This week, the House Agriculture Committee advanced a big (bad) change to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program by approving a provision that would require states to contribute to the cost of SNAP benefits — a departure from the program’s longstanding federal funding model.
For the last few decades, the federal government has covered 100% of SNAP benefits – with administrative costs shared between federal and state governments. Under the new proposal, states with higher payment error rates could be required to cover up to 25% of benefit costs, while those with lower error rates might pay as little as 5%.
Note: the USDA hasn’t publicly released state-specific SNAP payment error rates (including Arizona’s – or at least I couldn’t find it.
The proposal is designed to cut the federal budget to place more of the cost burden for SNAP on to states. If states don’t pay up they could lose all SNAP benefits (depending on how USDA interprets the law if it passes and is signed.
I don’t need to write about how ending this benefit would harm the social determinants of health, health equity and food insecurity – a likely scenario if Arizona’s legislature doesn’t appropriate the funds to cover the state portion as I would expect.
