Senate Reconciliation Proposal for Shifting SNAP Costs to States

The Senate Agriculture Committee reconciliation proposal released on June 11th and revised on June 25th pares back some of the most significant cuts to SNAP passed by the House. Still, it would make sweeping cuts to SNAP by shifting an unprecedented share of its costs to the states. While states with the lowest payment error rates would not have to contribute to benefit costs under the Senate plan, most states would have to pay between 5-15% of benefit costs starting in FY 2028. 

States would also be forced to pay 75 percent of administrative costs, up from the current 50 percent, starting in FY 2027. 

This resource aims to provide states with a sense of what their new state responsibility would be compared to their current responsibility. It shows the FY23 payment error rate, the percentage of benefits the state would need to cover based on the payment error rate, the state share of FY23 administrative costs (the current total state responsibility), and the projected state responsibility if the state had to cover 75% of FY23 administrative costs plus the specified percentage of FY24 benefits.

This has been updated to indicate that error rate data from three year's prior would be used to calculate the state's benefit cost responsibility under the revised proposal in response to the Parliamentarian's concerns. The numbers have not been changed. 

To see the estimated state costs under the House-passed reconciliation package, see this resource.

Note: This is a Share Our Strength-branded version. A No Kid Hungry-branded version is available at https://bestpractices.nokidhungry.org/resource/senate-reconciliation-snap-cost-shifting-proposal

This has been updated to reflect the revised proposal released on June 25th that changes which year of error rate data is used to calculate a state's benefit cost share.