At a time when the cost of food and other essentials has been on the rise, our nation’s most important anti-hunger program, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)  has begun to break down. And break down quickly. This is the result of H.R. 1 and its the deep cuts to nutrition assistance.

The harm from those cuts has arrived even more quickly than was expected, according to Katie Bergh, a Senior Policy Analyst with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. In this episode of Policy for the People, we talk with Katie Bergh about what’s been happening with the SNAP program nationally and in Oregon.

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Transcript

[We make this transcript available for your convenience and to increase the accessibility of our content. The transcript was generated by software and was slightly edited for clarity. If you are able to, we encourage you to listen to the recording.]

A man-made disaster is unfolding right now all across our nation, Oregon included. 

At a time when the cost of food and other essentials has been on the rise, our nation’s most important anti-hunger program, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) – what used to be called “food stamps” – has begun to break down. And break down quickly. 

This is setting the stage for much greater levels of hunger and suffering throughout our nation.

There is no mystery as to why SNAP has begun to unravel. Last year, Congress and the Trump administration pushed through deep cuts to nutrition assistance as part of H.R.1, the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill.” 

The harm from those cuts has arrived even more quickly than was expected, according to Katie Bergh, a Senior Policy Analyst with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

In this episode of Policy for the People, we talk with Katie Bergh about what’s been happening with the SNAP program nationally and in Oregon. 

Our conversation explores the changes that H.R. 1 made to SNAP, how these changes are causing millions to drop out of the program, and the budgetary and administrative pressures that states are facing – pressures that could lead some states to abandon the SNAP program altogether. Katie also discusses what Congress needs to do right now to ease some of the pressure.

I began my conversation with Katie by asking her to talk about the importance of the Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Program. This is what she said.

Katie: SNAP is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. It is our country’s most important and effective anti-hunger program. It helps households with very low incomes, the vast majority of whom include children and elderly persons or someone with a disability, to afford their basic needs by giving them a monthly benefit on a SNAP card that can be used to buy food at the grocery store.

So even though SNAP benefits are pretty modest, we’re talking about a benefit that averages just over $6 per person per day. It is highly effective at reducing food insecurity and poverty, and SNAP participation is linked to better health, education and economic outcomes, particularly for people who participated in SNAP as children. So it’s a really powerful anti-poverty and anti hunger tool.

And it’s existed in its modern form for about 50 years and grew out of recognition that hunger was really a problem in this country and that people needed access to basic food assistance, you know, even if they lived in a state that had fewer resources and higher rates of poverty. But it is undergoing some pretty significant changes, I would say the most significant changes in it in its modern history. In 2025, SNAP served about 42 million people. In a typical month. That’s roughly 1 in 8 people in this country. Though, as I’m sure we will discuss, the program has been shrinking pretty significantly over the last year following the enactment of some very, very significant federal cuts.

Alejandro: And thanks for that summary, because I think it’s important to recognize that this program is threatened. True. It’s been around for 50 years serving millions of people. And despite that, in July of last year, the Congressional Republican Congress passed H. R. 1. Can you describe what H.R.1 did to SNAP, H. R. 1, the so-called One Big, Beautiful Bill act?

Katie: That law included the deepest cuts to SNAP in history, and it did so to partially pay for tax cuts that disproportionately benefit wealthy people and corporations. So at the time that that law was enacted, the Congressional Budget Office, which is Congress’s kind of official, nonpartisan scorekeeper, estimated that that law would cut almost $187 billion from SNAP through 2034, which represents about a roughly a 20% cut to the program.

And what we are seeing now in the wake of those cuts is that millions of low income people are losing access to the food assistance that they need to afford groceries. And it’s becoming increasingly clear that even more people are losing food assistance than was expected at the time that law was enacted. And those cuts are happening much faster than people anticipated.

So in the 11 months between when that law passed in July 2025 and June 2026, which is the most recent month that we have data for all states, the number of people receiving SNAP in this country fell by more than 5 million. So more than 5 million people have lost food assistance in an 11 month period. That’s about a 13% decline.

And it really represents the fastest drop in SNAP participation in decades, going back to the so-called welfare reform law in 1996. So SNAP enrollment is now at its lowest point in about 17 years. In Oregon, about 70,000 fewer people are receiving food assistance through SNAP compared to July 2025. That’s about a 9% decrease, so slightly less steep than the overall decline we’re seeing nationwide.

But some states are having very, very steep drops in SNAP participation. The most staggering example is Arizona. SNAP participation in Arizona has been cut roughly in half. That’s well over 400,000 people who have lost benefits in just that one state. But we’re also seeing the number of people receiving SNAP falling by around 20% or more in other states like Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, Nevada and Oklahoma.

In a lot of states. People are losing benefits very, very quickly. And it’s happening, as I mentioned, much faster than policymakers anticipated. 

