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(NEXSTAR) – Dozens of states are going to have to start forking over more money to fund SNAP (or end up cutting food assistance) if they don’t get their error rates in check.
With the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill last year, the Trump administration put states on notice: If they don’t get their error rates under control, they’ll lose partial federal funding for SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly known as Food Stamps), starting with the 2028 fiscal year.
The target is an error rate under 6%, but few states are meeting that benchmark. In fact, in the latest batch of data released in June, there were more states with double the target rate than states that fell under it.
The error rate refers to the percentage of SNAP benefits paid either above or below what people should have received, primarily because of mistakes. It includes overpayments and underpayments, but overpayments are more common.
States with error rates higher than 6% will be required to start paying between 5% and 15% of benefit costs in October 2027. Those with higher error rates generally must pay more, but states with especially high mistake rates will have an extension as late as 2030 to comply.
In the 2025 fiscal year, only nine states fell under the 6% error rate: Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Nebraska, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
The national average error rate is about 11%.
The vast majority of states are above the target, and some far exceed it. Most of them have just one more year to get their acts together. Last year’s error rate was the first to count. Federal law says states can choose to use either their 2025 or 2026 error rates when determining what percentage of SNAP benefits they must pay starting in October 2027.
In states with high error rates, the law doesn’t directly cut benefits for SNAP recipients. Instead, it forces states to come up with the funding themselves. As a result of the cost shift, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that some states will end up reducing or eliminating SNAP benefits for about 300,000 people. Subsidies through child nutrition programs could also decrease for about 96,000 children.
Consider Missouri as an example. It had an error rate of 8.7% last year. Unless it improves next year, the state will have pick up 10% of SNAP benefit costs starting in October 2027.
Missouri residents received about $1.5 billion of SNAP benefits in 2024, the latest year for which federal data is available. If that same amount of benefits is paid in the future, Missouri could have to cover $150 million of the costs; that’s a sum greater than the total budgeted for several state prisons.
“There are billions of dollars that are at stake that states will have to find the money to be able to pay if they want to continue to operate a SNAP program,” said Chloe Green, assistant director for policy at the American Public Human Services Association.
Error rates are so high in Alaska, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, New Mexico, Oregon and D.C. that they’ll be given at least one more year to try and reduce them.
More than 37 million people nationwide received SNAP benefits in March, according to preliminary USDA figures. That’s down nearly 5 million people — over 11% — from a year earlier. Other aspects of the One Big Beautiful Bill have already had an impact on SNAP, including expanded work requirements and stricter conditions on immigration status.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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