Cuts in Food Assistance Will Hurt People.

copied from ABC

Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) funding could face a major shake-up at the end of September unless Congress passes a resolution to delay major changes included in H.R. 1, commonly known as the GOP's One Big Beautiful Bill.

Starting Oct. 1, states will have to pick up 75% of the administrative costs of running the program, with the funding burden of providing benefits to participants set to shift from the federal to state level over the next few years.

State and national food assistance groups are calling on Congress to pass a resolution delaying the implementation of this cost shift, to give states more time to prepare for the bigger bill.

Advertisement

The federal food assistance program faced a funding lapse last fall, and experts are now warning of an uncertain future.

Jessica Dinapoli/Reuters - PHOTO: FILE PHOTO: A general view of the tobacco section of a 7-Eleven store at Manhattan, in New York City

Nationwide, roughly 5 million Americans have lost access to SNAP since the Republican-backed budget bill became law, including more than 1.5 million children, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Much of the decline can be attributed to changes in work requirements and administrative hurdles in applying, coupled with a major cost shift that states will have to bear if they want SNAP to remain fully funded, Dottie Rosenbaum, director of federal SNAP policy at the CBPP, told ABC News.

Under the law, the upper age limit for able-bodied adults without dependents who must meet work requirements was raised from 54 to 64.

Additionally, exemptions were changed for parents and other family members responsible for a dependent, lowering the qualifying age from 18 to 14.

"The declines we're seeing in SNAP participation so far are far deeper and far faster than the Congressional Budget Office predicted at the time the law was enacted, and it's especially alarming that more than one and a half million children have been cut," Rosenbaum said.

"We're hearing increasing reports ... of people struggling to put food on the table, of people facing untenable choices between, you know, paying their rent and buying groceries and other essentials, putting gas in their cars," Rosenbaum added.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the impact of the new work requirements. The administration has publicly supported the idea in the past.

"The American dream is not being on [a] food stamp program. ... The American dream is not being on all these programs. That should be a hand up, not a handout," Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said in an interview on Fox Business in January.

Alongside the new work requirements, the budget outlined a major shift in costs from the federal government to the states.

STOCK IMAGE/Getty Images - PHOTO: In this undated file photo, the US Capitol building is shown in Washington, D.C.

Beyond each state's responsibility to pay 75% of SNAP's administrative costs starting in October, states are set to pay a percentage of the benefit costs tied to its error rate in the coming years.

The error rate measures underpayments and overpayments, resulting in mandatory additional payments ranging from 5% to 15% for most states.

The benefit cost shift will take effect as early as 2027 and could lead to cuts or major changes in other state-run programs as states try to make up the difference, food assistance leaders told ABC News.

These changes, some already implemented and others on the horizon, have forced food banks to step in and fill the gaps while lawmakers debate a more stable funding structure.

Impacts already seen

In Arizona, the state "took immediate action on error reduction efforts after H.R. 1 became law," the Arizona Dept. of Economic Security said. This included expanding documentation requirements, establishing a preauthorization review process and continuous income monitoring. More than 400,000 SNAP recipients lost access to the program thereafter, according to the CBPP.

"Which meant that the number of people visiting food banks increased by about the same amount," Terri Shoemaker, executive vice president of the Arizona Food Bank Network, said, crediting the state's changes in SNAP for the substantial drop in participation.

"We know that [the Arizona Department of Economic Security] is trying to get its arms around accuracy and reporting, but at the same time, we also know that there are people who were impacted by those changes who shouldn't have been," Shoemaker said.