LANSING, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – Michigan would be among the states paying the highest percentage in a cost-sharing plan the U.S. House GOP is proposing to lower the costs of food assistance.
The GOP is proposing changing who pays for food stamps, known as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The federal government now pays for all the SNAP benefits and the states and feds share in the administrative costs.
Feds vs. states.
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But the U.S. House GOP says that doesn’t work. The states have no skin in the game for the costs of SNAP, so states do things to inflate the costs, such as working around work-requirement rules to be eligible to received food stamps as well as using loopholes to increase the eligibility.
“We have seen states discourage work and expand benefits for those the program was not intended to serve,” the House Committee on Agriculture said in a statement.
That hasn’t happened in Michigan. There were 1.65 million people in this state on SNAP as of Oct. 2009 and 1.61 million on SNAP as of Oct. 2014. As of Feb. 2025, there were 1.6 million people receiving SNAP benefits in Michigan. The monthly cost to the federal government for Michigan’s SNAP beneficiaries was $261.31 million.
State mistakes.
States administer the SNAP program and make about $13 billion a year in errors. The error rate of a state is defined as the percentage of benefit dollars issued to ineligible households or to eligible households above what program rules direct. Michigan’s 2023 error rate was 8.69%.
Under one cost-sharing scenario being proposed based on the latest year’s data, that would have Michigan at a 25% cost-sharing rate.
SNAP fraud.
The GOP also hopes making states share in the costs of SNAP will be an incentive to cut down on fraud. The U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York just charged six people for their involvement in a $66 million fraud involving SNAP benefits.
The Democrats are upset that the GOP would shift part of the costs to states.
“If these cuts are signed into law, more Michiganders will go to bed hungry,” Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said in a press release. “That’s unacceptable. We should [be] making it easier for families to afford the essentials, like food and health care, not harder.”