Alejandro: Let’s talk about that for a minute. Why is it that we had underestimated the CBO? The Congressional Budget Office had underestimated the number of people that would be impacted this soon. Can you talk a little bit more about that? 

Katie: Happy to dive into the way that the law makes those cuts and why that is playing out in what we’re having, what we’re seeing happen on the ground.

But I also think it’s important to talk about what’s not happening. And what’s not happening is that we are seeing the need go down, right. SNAP is very responsive to the economy. Historically. So typically what we see is when the economy weakens and people are losing jobs and losing income, the program grows because more people are turning to SNAP to help them afford groceries.

And then as the economy recovers, participation kind of gradually declines as people go back to work and no longer need that additional help. What we have seen over the last year is not the economy getting substantially better, right? Unemployment has been relatively flat. Real wages have actually declined recently. Grocery prices, as anyone who has gone shopping recently can tell you, are continuing to rise.

So what we are not seeing is that millions of people are leaving the SNAP program because they are suddenly much better off, which suggests to us that a lot of this is being driven by harmful policy changes that are either directly from the federal law that passed, or are because of how states are responding to changes in federal law.

So let’s dive into what the federal law actually changed. And it cut SNAP in a couple of different ways. The first is that it changed who is eligible for SNAP. Many people who previously qualified for SNAP are no longer eligible at all. And most notably, it changed that by dramatically expanding the number of people who are subject to the program’s longstanding work requirement.

Now, many more people are only eligible for three months of food assistance, unless they can demonstrate that they’re working a minimum number of hours or prove that they qualify for an exemption. So this is a requirement that has existed in SNAP for decades, but it was expanded in the law last year to apply to older adults up to age 65.

It was expanded to include, for the first time, parents and other caretakers of older children. So people with kids who are 14 or older in their household are now subject to this work requirement. And it also removed exemptions that had previously existed for veterans, people experiencing homelessness and young people who had recently aged out of foster care, which Congress had created in recognition of the fact that those populations tend to experience some additional challenges to securing steady employment.

So those people are no longer categorically exempt from this work requirement. It also really substantially limited states ability to waive that work requirement in response to local labor market conditions. So Oregon and every other state in the country at some point has used the authority to waive this requirement temporarily in response to, you know, what was happening in the local economy.

Even people who support the concept of a work requirement understand that it doesn’t make sense to take food away from someone for not working if there are no jobs that are realistically available to them. But what the law did was substantially limit which areas qualify for a waiver. So currently very few areas in the country are able to waive that requirement because that authority has been so significantly curtailed.

I think it’s really important to mention that there’s a lot of research on this requirement, and it really doesn’t improve employment or earnings. It is just really effective at kicking people off of SNAP, including people who are working or should be exempt. So that’s one major way that people are losing benefits. 

Alejandro: Correct. And one of the things that it’s clear and, you know, to summarize what you said, I mean, making those requirements more stringent was not necessarily done to increase the number of people that were employed, but really were created to limit the number of people that could participate.

And at the same time, it removed the flexibility that the states have or had to adapt to the current economic conditions in the state. So it basically closed a whole bunch of doors, leaving no other option but for people to be removed from the program. 

Katie: Absolutely. But I think it’s also really important to underscore that the people who were made ineligible by the reconciliation law aren’t the only people losing SNAP.

So we are not just seeing people being kicked off by that expanded work requirement and the other eligibility restrictions in the law. In fact, many of the people who are no longer receiving SNAP are losing SNAP, even though they’re still eligible. Right. And this is where we’re seeing some pretty significant variation across states, with some having much larger drops in participation than others.

And this is really being driven by a change in federal law that completely upended how SNAP is funded. So H. R. 1 slashed federal funding for SNAP and shifted those costs on state budgets. So historically, states and the federal government split the cost of operating the program 50/50. And then the federal government picked up the full tab for the cost of benefits.

And kind of going back to the history of the program, that structure ensured that eligible low-income families who were seeking help from SNAP could get it, regardless of what state they lived in. But the federal reconciliation law that passed last year kind of upended both aspects of that funding. So starting October 1st of this year, so in just a couple of days, the federal funding for SNAP administrative costs, which covers, you know, the workers who are making the eligibility determinations, the computer systems that the state workers are using, even those EBT cards themselves, that funding gets cut in half.

So states will be picking up a much, much larger share of the tab for the day to day operations of the program and states that don’t make up for that, you know, cut in federal funding are likely to see things like worsening staff shortages, overloaded phone lines where people call and call and can’t get through to anyone, and processing backlogs and delays that leave people waiting without benefits and without a way to afford food.

I think if you were boiling down these changes, it’s more paperwork with fewer resources, and that is really causing a lot of eligible families to lose access to the program. And the cut to administrative funding is really the only the first piece of this massive cost shift from the federal government down to state and local governments, because the next year, on October 1st, 2027, most states are going to be required to start paying a portion of the SNAP benefit costs themselves, and that is the first time they will be required to do that in the program’s history.

