Democratic lawmakers and state officials are warning that the changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program enacted through last year’s reconciliation package are unrealistic for states and counties, which are expected to do more to run the program.
They say that the tab for the program is too big for anyone other than the federal government to pick up. And they’re worried that as the burden of administering the program, which serves more than 42 million people, shifts away from the federal government, that states and counties may be vulnerable to more cuts by Republicans in Washington.
“Any mistakes will be held against the states and will be used to punish them by withholding more federal funding for SNAP food assistance,” said Rep. Angie Craig, the ranking Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee, at an event on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.
Later this year, all states will be required to cover 75% of the SNAP program’s administrative costs, a dramatic increase of 25% from previous years. State officials say implementing that new policy by the October deadline will put pressure on already-strained agency budgets.
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“This puts states in an impossible position,” Rep. Alma Adams, a senior member of the House Agriculture Committee, said of the upcoming changes.
In some states, like Ohio, SNAP is administered on the county rather than the state level. Some county officials who oversee the program say that as more of the responsibility of facilitating it falls to them, they face a funding hurdle.
Joy L. Bivens, the deputy county administrator of Health and Human Services in Franklin County, Ohio, told lawmakers at the Capitol on Wednesday that in her county, it would ultimately cost an additional $7.5 million per year to implement the changes tucked into the reconciliation bill.
“Counties are being asked to administer a more complex SNAP program under rapidly changing rules, without additional resources and without adequate time or system to implement these changes,” Bivens said.
She added that Ohio will not provide additional funding to counties to offset the reduced federal funding match.
Other local officials who appeared alongside Bivens warned that if states or counties can’t absorb the increased cost of administering the program, their residents could lose access to SNAP altogether.
“I think it even goes down to, if one of my counties can’t come up with the funding, and the state can’t step in, that means we could potentially have one county lose the program,” said Larry Braasch, deputy division director of New Jersey’s Department of Health and Human Services.
Advocates are also warning that the increased cost of managing the program could jeopardize vulnerable communities the most.
“These cost shifts will force states to make the impossible choices of cutting eligibility for families, veterans, older adults, and people with disabilities; raising taxes; or cutting other essential services,” said Crystal FitzSimons, president of the Food Research and Action Center, in a statement. “Some states will be unable to absorb these costs at all, putting the future of SNAP itself at risk.”
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This story was produced as part of a partnership between NOTUS and Signal Ohio.
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