A July 21 report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that 4.5 million people have lost Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits between July 2025 and April 2026 despite fully qualifying for the program. Meanwhile, a July 9 report from Stateline shows that costs for the program to states will rise by more than $9 billion. States that are often already facing budgetary constraints may be forced to reduce the SNAP program or even eliminate it completely. A March report from the Center for American Progress warns that these bureaucratic changes could result in nearly 70,000 avoidable deaths by 2040. The July 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill cut nearly $187 billion from the SNAP program through 2034, causing real harm to America’s most vulnerable people.
Under the new system, states are penalized for overpayment or underpayment to beneficiaries. The issue is not fraud or abuse, but rather meeting administrative requirements for documentation. States are required to provide full documentation, for every beneficiary, of their earned income, unearned income, expenses, medical expenses, medical records, car titles, land titles, bank records, proof of residency, and proof of citizenship. After full documentation is provided, the candidate for benefits must attend an eligibility interview, which may take months to schedule. Other residents of the household may also be required to provide this same documentation. There may be a need to repeat this process as frequently as once a month for beneficiaries to re-certify their status, making the program overly burdensome for the $8 to $9 paid per person per day for a typical beneficiary. States are spending billions on staffing, technology, and automation to prove that they have a “payment error rate” which is below the federally required 6% threshold. Any state which does not meet this threshold will lose 5% to 15% of federal SNAP funding. New York State could lose $1 billion in federal funding each year. In ten states the SNAP administration is done by counties, which warn that the shift of funding may threaten essential local services, such as public safety and basic infrastructure. While there are penalties to states for an incorrect SNAP payment, there is no penalty or oversight for a state for denying benefits to a qualified person. The bureaucracy is more valued than the people.