And those costs are much, much larger. So we estimate that that’s about a $9 billion total hit to state budgets in the first year. And about half of states are going to owe $100 million or more. 

So we’re talking about very, very large costs that states are going to have to absorb in order to sustain their SNAP programs.

Alejandro: Yeah. No, I was just going to mention that that has put Oregon also in a really dire financial situation. I mean, our outlook, you know, for the 2029, 2031 biennium, is in a deficit in the billions of dollars and in great part is due to this shift, as you call it, cost shift to the states. One of the questions that we have about cost shift is how is this calculated?

In other words, there is what I think it’s called an error rate in the formula. Can you talk a little bit about how this cost shift is implemented and why there’s variation across the states? 

Katie: Yeah. And I think you raise a really good point about the challenges that Oregon is facing, because I think sometimes when I’m talking about this with people, they kind of don’t understand why it matters or who is paying, right.

And the really key difference between the federal government and states is that states have to balance their budgets. So if they are taking on these additional costs, that means they either have to raise taxes or they have to cut other programs and services in their budgets that people rely on. So that is why these shifts are so challenging for states.

But the amount that states are ultimately going to have to pay towards benefits, as you mentioned, is based on a very complicated metric in the SNAP program called the payment error rate. It is very frequently misunderstood, but what it essentially measures is the extent to which SNAP state agencies issued households the wrong amount of SNAP benefits.

So we’re talking about overpayments and underpayments, and we’re talking about largely unintentional mistakes in a program with complicated rules that serves low income families with complicated and fluctuating circumstances. So, you know, a worker made a typo in entering household shelter expenses, or a family didn’t understand what information they needed to report and when. Those are the types of mistakes that we’re talking about.

It is very commonly conflated with fraud, but that is not what it is measuring. So states who have error rates above a particular threshold will begin having to pay 5% to 15% of SNAP benefit costs moving forward. And the share that they owe escalates as their error rate increases, with one very notable exception that is relevant to Oregon, because when this law was passing, Congress created a special carve out for the states with the very highest error rates, which will buy them some additional time before they start having to pay these very, very large new costs.

And Oregon is a state that has an error rate that is above the arbitrary threshold that Congress set in the law. So Oregon will not have to pay these costs in the first year. They may qualify for a second year. That still remains to be seen, but Oregon has a little bit more time than than most other states before the rubber hits the road.

And these costs really become quite tangible and real for state lawmakers. But I think your question also kind of gets to the heart of why we are seeing this looming cost shift have such a tangible impact on families right now. And that is because the law gave states a very, very short window of time to lower their error rates before that cost shift is set and those massive, enormous new costs are locked in.

So states have been kind of pulling out all the stops, doing everything they can to try to lower their error rates as quickly as possible. And some are taking some pretty extreme steps that are making it much, much harder for eligible families to access SNAP. And I think it’s really, important to understand, you know, I talked about the error rate being kind of a complicated, wonky measure.

It only samples households who are receiving SNAP, which means that if a state wrongly denies benefits to an eligible family or cuts benefits off for an eligible family, that does not count as an error in the payment error rate, which is creating some pretty terrible incentives for states as they face these massive new costs. So what families are experiencing in many parts of the country right now is that the process to get and keep their benefits has suddenly required a lot more documentation that they’ve never been asked for before.

It’s meant waiting a lot longer for their applications to get processed while the state checks, and recheck and recheck every element of eligibility. And it’s getting harder and harder to reach anyone to get help getting through all of that red tape. Because particularly in states that were understaffed to begin with, the state just doesn’t have the capacity to handle all of that additional paperwork that they’re now requesting from households.

So we’re seeing eligible families who are losing SNAP because they can’t get through all of those new bureaucratic obstacles, or they’re stuck in a backlog because the state just doesn’t have the capacity to process all of the applications and recertification that are coming in. So I think that is why we are seeing such a significant impact so quickly is because of how states are changing the administration of the program in response to these very significant federal cuts in the cost shift down to the states.

Alejandro: Funding for SNAP,  if I understand correctly, it’s still being debated as part of the Farm Bill, which is where traditionally the funding for SNAP has been determined.

Can you talk about where we are in terms of the Farm Bill and what the outstanding issues are, what the outlook or prognostication is around SNAP funding? 

Katie: Sure. So the Farm Bill is the federal legislative vehicle that typically reauthorizes SNAP. It is a massive piece of legislation. It does not only deal with SNAP, it also covers crop subsidies, crop insurance, agricultural conservation programs, agricultural research, rural development.

