Beginning late next year, 35 states could be required to collectively hand the federal government billions of dollars due to changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program aimed at targeting payment errors.
The coming bill could be so steep that some states are considering dropping out entirely of the federal food aid program, which serves about 37 million people, according to the latest figures released in March.
Under last year’s Republican-backed One Big, Beautiful Bill tax and spending package, states with payment error rates above six percent in their SNAP programs will begin paying for between five and 15 percent of benefit costs. The higher the error rate, the higher the share states will have to pay.
States and the federal government split the costs to administer the program, which is commonly known as food stamps. The 2025 legislation, however, marked the first time states were also asked to pay for the benefits themselves, which come in the form of monthly payments that program participants use on groceries.
During the last fiscal year, according to recently released USDA data, just nine states fell below the six percent error threshold that would let them avoid these new costs, which kick in beginning in October of 2027: Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Nebraska, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
Under the law, states with error rates above 13.32 percent could delay their cost-sharing requirements until the 2030 fiscal year to allow them time to cut down on over- and underpayments that drive their high error rates.
In the 2025 fiscal year, the first of two successive years states can use to calculate if they would owe the government, six states and the District of Columbia had high enough error rates that they would qualify for the exception: Delaware, D.C., Georgia, Illinois, New Mexico, Oregon and Alaska, which was the worst offender with an error rate above 23 percent.
The remaining 35 states could face a collective bill of roughly $9 billion, while nearly half of these states could owe $100 million or more, according to an analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
States with large populations and high error rates could face substantial costs, such as California, which could owe about $1.9 billion, and New York, which could have to fork out over $1.15 billion, according to the center.
Faced with potentially staggering benefits bills, leaders in 11 percent of states said in a recent survey from the American Public Human Services Association that they have considered withdrawing from SNAP.
The Trump administration argues the changes are necessary to reduce waste across SNAP, which it estimates paid out $10.1 billion in improper payments over the last fiscal year.
“These payment error rates are further proof that state accountability is severely lacking in SNAP,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said in a statement last week. “USDA has taken historic action to help interested states curb SNAP waste, and I hope other states, regardless of political leadership, prioritize needy families and the American taxpayer over politics.”
Critics argue the changes, along with the spending bill’s new work requirements for SNAP, will further push vulnerable people off the program and take away a key resource the federal government has to maintain the economy during periods of instability.
The new set of changes “undermines the program’s ability to alleviate hardship for families during downturns and diminishes SNAP’s vital contribution to stabilizing demand,” a recent Brookings paper argues.
SNAP enrollment already fell by more than 4 million people between the summer of 2025, when the Big, Beautiful Bill was signed, and this March, an unusual roughly 10 percent drop given that unemployment remained flat and grocery costs rose during that time.
Republicans who backed the spending bill argued the changes were aimed at eliminating fraud and abuse, while encouraging able-bodied people to work, but the reforms have had the practical effect of pushing out “well over 800,000 children” as well as “workers in low-paying jobs, seniors, and people with disabilities — people ostensibly not targeted by the reconciliation law’s cuts,” the CBPP analysis argues.
