This legislative ask is designed to be shared with your members of Congress and their staff.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) helps more than 40 million people per month put food on the table. SNAP saves and improves lives. By decreasing food insecurity, it lowers disease rates, improves educational and employment outcomes, and reduces healthcare costs. Yet, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (OBBBA) makes the largest cuts to SNAP in the program’s history while putting money into militarized immigration and tax cuts for the wealthy. For the first time, states will have to pay a portion of SNAP benefits, something most of them cannot afford. The amount states must pay is based on the state’s SNAP error rate (the percentage of total benefits that states currently underpay or overpay). Without adequate time to safely and efficiently address their error rates, states will be forced to cut benefits or opt out of SNAP entirely. Congress must step in to prevent these outcomes and undo the damage that it has created. As members consider proposals to provide relief to farmers, they must couple those efforts with relief to families by delaying the SNAP cost-sharing requirement. 

Tell Congress: Delay the SNAP benefit cost shift. 

  • 4 million people are at risk of losing their food benefits. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the OBBBA’s SNAP cuts will cause 4 million individuals—including 1 million children—to see their SNAP benefits cut or eliminated altogether.
  • States don’t have enough time to reduce their error rates. The cost-sharing requirement is set to kick in on October 1, 2027, based on states’ error rates as of June 30, 2026. This short turnaround time—exacerbated by the government shutdown and delayed guidance from the Department of Agriculture—has left states scrambling to reduce their error rates in a matter of mere months. 
  • SNAP fraud is rare. State error rates reflect mistakes—made by households or by government officials—more often than they reflect fraud. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “the number of SNAP participants disqualified for fraud… typically represents about 0.1 percent of the average monthly SNAP caseload.”  
  • States cannot afford to share the costs of SNAP. Based on fiscal year 2024 data, 42 states and DC will be forced to shoulder SNAP benefit costs, 27 of which will pay an additional $100 million+ annually. In other words, the median state will need to increase its SNAP budget by 202% to ensure all current recipients maintain their benefits. Because states must balance their budgets each year, they cannot afford this significant and unexpected cost. 

Contact: Amelia Kegan, Associate General Secretary for Policy and Advocacy, amelia@fcnl.org