It covers the whole host of issues. But one of the the issues that’s being debated in the Farm Bill right now, which is typically up for reauthorization roughly every five years, the last one passed in 2018. So Congress is a little bit behind schedule, about this cost shift down to the states.  What many stakeholders, including the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, but also a bipartisan coalition of governors, mayors, county commissioners, state legislators have been asking for is for more time.

You know, I think we are seeing the really, really significant impacts on access, in part because states have been asked to move so quickly to get their error rates down to avoid these cost shifts. So what those coalitions of stakeholders have been asking for is for a two year delay of both the administrative cost shift and the cost shift for the portion of benefits.

The House passed a version of the Farm Bill earlier this year that did not address this issue at all, and the Senate Agriculture Committee recently advanced a bill on kind of a party line, very one vote margin vote. And that bill includes a one year delay of the cost shift for benefits, which I would characterize as kind of finally, some recognition that there is an urgent need for Congress to intervene, that this is becoming a really significant problem, both for states and for the families who are now going without the food assistance that they need.

But it is really not doing enough to adequately address what we are seeing. It falls short in a couple of ways. First, it’s again only a one year delay when what people have been asking for is two years. That’s kind of the bottom line that Democratic senators have raised, which is that all states should be on a level playing field and be treated the same.

Right. If we’re giving states with high error rates like Alaska, potentially two additional years, that we should not penalize states that are doing a better job when it comes to payment accuracy, right. All states should benefit from that additional time. But really critically, it also pays for that one year delay by cutting SNAP more deeply in the future, right?

We just had the deepest SNAP cuts ever enacted last year, and it is offsetting those costs by increasing the risk that some states could drop out of the program entirely, because that’s really what we’re talking about when we talk about this cost shift. If states can’t raise enough taxes or cut enough elsewhere in their budget so that they can cover this required cost share, they may opt to withdraw from the program entirely.

So we could see the end of SNAP as a nationwide program that’s available in all 50 states. And that is a problem we are very concerned about right now. But this proposal would increase those cost sharing penalties in the future. And really, you know, increase the risk that that is the outcome states are looking at. So I think it’s really important to address this without taking the food off of families plates down the road.

And that’s really why this Senate proposal falls short. 

Alejandro: I imagine there’s a lot of our listeners that obviously don’t want to see more Oregonians going hungry. So I’m curious about what is the kind of action that they could take, or what can they do to help steer things in a better direction?

Katie: Yeah. So I think the first and most obvious answer is to push your federal members of Congress to take steps to roll back these cuts, most crucially, starting with delaying this cost shift for all states.

I think that’s a really, really important first step to stem the bleeding and mitigate the harm of what we are seeing unfold across the country. But there’s also choices that states are making that can make these federal cuts less bad. Like there’s really no way to have no harm in this environment. Right. Because the federal cuts are so deep.

But what we’ve seen is that states are making different choices about how they respond to those federal cuts. And the outcomes that families are seeing in different states are very different. And this is where I think the state of Oregon deserves a little bit of credit, because one of the things that Oregon did in response to those federal cuts is you included money in your state budget last year to hire a lot more people to help deal with some issues with understaffing, which should help both with making sure benefits are getting to eligible families.

And people aren’t stuck in backlogs, but should also help lower your error rate. Right. Often we see that the error is a measure of administrative capacity. And, you know, a great way to address that is to make sure, again, people need to have manageable workloads or they’re going to make mistakes. So I think, you know, pressuring your state legislators to continue to prioritize funding for SNAP itself and just Human Services administration and keep the core value of, we want people to have enough to meet their basic needs.

I think that is also a really important piece of how to move forward from these really devastating cuts. 

Alejandro: You’re right. I mean, the state has an increased role to play, and therefore we must hold our state legislators accountable to addressing those concerns. Obviously, part of that equation is ensuring that we have sufficient revenue to meet those needs. And so that is also part of the conversation.

I’m curious if there’s anything else you would like to add. 

Katie: The changes to SNAP are so complicated to understand, but I think the really key bottom line is, you know, we are seeing something that we have not seen before. We have not seen this many people losing food assistance this quickly, and we have not seen the risk that some states could leave the program entirely because of the math and new costs that they face.

So I think it’s just really important to understand the urgency for, especially our federal lawmakers, to step in and address this, because we are seeing more than 5 million people nationwide have lost benefits. 

What I didn’t mention is that we have also started gathering data on the number of children who are losing SNAP. We’ve estimated that the number of kids who have lost SNAP nationwide is well over a million and a half kids, and we’re about to update our analysis and add in data from a couple of more states.

And that number will be much closer to 2 million children with that additional data. So I think it’s really important to underscore we are not just talking about adults losing SNAP because of a work requirement. We are seeing millions of kids who are losing food assistance as well.

Alejandro: Katie, thank you so much for joining Policy for the People.

It’s been a pleasure talking to you and thank you for educating us. 

Katie: Yeah. Thanks so much for having me.