Cuts To SNAP May Hit NJ Beneficiaries Hard

By Benjamin J. Hulac
Washington Correspondent For NJ Spotlight News

WASHINGTON — More than 22 million households, including 400,000 in New Jersey, could lose some or all of their benefits from a national food-assistance program under a new federal law, according to preliminary analysis.

Cuts to benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, will vary by state under the new law President Trump pushed through the Republican-controlled Congress. Those 400,000 families are projected to lose different amounts of benefits.

But of the 114,000 New Jersey families expected to lose $25 or more in monthly benefits, most would lose far more a month under the law — $182 on average — according to researchers at the Urban Institute, a nonprofit organization.

Overall, the law cuts about $186 billion from SNAP over the next decade, a roughly 20% reduction in the program that currently helps about 42 million people buy groceries.

Congress included those spending cuts, along with about $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, the federal health program for low-income and disabled citizens, in a sprawling tax bill that became law last week.

A fundamental change

For the first time in the program’s history, states will have to pay for some of the food costs to carry out SNAP — something no state had done since the system, in an early form called “food stamps,” was created in 1939 and then updated in in 1964 as part of President Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty.”

Historically, the program has been a state-federal partnership, with the U.S. government paying for food costs and sharing administrative costs with states.

House Republicans included language in the bill to require states to pay for food benefits and to charge states with track records of making errors in their management of the program to pay more than other states.

Pennsylvania Republican Rep. G.T. Thompson, who championed those provisions, said in May. “And the only way for that to occur is for them to have some level of skin in the game on benefit expenditures.”

To prod state governments into running SNAP with fewer errors, Republican lawmakers like Thompson included language to charge states with high “error rates” — a metric for how accurately benefits go out to enrollees. Those rates are the sum of “overpayments” (when a household receives too much in benefits) and “underpayments” (when a household gets too little).

The Murkowski factor

In the Senate, that idea hit a snag: Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski, whose home state has the nation’s highest SNAP error rate.

Murkowski, a key swing vote, ultimately voted for the bill after Republican leaders created an exemption for Alaska and other states with high error rates to meet the new rules.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, about 40% of errors in SNAP payments occur when recipients’ life events change — like moving jobs or changes to the number of people in a household.

“They were just trying to find any and all ways to just give Alaska more money and resources,” Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ) said in an interview with NJ Spotlight News after the vote.

Under the law, most states will be required to contribute some funding for SNAP for their citizens, starting in the 2028 federal budget year, which begins in October 2027.

Error rates

But states with higher error rates, including New Jersey, will have a year or two extra to comply — undercutting Republicans’ original message when they wrote the bill.

“You have designed a program in which you are incentivizing states to have a higher error rate,” Rep. Joe Neguse, a Democrat from Colorado, said during debate on the law. “That way you can delay having to comply with this mandate as long as possible.”

“Why give that special break to New Jersey over Texas?” Neguse asked Thompson, the Pennsylvania representative, during a hearing before the House passed the bill last week.

“Why did they do it?” Thompson said. “We’re all in politics. We know why they did it in the Senate. In order to get certain votes from certain states to be able to pass this.”

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, about 40% of errors in SNAP payments occur when recipients’ life events change — like moving jobs or changes to the number of people in a household.

Depending on its error rate, New Jersey could be required to pay between $96 million and $287 million yearly, according to an assessment from the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, a politically left-leaning research group.

What cost-sharing could cost NJ

In a statement, Sarah Adelman, commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Human Services, said the law’s cost-sharing requirements could cost the state between $100 million and $300 million and cost county governments $78 million in new money every year.

New Jersey’s latest error rate of 14.33% would place the state’s new cost on the more expensive side of Adelman’s range.

“Hundreds of thousands of households across our state rely on SNAP benefits to put food on the table,” Maggie Garbarino, a spokesperson for Gov. Phil Murphy’s administration, said in a statement.

“The changes advanced by Congress and signed into law by President Trump severely jeopardize our ability to continue this lifeline program for families that are already struggling. These changes are not only irresponsible, they are morally indefensible,” Garbarino said, adding that the administration is “closely monitoring the impact of these cost shifts.”

About 800,000 people in New Jersey are enrolled in SNAP.

Beyond encouraging states to lower error rates, the new law requires states to pay 75% of administrative costs, said Elaine Waxman, senior fellow at the Urban Institute.

Changes the law will usher in will hurt rural portions of New Jersey and damage the state’s economy and public health, said Elaine Waxman, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute.

“That’s kind of a seismic shift in the way we think about the program,” Waxman said in an interview with NJ Spotlight News about the new state requirements. “That’s a big lift for state budgets.”

Katie Bergh, an analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, wrote in late June, as passage neared on Capitol Hill, that states will be faced with two options under the law. The choices? Shrink the scale of the program or “terminate the state’s SNAP program entirely,” Bergh wrote.

SNAP Basics

To be enrolled in SNAP, people must have limited income and assets.

A family of three, for example, must earn $2,798 a month or about $33,576 a year. The thresholds are lower for smaller families and higher for larger ones.

The new law requires parents of children 14 years of age or older to meet certain work requirements, and it raises the work requirement to age 64, from 54.

NJ’s new budget may get walloped as US Senate passes Trump’s tax billThe majority of people enrolled in SNAP work, are in school or are taking care of someone at home, like an ailing parent.

Historically, work requirements for the program do not result in more work or higher earnings, and often wind up removing people from the SNAP system, Waxman said.

Sometimes enrollees are removed if they don’t have the proper paperwork or vital pieces of mail get lost, she said. “People fall off for administrative reasons.”

Benefits in the program average $6.20 per person per day, following an increase in 2021 from $4.80 a day.

Changes the law will usher in will hurt rural portions of New Jersey and damage the state’s economy and public health, Waxman said.

“It helps pay for grocery stores and trucking companies,” Waxman said. “It will affect larger grocers who generally operate on pretty small margins,” she said. “It ripples through in all these ways.”