In legislation signed into law on July 4, 2025, Congressional Republicans chose to enact the largest cut to food benefits for very low-income people through SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly called Food Stamps), in its history. These drastic cuts to SNAP will increase poverty, food insecurity, and hunger, including among children.
In Minnesota, more than 440,000 adults, children, seniors, veterans, folks with disabilities, and others have some additional income to afford a basic diet because of SNAP. More than 63 percent of Minnesota SNAP participants are in families with children, and nearly two-thirds of participants have incomes below the federal poverty level (for a family of four in 2025, that’s a yearly income just above $32,000). SNAP benefits in Minnesota for federal fiscal year 2024 averaged around $5 for each household member per day.
Because of provisions in the 2025 federal reconciliation law (H.R.1), by September 2034, $187 billion will be cut from this essential basic needs service. Policymakers made changes that take away eligibility, reduce benefits, and shift costs to states. Across the country, these cuts will come in the form of:
- A never-before-seen “cost sharing” requirement that means states must pay some of the cost of SNAP benefits, a change which could cost Minnesota more than $86 million every year.
- An expansion of red tape through work reporting requirements for people ages 55 to 64, parents of teenagers, veterans, people experiencing homelessness, and youth aging out of foster care.
- An across-the-board reduction in the future value of benefits.
- A dramatic shift of administrative costs to states, including the costs of implementing the above changes without sufficient or timely guidance from U.S. Department of Agriculture.
- Completely eliminating SNAP-Ed, a program that provided meaningful opportunities for community members regarding healthy eating, cooking, gardening, food budgeting, and more.
- Ending access to SNAP benefits for lawfully present immigrants with humanitarian statuses, including refugees, asylees, victims of trafficking and domestic abuse, and more.
All Minnesotans should be able to get the support they need to thrive, regardless of who they are or where they live. Without SNAP, tens of thousands of Minnesotans will go hungry or have less food than they need to live a healthy, happy life. Minnesota policymakers must make choices ahead to mitigate harms from these federal actions to keep folks from going hungry.
For the first time, states will be required to pay a share of SNAP benefits
For more than 60 years, the federal government has covered the complete cost of SNAP food benefits – the funds that go directly to individuals and families to pay for food at their local grocery store, farm stand, and more. States’ role has been to cover half of the administrative costs of the program in their state, as well as screen for eligibility and make sure food benefits get to the people who need them.
Starting in federal fiscal year 2028 (FFY 2028), which begins on October 1, 2027, states must pay between 0 and 15 percent of SNAP food benefits costs, based on a metric called the Payment Error Rate (PER). The payment error rate estimates the share of payments to SNAP participants that were either overpaid or underpaid. For example, if 5 percent of the dollar value of payments sampled by quality control were overpayments and 2 percent were underpayments, the state’s PER would be 7 percent. Another way to view the payment error rate is to flip it. In this example, SNAP benefit dollars were correctly allocated 93 percent of the time.
The payment error rate is not a measure of fraud. Instead, the PER is mostly a measure of honest mistakes, like data entry errors in the outdated systems states and counties use to administer SNAP. In Minnesota in FFY 2024, nearly 60 percent of payment errors were caused by agency administrators and a little over 40 percent by folks participating in SNAP. These errors vary from folks forgetting to share their new address and housing costs after a potentially stressful move, to county administrators accidentally overlooking a document in a family’s file. And as noted above, some of the errors result in Minnesotans receiving less in SNAP benefits than they qualify for. Many of these errors could be resolved with more people-centered technology and simpler processes.
Minnesota’s payment error rate for FFY 2024 was 9 percent, meaning that our state would need to cover 10 percent of SNAP food benefits, or about $86 million (based on FFY 2024 benefit levels) annually starting at the end of 2027, according to the Minnesota Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF). If Minnesota’s PER were to increase above 10 percent, then the annual benefits cost could increase to nearly $130 million every year. Conversely, reducing the PER below 6 percent – and keeping it there – would eliminate the state’s SNAP benefits cost share.
By over-emphasizing esoteric metrics like the payment accuracy rate, federal policymakers are forcing attention and resources away from SNAP’s core goal of helping people with low incomes afford a nutritionally adequate diet.
Federal changes mean states need to spend more to become less effective at reducing hunger
The new cost share – and other SNAP changes – set back efforts at reducing hunger at the same time the federal government is providing less support than ever.
Starting on October 1, 2026, the federal government slashes their contributions to SNAP administrative costs from 50 percent to 25 percent, burdening states even more. For example, cutting federal administrative funding will make it more difficult for Minnesota to invest in staffing and technology to help lower the payment error rates, as well as implement other administrative changes like expanded red tape requirements for parents and older folks. DCYF estimates that these changes in administrative reimbursements will cost Minnesota an additional $39 million in lost federal dollars every year.
Paradoxically, these administrative changes and the rules around the cost shifts to states create great pressure on state and local agencies to spend a significant amount on administrative changes to make SNAP less effective at reducing hunger.
By shifting costs to states, the federal government has moved further away from the promise of providing a lifeline to individuals and families at risk of going hungry at a time when more and more of our neighbors are struggling to make ends meet.
Minnesota should fight hunger despite federal SNAP cuts
Hunger is not inevitable but rather a policy choice. SNAP is the largest and most effective anti-hunger and food security program in the United States. Every month SNAP helps over 42 million low-income Americans afford a basic diet.
State policymakers should take bold action so that these dramatic federal cutbacks do not result in State policymakers should take bold action so that these dramatic federal cutbacks do not result in increasing hunger in Minnesota, while also addressing the more than $125 million annual unfunded federal mandate in SNAP. Minnesota policymakers should:
- Take every opportunity during implementation of these federal changes to minimize harm and unnecessary red tape, and pursue thoughtful error reduction strategies to reduce state costs without jeopardizing food assistance for low-income households;
- Prevent Minnesotans from going hungry by shifting newly ineligible people to state services like the Minnesota Food Assistance Program (MFAP) and investing in other state nutrition programs; and
- Raise more state revenues to replace what the federal government took away.
In contrast, simply accepting and mirroring the targeting of certain people and public services by federal lawmakers would leave tens of thousands of Minnesotans without the food assistance they need to buy groceries and would negatively impact grocers, especially in rural communities. Minnesotans deserve federal and state budget choices that put everyday people first by protecting and strengthening essential public services that our families and neighbors count on to get by, and that contribute to thriving communities in every corner of our state.