Hickenlooper Leads Fellow Former Governors Raising Alarm on SNAP Cuts Impact on State Budgets

WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. Senator John Hickenlooper, Tim Kaine, Mark Warner, Maggie Hassan, Angus King, and Jeanne Shaheen released the following statement regarding MAGA Republican’s disastrous cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) crippling states’ ability to deliver meals to hungry Americans. As former governors, the group of senators understand the challenges of balancing state budgets, made more difficult by MAGA’s One Big Ugly Betrayal bill that cut $186 billion from SNAP, a program serving 42 million Americans, including 600,000 Coloradans. The law also requires states to spend more of their state budgets to cover SNAP benefits and administrative costs associated with them. On average, states will be forced to spend two to three times of their previous SNAP budget on the program. In Colorado, SNAP cost-share will rise from $94 million to $272 million, a 188% increase. At least 23 states have expressed concern that they may be forced to dramatically reduce or end their SNAP programs. Read the full statement below: “The One Big “Beautiful” Bill Act (OBBBA) contained a ticking time bomb for state budgets and for millions of low-income families who depend on food assistance. “Starting October 2027, most states will be required to pay 5 to 15 percent of SNAP benefit costs for the first time. The Congressional Budget Office projects this will shift more than $35 billion from the federal government to states between 2028 and 2034, with states expected to respond by cutting another $7 billion in food assistance. “The stakes are enormous. About half of all states will face new costs exceeding $100 million per year. The largest states will face costs topping $1 billion annually. “States had no say in this design and no time to prepare. The mandatory cost shift to states will be based on a state’s error rate for FY 2025 or 2026, giving states only until this September to minimize their exposure. But there are no quick fixes. Worse, the chaos created by the SNAP shutdown last fall and the rushed rollout of the OBBBA’s other SNAP cuts – with no technical guidance from USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service – has driven up error rates, adding to states’ burden. “The OBBBA also locked in a fundamental inequity: states with the highest error rates received up to two extra years before the cost-shift kicks in. Most states don’t qualify, meaning that some states that worked hard to reduce their error rates have actually lost access to that extra time and, as a result, will have to pay hundreds of millions of dollars even as others with higher error rates pay nothing at all in the near term. “As former governors who have had to balance budgets, we know exactly what this unfunded mandate means: states will be forced to raise taxes, cut education, health care, or transportation, or restrict access to SNAP itself. Some may be forced to drop the program entirely. “This is not a hypothetical. SNAP participation is already declining at alarming rates, with over 3.5 million people leaving SNAP just since the OBBBA was enacted. “We stand with Ranking Member Klobuchar: any farm bill the Senate considers this year must extend the full two-year delay in the SNAP cost-shift to every state.” Hickenlooper has fought dangerous cuts to SNAP and food assistance programs. When President Trump illegally withheld food assistance funding, Hickenlooper introduced the Keep SNAP and WIC Funded Act to protect Americans’ food access. As a direct rebuke to the reckless, inhumane SNAP cuts in Republican’s One Big Ugly Betrayal, Hickenlooper introduced the Restoring Food Security for American Families and Farmers Act to repeal the cuts and restore food access for millions of Americans. Hickenlooper understands SNAP cuts and new burdensome cost-share requirements will take meals away from thousands of Coloradans. He will continue to fight for a fully funded, fairly administered SNAP program in this year’s Farm Bill. ###