What would you say if I told you there was a way D.C. Republicans could stop fraud, stave off losses in the midterms, and even stop terrorism? And all it would take is them doing something they should have already done?
You’d probably say, “full-steam ahead.” Yet as of right now, the party is treading cautiously.
The issue is fraud, waste, and abuse in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps. The federal government spends about $100 billion on SNAP per year, but at least $10 billion of that is stolen or lost to improper payments, according to the Government Accountability Office.
Last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) included a provision to cut this by half by giving states a choice: limit improper SNAP payments or start sharing in the cost of paying for those benefits, which are otherwise paid entirely by federal taxpayers. Rates of SNAP payment errors (ie fraud, waste, and abuse) have been climbing in recent years. The American Enterprise Institute determined that the average nationwide error rate was just over six percent in 2017, but that by 2025 it rose to 10.6 percent!
Under OBBBA, any error rate over six percent will cost the offending state. If states are appropriately motivated, they’ll reduce their payment errors. At worst, incompetent states will have to pay for their failings rather than sticking the rest of us with 100 percent of the bill. But now, Democrats are trying to reverse this out via the Farm Bill, because more blue states than red states would have to bear higher costs under the OBBBA provisions.
The states with the worst error rates, according to federal data, include Delaware (16 percent), New Mexico (16.8 percent), and Washington, D.C. (18.66 percent). The error rates in California (10.93 percent) and New York (13.18 percent) aren’t as high — but given that those states are so huge, those mistakes cost Uncle Sam much more money. Contrast that with red states like Wyoming (3.96 percent) and South Dakota (2.47 percent). Democrats have not had a physical office in South Dakota for years, which may explain why the state is run so well. Be like South Dakota!
There’s another wrinkle here, too: In a variety of blue states (plus Arizona), SNAP can be used at fast food restaurants, which so-called progressives include when lauding the benefits of “federal nutrition funding.” In California alone, $475M in SNAP benefits were spent at fast food joints! Ostensibly, this policy exists to facilitate nutrition on the part of the homeless and the disabled. But of course, blue states — and especially California — have a policy landscape that has caused homelessness to boom, while taking a broad and expansive view of who is and is not disabled — all with attendant fiscal effects. This means up to $250 million every year in waste via the SNAP program — and of course, Democrats want blue state SNAP recipients’ right to spend your tax dollars on Taco Bell protected in the Farm Bill, too.
This isn’t just about dollars and cents: Some SNAP fraud has facilitated actual financing of terrorists, namely the Islamic terror group Al-Shabaab. The issue is so high-profile that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent directed his department to investigate these claims “to ensure Americans’ taxes are not funding acts of global terror.”
We just recognized the 25th anniversary of 9/11. We said we would never forget. And yet here we are letting agents of evil steal our tax dollars to use against us, while others load up on $15 burritos at Chipotle.
The Farm Bill is set to be marked up this month in the Senate Agriculture Committee, and the GOP needs to hold fast and not cave on these critical SNAP provisions. The bill failed before recess because Democrats doubled down to protect SNAP fraud and tax-money-for-Big-Macs. This vote may be dragged out until after the midterms, but we still need to do the right thing. As Brookings Institution scholars recently noted, “the state cost shift will likely lead some states to … restrict eligibility, cut benefits, or make it harder for eligible residents to enroll in SNAP.” That sounds like a feature, not a bug!
Here’s another bonus: Restricting SNAP use for fast food could help the GOP in November by exciting MAHA voters in Alaska, Kansas, WA-04 and CO-04—all areas where RFK, Jr. overperformed in 2024. Cutting wasteful spending while increasing the chances of GOP wins? As the saying goes, “Don’t you threaten me with a good time!”
Fixing all of this is so easy. In fact, one might say that doing so is… a SNAP.