The Trump administration says SNAP is rife with fraud and waste. Is it?

The Trump administration says the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps, is losing billions of dollars because of payment errors it characterizes as fraud, waste and abuse. But anti-hunger advocates say that description is misleading, and could threaten food assistance for millions of low-income families.

The Department of Agriculture on June 24 said that the food-stamp program’s payment error rate was 10.6% for fiscal year 2025 — almost double the 6% threshold established as acceptable under the Republicans’ 2025 “big, beautiful bill act” (OBBBA). The error rate last year amounts to more than $10 billion in improper SNAP payments across the U.S., the agency said. 

SNAP provided $95.7 billion in benefits to American families during fiscal year 2025, meaning that payment errors accounted for roughly one-tenth of the program’s spending.

Fraud or a mistake?

Conflicting views on the prevalence of fraud in food stamps centers on what the SNAP payment error rate actually measures. Payment errors occur whenever households receive too much or too little in benefits, regardless of whether anyone intentionally broke the rules, and experts say such over- and under-payments are usually unintentional.

Fraud, by contrast, generally involves deliberate deception, such as trafficking benefits for cash or using stolen EBT card information.

The Trump administration has cited the payment error rate as evidence of waste in the program. The metric does not capture many of the most common forms of SNAP fraud, such as EBT card skimming or recipients illegally selling benefits for cash, according to the American Public Human Services Association (APHSA), which represents state and local human services agencies.

A 2024 report from the Government Accountability Office found that SNAP payment errors tend to stem from over- or under-payment issues, while describing food-stamp fraud as a separate, if related, issue. 

Payment errors are “mostly unintentional because the policy is very complex, and there are a lot of reporting requirements” that households may not be aware of, Brian Jones, a SNAP quality control expert at APHSA, told CBS News.

Republicans argue that reducing both payment errors and fraud would save taxpayer dollars and help ensure benefits go only to eligible recipients.

“Every dollar in this program is intended to help feed eligible individuals in need,” said Rep. Tim Burchett, a Republican from Tennessee, in a June 25 House subcommittee hearing on “Combating Waste, Fraud, and Abuse in SNAP. “That’s not where every dollar goes, not by a long shot.”

Anti-hunger advocates say that while focusing on fraud is important, erroneous food-stamp payments largely reflect changes in recipients’ personal and financial circumstances, such as getting or losing a job. Mistakes can also result from paperwork problems, such as missing addresses or phone numbers. 

“We should not confuse payment errors with fraud,” Gina Plata-Nino, SNAP director for the anti-hunger advocacy group Food Research & Action Center, or FRAC, said at the same hearing. “Fraud involves intentional wrongdoing — payment errors often involve complicated rules, changing work hours, missing paperwork, outdated systems or agency mistakes.”

Recouping overpayments

Under federal law, SNAP recipients must repay overpayments, with states typically reducing the monthly payment until the money is recouped.

“State and counties, those administering the program, should strive to have as low an error rate as possible because it is an indicator of strong administration of the program,” said Alexis Kuznick, policy director for APHSA. “States are working really hard to get their error rates much lower.”

To be sure, actual SNAP fraud is costly. The GAO pointed to earlier data showing the program lost about $1 billion a year to fraud. 

A USDA report published in May flagged other potential fraudulent activity, including recipients with dummy Social Security numbers and duplicate enrollments, that could add up to roughly $3 billion in annual improper payments. However, the report described the findings as possible issues rather than confirmed fraud.

Ironically, states are “having to take folks off of their work on reducing, preventing or responding to fraud and move them over to the quality control side” to focus on reducing payment error rates because of the OBBBA’s requirements, Kuznick said.

Potential hit to state budgets

Under the OBBBA, the program’s payment error rate has become increasingly key to SNAP, a federally funded program administered by the U.S. states. 

The new law mandates that states’ SNAP programs should maintain payment error rates below 6%. Those states whose food-stamp programs exceed that threshold will be on the hook for shouldering more of the program’s costs starting in October 2027.

According to the USDA’s report last week, only 10 states have SNAP payment error rates below 6%, with South Dakota at the lowest, at 2.5%. Alaska has the highest payment error rate, at 23%, the data shows.

Under the OBBBA, states with SNAP payment error rates between 6% and 8% will have to pay 5% of the benefit costs starting in late 2027. Those with error rates of 8% to 10% will have to pick up 10% of the benefit costs. And those with error rates over 10% will have to pay 15% of the costs.

In total, states could be on the hook for an additional $9 billion in SNAP spending, based on the most recent payment error rates released by the USDA, according to a new estimate from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, or CBPP.

“States have never before had to put up a share of the benefit costs, and based on the 2025 data, almost half the states are facing a cost-sharing requirement that’s going to cost them $100 million or more in the first year of implementation,” Katie Bergh, a SNAP expert at CBPP, told CBS News.

That could result in states having to either raise taxes or cut spending elsewhere in their budgets, she said. 

“We may even see some states withdraw from the program entirely,” Bergh added, citing an APHSA survey of all 50 state SNAP agencies that found 11% identified withdrawing from the food aid program as a potential risk due to higher expected costs.

States with SNAP payment error rates above 6% will have another year to reduce their errors and decrease the hit to their budgets. But states that aren’t able to drive down their error rates will likely need to make choices that could impact their residents, such as choosing between funding public services like law enforcement and education versus providing food aid.

Enrollment decline

The financial pressure comes as U.S. SNAP enrollment has already fallen sharply since President Trump signed the OBBBA into law on July 4, 2025.

About 37 million people were enrolled in SNAP as of March, the most recent data available, according to USDA figures. That represents a decline of almost 5 million people from a year earlier. 

The sharp drop in SNAP enrollees is due to recent changes to the program under the OBBBA, including a new work requirement for “able-bodied adults” aged 64 or younger, whereas the previous regulation only applied to people 54 or younger. The new regulation restricts SNAP benefits to three months of aid every three years if people under 64 don’t work, volunteer or participate in job training at least 80 hours a month. 

Some advocates, including the National Governors Association, a bipartisan group that represents the nation’s governors, as well as APHSA, are now lobbying lawmakers to delay the revised state cost-sharing rules by two years. 

“We have been working hard to educate and inform leaders around what the impacts will be to states,” and to ask for additional time to implement changes, said Timothy Blute, chief policy officer at the National Governors Association. “Governors and states care deeply about program integrity and are working tirelessly to lower their error rates.”

Without time to fix the payment errors, many states are likely to face difficult decisions once the cost-sharing provisions kick in, Kuznick said.

“If an individual state can’t pay its share, what happens then? Those are the sorts of things that we have not encountered yet,” she said. “We know how critical food security is to people’s livelihoods and their ability to focus in school. You could see a widespread impact in terms of wellness outcomes overall.”