Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins is promising big changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which currently helps almost 42 million Americans buy groceries.
In recent media appearances, she said attention on SNAP during the government shutdown "has given us a platform to completely deconstruct the program" and said details about structural changes to the program would be released this week.
Rollins has made a case for sweeping changes to SNAP by asserting her agency uncovered "massive fraud" in state data the agency demanded, and has emphasized statistics suggesting wrongdoing without providing the underlying data or details.
The Trump administration's latest campaign for SNAP changes comes as millions of recipients are already poised to lose benefits in the coming years as states begin to implement new work requirements and eligibility rules that Republicans in Congress passed over the summer that are the deepest cuts in history to the program.
In a Fox Business interview last month, Rollins said the further changes she is proposing will "make sure those vulnerable Americans who really need that benefit are going to get it. And for all the rest of the fraudsters and the people who are corrupt and taking advantage of it — we're going to protect the taxpayer, too."
Food policy experts say they are concerned that Rollins' talking points suggest a distorted view of the prevalence of SNAP recipients committing fraud, and seem to conflate fraud with payment errors of any kind.
"My worry is that she's risking setting a public narrative that this is a program that has more fraud than it actually does, or that the people who need it and use it to meet their very basic food needs are somehow committing a crime by seeking food assistance," said Stacy Dean, executive director of George Washington University's Global Food Institute and a former U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) official during the Biden administration.
"And that's just it's not it's not good for the program. It's absolutely terrible for the people who need it," Dean said.
Comments Rollins made in recent weeks that everyone on SNAP would have to reapply sparked confusion among SNAP recipients, state officials and food policy experts. SNAP recipients already have to go through a recertification process — in most cases every six or 12 months, and it is unclear what legal authority USDA would have to add additional steps.
A group of Democratic U.S. senators sent a letter last month asking Rollins to clarify what she meant and pointed out that SNAP is facing "unprecedented cuts" and there is additional uncertainty after the Trump administration halted SNAP payments during the shutdown.
"We are therefore troubled that the Administration could choose, at this moment, to add additional red tape that creates duplicative and unnecessary barriers to accessing nutrition assistance for families," the letter reads.
USDA officials are seemingly walking back the suggestion that there will be a new reapplication process for SNAP recipients. A statement from the agency indicates that it plans to use existing recertification protocols.
"Secretary Rollins wants to ensure the fraud, waste, and incessant abuse of SNAP ends. Rates of fraud were only previously assumed, and President Trump is doing something about it," reads a statement from a USDA spokesperson. "Using standard recertification processes for households is a part of that work. As well as ongoing analysis of state data, further regulatory work, and improved collaboration with states."
Unpacking Rollins' claims
Earlier this year, the USDA made an unprecedented demand to states to turn over personal data of SNAP recipients. Most Democratic-led states refused, and a federal judge in San Francisco blocked USDA from withholding funding from states that did not comply and found the federal agency's data demand was likely unlawful.
But 28 states and Guam did turn over data, according to a USDA spokesperson, and Rollins has been citing statistics from that data in several media appearances in recent weeks as evidence that the food assistance program needs to be overhauled.
In a recent News Nation interview, Rollins said the state data showed that "186,000 dead people receiving benefits, 500,000 Americans receiving benefits two times, so double what they should be receiving. We've arrested more than 120 people with SNAP fraud," Rollins said.
"And that doesn't include most of the blue states where we believe there's even more fraud and abuse. And under the last administration, the SNAP benefits increased 40%. So clearly, there's a right-sizing that needs to happen."
The USDA has not presented data that backs up these statistics, which makes it hard to evaluate their significance.
For example, some deceased individuals will inevitably be enrolled in the program because state officials have to verify the death and provide time for the household to respond before SNAP benefits are reduced or terminated. Households that erroneously receive payments when someone is deceased must pay that money back.
As for people receiving two benefit payments, the specifics of the cases Rollins cited are still unknown, but in court filings a California state official listed a number of legitimate explanations for why that can occur — including when a SNAP household is owed a supplemental payment to correct an error.
It is also unclear what Rollins means when she says SNAP benefits increased 40% under the Biden administration. USDA did not respond to a question seeking clarification.
The department announced that SNAP payments would expand 40% due to the pandemic in April 2020 — during President Trump's first term.
Lauren Bauer, a fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution and the associate director of The Hamilton Project, analyzed USDA data but was unable to find evidence of a 40% increase under Biden. Instead, she found that during Trump's presidency benefit costs increased by more than 30%, while during Biden's term they decreased by almost 17%.
"The dynamics of benefit increases and decreases is not really about presidencies. It's about the business cycle and where we are in terms of a recession and in terms of the climb out of it," Bauer said.
More SNAP changes to come
A draft of a regulation that the USDA submitted to the Office of Management and Budget last month could provide a clue for one of the changes to SNAP the Trump administration could unveil soon.
The draft calls for narrowing what is known as "broad-based categorical eligibility" for SNAP, which is currently used by more than 40 states to ensure welfare recipients can receive SNAP.
Researchers at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute have argued this eligibility rule should be ended because states are using it to allow people with incomes above the limit set by the SNAP statute to receive the benefit. Though they also cautioned that eliminating broad-based categorical eligibility must be done in a way that addresses "benefit cliffs" that would disincentivize people from earning slightly more because they would lose benefits and become worse off.
Katie Bergh, a senior policy analyst at the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities who has criticized the potential change, estimates a policy change like this could lead to nearly 6 million people losing SNAP benefits.
"At every opportunity, the administration is seeking additional ways to attack anti-hunger programs," Bergh said.
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