Proposed SNAP overhaul in Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ could cost Pa. $800 million

Nearly half a million Philadelphians rely on the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to buy milk, produce, and other essential groceries.

Proposed changes to SNAP, commonly known as food stamps, in the so-called “big, beautiful bill” tax and spending package championed by President Donald Trump would shift some program costs from the federal government to the state. And based on the proposed plan, and how the program has been funded here in recent years, the state could have to pay hundreds of millions more — as much as a threefold increase, according to some projections.

“SNAP is the only state administered entitlement program fully funded by the federal government,” said U.S. Rep. Glenn Thompson (R., Centre), who chairs the House Agriculture Committee. “It’s time to establish clear incentives to enhance services to SNAP participants and manage costs effectively. The only way for this to occur is for states to have some level of skin in the game.”

Gov. Josh Shapiro has said there is no way for the state to absorb the added costs. He estimated that of the 2 million state residents currently receiving benefits from SNAP, 140,000 would be kicked off the rolls, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services’ (DHS) analysis of the House version of the bill.

“I really need you to hear me on this,” Shapiro said last month after the bill passed the U.S. House. “We will not backfill the cuts that come from the federal government. We don’t have the ability to make up the dollars that they’re taking away from Pennsylvania.”

The Senate’s version of SNAP cuts, still awaiting a vote in the chamber, scales back the more aggressive House version but still proposes cutting $41 billion over 10 years, a savings achieved through increased cost-sharing with states and stricter work requirements that could boot some people off the federal assistance.

The changes could cut off support for vulnerable Pennsylvanians, especially in the Philadelphia region, which is home to the largest population of recipients in the state.

As Senate Republican leaders look to push the package forward, Democrats have tried to sound alarms about the impact they say the cuts could have. Sen. John Fetterman (D., Pa.), who sits on the Senate Agriculture Committee, which has been debating the SNAP changes, said he will oppose the bill partly because of the SNAP cuts.

“I can’t understand why anyone would want to rip food away from the children and families who need it most,” Fetterman said. “The SNAP cuts proposed in this bill would hurt Pennsylvanians in all corners of our commonwealth … If it passes, Pennsylvania’s budget will be hit harder than almost any other state.”

Sen. Dave McCormick (R., Pa.) defended SNAP changes in a tele-town hall with constituents Wednesday night.

“We’re not reducing the spending,” he said in response to an 80-year old caller from Philadelphia who receives SNAP and told him she worried she could lose it.

“We’re slowing the growth of the spending because they’ve grown out of control … the goal here is not to hurt people for whom the programs are designed.”

Here’s a look at how the SNAP program is administered in Pennsylvania and the changes proposed under the bill.

For two decades, SNAP enrollment in Pennsylvania has been shaped by broad forces — recessions, pandemics, and policy changes from Harrisburg.

But under the proposed federal legislation, the number of Pennsylvanians who can receive the benefit may hinge on something more technical: Pennsylvania’s administrative accuracy.

Under the proposal, beginning Oct. 1, 2027, states would be required to cover a portion of SNAP benefits for the first time if their error rate — how often they overpay or underpay SNAP benefits to households — is too high.

Error rates can also be affected by paperwork issues, such as a missing signature, according to Ali Fogarty, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services.

“Even when we review applications and fix what’s missing, we’re still required to record it as an ‘error’ for measurement purposes,” she said.

States with a payment error rate below 6% would continue to pay 0% of benefit costs, while states above that threshold would face cost-sharing responsibility, ranging from 5% to 15%.

The higher the error rate, the more the state would have to pay up.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service, Pennsylvania’s SNAP payment error rate was 16.6% in fiscal year 2023, the 10th highest of all states that year. The error rate consisted of 15% in overpayments and 1.6% in underpayments.

State payment error rates are released each year at the end of June, and the 2024 rates are not yet available.

States exceeding a 10% error rate under the proposed legislation would be required to cover 15% of their SNAP benefit costs, the highest penalty.

In fiscal year 2023, Pennsylvania’s SNAP benefits cost the federal government $3.7 billion, excluding COVID-19 emergency supplements to SNAP. Under the Senate proposal, the state would have been required to cover $564 million of that total.

