States now have increased incentive to root out food stamp fraud. That’s good news for taxpayers.
President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, passed last summer, includes provisions reforming the arrangement between the feds and the states as it pertains to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The move seeks to reduce waste and to ensure only those who truly need assistance receive help.
For decades, Washington has fully funded the benefits, while splitting overhead costs with the states. Many states, often blue ones, responded over the years by easing eligibility requirements, particularly during COVID. Why not? They incur none of the payment costs.
“States have also let illegal aliens get food stamps while refusing to clean their rolls of the dead and incarcerated, lottery winners and others who aren’t eligible,” Paige Terryberry, a senior research fellow at the Foundation for Government Accountability, wrote in October for The Wall Street Journal. “It didn’t help that Washington gave states a two-year reprieve from food-stamp reporting during the pandemic.”
Beginning in October, however, states will take on an additional 25% of administration expenses. Eventually, they’ll also be responsible for certain payment costs if they don’t keep their error rates at a reasonable level. Under the new law, Terryberry notes, states with error rates of 6% to 8% will be responsible for 5% of the state’s benefit costs. The higher the improper payment rate, the bigger the financial hit.
Massachusetts’s error rate for FY 24 was 14.1%. Alaska, Oregon, New York, Florida and Georgia exceeded 15%. These mistakes cost more than $10 billion a year, governing.com reports. How was that acceptable?
Not surprisingly, “state agencies and budget offices have quickly coalesced around a top priority: reducing SNAP payment error rates,” Pew Research Center reported.
Forcing states to become more cost-conscious also provides motivation for state officials to enforce rather than water down work requirements for the able-bodied, nudging them on a more productive path and away from government dependency.
“Work is the single best way to limit, and ultimately eliminate, wasteful spending — to say nothing of giving the economy a big infusion of desperately needed workers,” Terryberry wrote.
Spending millions on ineligible recipients only diverts resources from those most in need. The nation is on an unsustainable financial path. The SNAP reforms, properly implemented, represent a reasonable middle ground between fiscal responsibility and compassion.
Las Vegas Review-Journal/Tribune News Service
