvania Republican said in an opening statement.

“Our reconciliation instructions provide the opportunity to restore integrity to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, to make sure that this essential program works for the most vulnerable and functions as Congress has intended.”

Republicans on the panel said throughout a marathon committee meeting, which started Tuesday night and wrapped up more than 26 hours later following an overnight break, that the added work requirements and accountability measures for state governments were overdue reforms.

The panel’s GOP majority approved the bill over unified opposition from Democrats, who argued that the measure would unfairly cut benefits to needy families to pay for tax cuts for high earners, undermine the panel’s bipartisan tradition of fusing crop subsidies with nutrition assistance and overburden state governments that can’t afford to take on the additional cost.

Ranking Democrat Angie Craig of Minnesota called the measure “the largest rollback of an anti-hunger program in our nation’s history” which would be felt deeply across a broad swath of recipients.

“We will see children going to bed without dinner, more seniors skipping meals to afford their medicine, more parents sacrificing their own nutrition, so their kids can eat,” Craig said. “Every single one of us knows (the cuts) will take food away from families at a time when working folks are struggling with higher costs.”

State contributions

The bill would make states pay for up to 25% of SNAP benefits, which are currently entirely covered by the federal government, starting in 2028.

States would be required to pay at least 5%, with the rate rising with a state’s payment error rate. The highest state cost-share would be triggered by a state reaching a 10% or higher error rate.

Even at the lowest state cost-share, the provision would add $4.7 billion overall to annual state obligations, according to an analysis published Wednesday by the center-left think tank Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.

But only seven states would have qualified for the lowest cost-share in fiscal 2023, the most recent year for which data is available. The national error rate was 11.7% and more than two dozen states and territories had error rates higher than 10%.

That means in practice the costs to states would be much higher. The three most populous states — California, Texas and Florida — alone would have combined to owe more than $5.7 billion under their 2023 error rates and 2024 benefit amounts.

Republican members said the requirement would incentivize states to better manage their programs.

“Unlike every other state-administered entitlement program, SNAP benefit is 100% funded by the federal government, resulting in minimal incentives for states to control costs, enhance efficiencies and improve outcomes for recipients,” Thompson said.

Impact on state budgets

Democrats said states could ill afford to take on additional costs, meaning the bill would result in cuts to the program or other critical services.

“The massive unfunded mandate this bill forces on states just passes the buck onto state legislatures, forcing them to slash local programs and services, cut benefits, kick vulnerable people off SNAP or raise taxes,” Craig said. “We already know states can’t afford it.”

The change would force difficult decisions for states, several Democrats said.

In Ohio, the state would be on the hook for an additional $534 million annually, Democrat Shontel Brown said.

“That’s not to expand benefits or improve outcomes, that’s just to maintain the status quo.” she said. “To cover the costs, Ohio, along with every other state, is going to have to make brutal tradeoffs. It’s going to mean cutting K-12 education funding, scaling back opioid and mental health treatment programs, reducing Medicaid coverage or putting off critical infrastructure repairs.”

Republicans countered that the provision would bring much needed accountability to state administrators, which would make the program fairer overall.

Alaska had an error rate of nearly 60% in fiscal 2023. Without mentioning that state, Derrick Van Orden, a Republican whose home state of Wisconsin was among the few states with error rates under 6%, said the costs associated with such numerous errors shouldn’t be covered by states with lower rates.

“Overpayments, waste, fraud and abuse have plagued programs like SNAP,” he said. “There is a state that has a 59.59% overpayment rate and my Wisconsinites are not going to pick up that slack.”

States’ error rates include fraud, but it makes up a small share of a category that also includes inadvertent underpayments and overpayments, Michigan Democrat Kristen McDonald Rivet said.

SNAP has a fraud rate of less than 1% and work requirements already exist, McDonald Rivet said. Republicans’ efforts to target fraud and add work requirements wouldn’t reach the cost savings they sought, she said.

“Are there error rates in the states? Sure,” she said. “Should we address it? Absolutely. But the idea that we are going to find $300 billion of cuts — $300 billion of cuts — on that small percentage of people who are not working that are already required to or error rates in the states is just a flat-out lie. What we are really doing is cutting food for people.”

Administrative costs

The bill would also increase states’ share of the cost of administering the food assistance program.

Under current law, states and the federal government evenly split the cost of administering the program. The bill would have states shoulder 75% of administrative costs.

Democrats, including the ranking member of the panel’s Nutrition, Foreign Agriculture, and Horticulture Subcommittee, complained that would compound the problems created by the new cost structure for SNAP benefits.

“States will be forced to budget more for SNAP benefits with less for administrators,” Rep. Jahana Hayes of Connecticut said. “With fewer administrative staff, it is inevitable that errors will increase.”

Work requirements

Another section of the bill would expand the number of participants subject to work requirements to receive SNAP benefits.

The proposal would raise from 54 to 64 the age at which a person no longer has to meet work requirements. It would also lower from 18 to 7 the age at which caring for a child exempts a person from work requirements.

Democrats raised and introduced several amendments meant to address the provision, but were outvoted each time.

Kansas Republican Tracey Mann said the changes were not only about improving SNAP efficiency, but would make the program’s rules fairer for those it was meant to serve.

“It is wrong to jeopardize the benefits of the single mom taking care of kids too young to be in school or the disabled or elderly in order to subsidize someone who is perfectly capable of making an honest income but isn’t willing to join the workforce,” Mann said.

“These changes will ensure that individuals are served by the program as it was intended — not as a couch that you can sit on as long as you want, but as a true safety net that gets you back on the ladder of opportunity and back into a job.”

Last updated 11:28 a.m., May. 15, 2025

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The post States on the hook for billions under U.S. House GOP bill making them help pay for SNAP appeared first on arkansasadvocate.com

Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Center-Right

This content primarily presents the Republican-led legislative efforts to restructure the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) with a focus on cost-sharing, work requirements, and accountability, reflecting a conservative policy perspective emphasizing fiscal responsibility and program integrity. While it includes Democratic responses highlighting concerns over potential harm to vulnerable populations, the overall framing, emphasis on Republican statements, and choice of supporting details align more with center-right viewpoints.