Pennsylvania hasn’t had an error rate below 10% since fiscal year 2019, before the pandemic.

Some Republicans who support the bill have pointed to high error rates as a sign of wasteful or fraudulent spending and the changes as a way to save critical funding as the national debt increases. The Senate bill currently gives states until Oct. 1, 2027 to get their error rates below 6%.

Thompson, the House Agriculture Committee chair, said he rejects the idea that the state can’t cover any SNAP costs. “The Commonwealth and every state is capable; each having achieved an error rate below 6% at some point in the last 10 years,” he said in a statement, noting the state’s rate had grown considerably since pre-pandemic levels.

McCormick in his tele-town hall, blamed some of the program’s growth on “waste, fraud, and abuse.”

U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle, a Democrat who represents Philadelphia and opposes the cuts, said a state’s “error rate is not the same as “fraud rate.”

“Most of these are minor paperwork issues,” he said, predicting that the bill would do “remarkable” damage to his constituents in Philadelphia.

“You will be poorer as a result of this bill.”

Error rates are calculated at the state level by quality control reviewers who determine whether a household was over or underpaid.

The proposed legislation would also raise the state’s share of SNAP administrative costs from 50% to 75%. Pennsylvania spent approximately $214 million on SNAP administration in fiscal year 2023; under the bill, the commonwealth would have paid $110.5 million more.

Taken together, the increase in administrative costs and benefits coverage would come out to approximately $888 million for Pennsylvania if future enrollment numbers and error rates look similar to 2023. That’s a potential threefold increase in the state’s yearly SNAP costs.

The Senate parliamentarian — a nonpartisan member of the body’s professional staff — was still weighing some elements of the SNAP plan this week to ensure it fulfilled certain requirements for legislation that can be passed with a simple majority vote.

Philadelphia accounted for 70% of SNAP participation in the five-county region as of December 2024 with 499,362 enrollees.

North Philadelphia, including Juniata Park and Kensington, had higher SNAP participation than the rest of the city.

Philadelphia’s poverty rate has declined gradually over the past decade, but remains the highest of any large city in the country.

Outside Philadelphia, enrollment was highest in the city of Chester. One in three residents of the Pennsylvania House district that includes Chester, received SNAP benefits last December, according to estimates from the public data journalism tool Census Reporter. Historical data from the past two decades show that local SNAP enrollment has traced economic trends, and the pandemic.

SNAP participation in the Philadelphia region experienced a steady decline from October 2015 through March 2020 in every county except for Bucks, a period that spans the Obama and Trump administrations.

Philadelphia decreased the most, losing 50,318 participants in this period.

The drop was driven by an improving local economy, but also Pennsylvania’s reinstatement of a 1996 welfare law provision in January 2016 that put a three-month limit on benefits for unemployed, childless adults under 50.

A study published in the American Journal of Public Health found that the expansion of work requirements across the U.S. between 2013 and 2017 resulted in 550,000 SNAP participants losing their benefits nationwide.

The Senate proposal would further expand work requirements to include adults younger than 65 (previously 54) and able-bodied parents, so long as their youngest child is 10 or older.

After a period of declining enrollment, the pandemic caused participation to spike again in April 2020, in part due to legislation that made it easier to enroll and stay in SNAP by waiving some application requirements and suspending the time limit on benefits.

SNAP participation has continued to rise in Philadelphia and its four collar counties since then.

If the bill becomes law, states will try to drive down error rates. But based on 2023 figures, it’s likely most states would still incur some penalties.

Only seven states had SNAP error rates below 6% in fiscal year 2023, all rural states with lower enrollment.

Laura Wheaton, a senior fellow at the liberal-leaning think tank Urban Institute, noted while states have some control over their error rates, they have less control over the number of enrollees who qualify for SNAP benefits. And the larger the benefit costs, the more states will pay, even those incurring smaller penalties.

“The only way to really reduce costs would be through trying to make participation more difficult,” she said.

This story has been updated to accurately reflect how states calculate their error rates.