If states are responsible for running SNAP, they should be responsible for getting it right. Accountability isn’t a cut—it’s common sense.
or sixty years, the food stamp program has operated under an arrangement no family and no business would ever accept: one level of government runs the program, and another level of government pays for it. States sign people up, calculate benefits, and process the paperwork while federal taxpayers cover the bill. When the people writing the checks and the people doing the work are in different buildings, nobody watches the register.
The results are exactly what you’d expect. In fiscal year 2024, the federal government spent roughly $100 billion on SNAP, and at least $10.5 billion of it was lost to improper payments, according to the Government Accountability Office. That’s at least one dollar out of every nine going out the door in the wrong amount, to the wrong people, or both. Year after year, the error rates barely move because for the states responsible for them, errors are free.
This lack of accountability is what feeds the fraud we’ve seen in states like Minnesota, where fraudsters stole as much as $9 billion in taxpayer money while state officials either neglected to do their job or turned a blind eye. Some of the money may have even ended up in the pockets of terrorist groups like al-Shabaab. As the inspector general responsible for investigating the SNAP program recently testified to Congress, “Proceeds of SNAP fraud have gone to individuals linked to terrorist groups, foreign adversary nations, and transnational criminal organizations.”
President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act finally fixed the incentive by requiring states with payment error rates of 6 percent or higher to pay 5 to 15 percent of benefit costs, and every state will cover a larger share of administrative expenses. For the first time since the program was introduced, a state that tolerates sloppy rolls will feel it in its own budget. Senate Agriculture Chairman John Boozman, describing why the provision exists, put it plainly: “It is clear that improvements were needed to ensure SNAP is administered as intended to support those truly in need while protecting taxpayer dollars.”
And here is the remarkable part: the reform is working before a single dollar changes hands. Because the 2028 cost share is calculated from each state’s error rate in fiscal year 2025 or 2026, the measurement window is open right now. States that spent decades shrugging at their error rates are suddenly tightening income verification, cleaning ineligible recipients off their rolls, and investigating why errors happen. That is the mechanism doing exactly what it was designed to do.
So naturally, Washington wants to kill it.