Today, a new report by the national anti-hunger advocacy group MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger is shedding light on the latest damage done by the Trump administration and Congressional Republicans to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). With the federal government now shifting its administrative financial support for SNAP onto states and counties, shirking its responsibility to Americans nationwide struggling with hunger, the report shows how this administrative cost shift is burdening state and county governments with enormous new funding gaps that will make the program harder to administer and access.
Read the report — “The SNAP Crisis is Here: A Deep Dive into the SNAP Administrative Cost Shift”
To date, over five million SNAP beneficiaries have already lost grocery benefits since and because of the passage of the partisan “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” MAZON’s new report shows the vast discrepancies between U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) SNAP administrative funding estimates and SNAP administrative funding enacted in state budgets. The detailed paper includes a full state-by-state analysis to compare estimates in the increased costs, finding that states enacted around $1.14 billion annualized against the USDA’s estimated need for $1.61 billion — a $469 million shortfall.
MAZON President & CEO and report co-author Abby J. Leibman stated:
“Led by Donald Trump, Brooke Rollins, Russell Vought, and their puppets in Congressional leadership, Republicans have prioritized dismantling SNAP since assuming unified power. The administrative cost shift directed by the OBBBA represents one of the opportunist slashes in their ongoing death by a thousand cuts. By forcing states to do the dirty work of reducing resources for law-abiding, low-income Americans, this government has forced states into the impossible position of having to raise taxes, pull resources from other services, or drop their SNAP programs altogether.
“As our report shows, the financial impact on states across the nation is staggering and coming at an unmanageable speed. The cruelty, thoughtlessness, and disrespect from the administration and Congressional Republicans is stunning, even more so when you see it laid out in such a stark fashion. And regardless of what the next Congress looks like, these attacks are not going to stop. This president is legislating by executive action, and we need to keep firing on all cylinders to combat his efforts to deny basic needs to all Americans.
“The path forward is difficult, but it is clear. We must all understand the breadth and depth of these attacks so that we can restore what has been taken, rebuild what has been destroyed, and reshape our nation’s systems to reflect a truly meaningful response to hunger in America. We haven’t a moment to waste.”
While SNAP is and remains the United States’ primary defense against hunger, the program has repeatedly come under assault from the Trump administration in recent years. President Trump’s partisan budget reconciliation bill included the most significant and damaging restructuring of SNAP in history, including new eligibility restrictions, narrowing strategic flexibilities, and forcing states to absorb unprecedented program costs. As of this month, the federal reimbursement for SNAP administrative costs dropped from 50% to 25%, leaving states to cover the remaining 75%. And beginning in October 2027, another cost shift from the federal government to the states is set to force most states with SNAP payment error rates of 6% or greater to pay at least 5% of SNAP benefit costs, up to a maximum cost share of 15% — the first time in history that the federal government has not covered the full cost of SNAP benefits.
MAZON’s new report finds that in implementing the administrative cost shift, USDA minimized the financial and operational burdens that the new requirements impose on states and, ultimately, the people that SNAP is intended to serve. While the agency estimated that federal spending would decrease by $16.9 billion and that state spending would increase by the exact same amount, MAZON’s state-by-state comparison of enacted budgets shows that the true burden is already much larger, with many states unable to fully cover the funding gap. For example:
• While USDA estimates that Arkansas will increase state spending on SNAP administrative costs by an average of $27.57M from FFY 2027 to 2031, the state legislature has not, to date, appropriated any additional funding to offset this loss.
• Indiana was estimated to increase state spending by $61.8M each year, but the state legislature had already passed its biennial budget for 2026-27 in May 2025, before the SNAP cuts were enacted, and has not appropriated additional funding as of this report’s publication.
• In Minnesota, USDA estimates that the state will increase spending by $55.14M each year. However, this is one of 10 states where counties administer SNAP and share the state’s portion of administrative costs. The biennial state budget passed $10.7M in supplemental funding in the 2027 state fiscal year, and there is significant uncertainty about whether counties can fill the large remaining gap.
• Ohio is another state where counties administer SNAP; while USDA estimates that state spending will increase by an annual average of $85.27M, the state legislature only passed $12.5M in additional funding, leaving several counties with multi-million dollar shortfalls.
Other key findings include:
• The massive shift in SNAP’s administrative costs is likely to undermine the program’s “automatic stabilizer” effect, which allows it to respond to economic recessions and recoveries.
• The harmful impacts of this policy will likely worsen existing disparities and increase hunger in communities that need SNAP the most.
• Indigenous communities face a separate harm: reduced state and county administrative capacity threatens Tribal citizens’ access to both SNAP and the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations. To date, USDA has not fulfilled its trust responsibility to consult meaningfully with Tribal leadership on these changes.
In addition to the state-by-state breakdown, the report also examines how USDA continues to ignore ongoing and heightened disparities in America. While the agency states that the administrative cost shift will not have a major or disproportionate impact on program participants based on “age, race, color, national origin, sex, or disability,” this assumption overlooks decades of research showing that administrative burdens fall hardest on households that already face barriers to accessing public benefits. The report also pays special attention to veterans, noting that although about 1.3 million veterans receive SNAP, only a fraction of food-insecure veterans who live in SNAP-eligible households are enrolled in the program. And in Indigenous communities, the report finds that USDA did not fulfill its legal obligation to meaningfully consult with Tribal Nations about these changes and their impacts on Tribal citizens.
With billions of dollars in funding each year being impacted by the SNAP administrative cost shift with severe consequences on application processing and customer service, this reckless policy may well threaten the ability of states and counties to continue participating in SNAP in the near future. In order to avoid this devastating future, MAZON’s recommendations for policymakers at all levels include:
• Reversing the harmful SNAP changes, including the administrative cost shift.
• Correcting the record to adequately reflect the harmful impact the SNAP administrative cost shift will have on state budgets.
• Reinstating USDA’s Household Food Security reports.
• Reversing course on USDA’s chaotic agency reorganization and relocation.
• Engaging in meaningful consultation with Tribal leadership about SNAP changes before finalizing this or any policy that might impact them.
• Rebuilding our country’s food assistance programs in a way that centers access to food as a human right, rather than a reward for work, compliance, or successfully navigating bureaucracy.
The report was authored by Sarah Hassmer, Senior Staff Attorney; Abby J. Leibman, President & CEO; and Liza Lieberman, Vice President of Public Affairs, all of MAZON. A similar version was submitted to USDA as part of the Food and Nutrition Administration’s comment period for the proposed rule on “Changes in Federal-State Administrative Cost Sharing.”
The full report, “The SNAP Crisis is Here: A Deep Dive into the SNAP Administrative Cost Shift,” can be found here.