The federal government’s food stamp program spent $10.1 billion on improper payments just last year, a stunning new report found.
Now, the Trump administration just put dozens of states on notice that the era of unlimited federal spending on their mistakes is over.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture released its annual Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program payment error rates Wednesday, showing a national rate of 10.62% — nearly double the 6% threshold Congress set as acceptable. That figure represents both overpayments and underpayments combined.
“These payment error rates are further proof that state accountability is severely lacking in SNAP,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said. “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.”
For the first time, the consequences are real and binding.
Under new provisions, states with high error rates will be required to start covering a share of SNAP benefit costs themselves beginning in October 2027. It is a dramatic break from decades of the federal government footing 100% of the benefit bill.
The penalty structure is a sliding scale. States with error rates between 6% and 8% will owe 5% of their benefit costs. States between 8% and 10% will owe 10%. States above 10%, which now includes well over half the country, will owe a full 15% of their total SNAP benefit costs.
Missouri posted an 8.7% error rate and received roughly $1.5 billion in SNAP benefits in 2024. If that funding level holds, the state would be on the hook for $150 million annually — more than the entire budget of several state prisons, according to the Associated Press.
Only nine states currently qualify for a full exemption from any cost-sharing requirement: South Dakota, which posted the nation’s lowest error rate at roughly 2.5%, along with Nebraska, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Vermont, Utah, Wisconsin, and Wyoming because they’re all under the 6% threshold.
At the other end of the spectrum, Alaska posted a staggering 23%-plus error rate, the worst in the nation. Alaska, along with Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, New Mexico, Oregon, and Washington, D.C., have one year to correct their 13% error rate before cost-sharing requirement kicks in.
More than 37 million Americans received SNAP benefits as of March — down nearly 5 million people, or 11%, from a year earlier, following new work requirements Trump signed into law last July.