By BRETT PEVETO
Public News Service
Kentucky faces deep cuts to a key food support program with Senate passage of the budget reconciliation bill.
It is estimated the new budget will kick millions off the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP, and shift food and administrative costs onto states. Schools offering free breakfast and lunch may also see impacts to SNAP’s Community Eligibility Provision, which they can use when 25% of students qualify for SNAP. An early House committee proposal sought to raise that threshold to 60%.
Jordan Ojile, advocacy manager for Feeding Kentucky, said even without the change, planned SNAP cuts may still affect schools.
“If the number of students on SNAP and Medicaid falls – and for some of these schools, falls even a few students shy – the entire school will lose their free school meal reimbursement,” Ojile explained. “It’s not just the poorest of Kentucky children that’ll be losing their meals at home when they lose their SNAP benefits. They’re going to be losing their meals at school, and their classmates are going to be caught in the collateral of that as well.”
More than 1,100 schools in Kentucky participate in the Community Eligibility Provision, reaching over 580,000 students daily.
If the budget bill makes it through the House, it would push more costs onto states. For those with a SNAP error rate above 6%, that could mean losing up to 15% of federal money for food. The error rate is not a measure of fraud, it tabulates how accurately states determine eligibility and benefits. Errors are typically unintentional clerical errors from state agencies. Ojile added SNAP errors are already being corrected.
“It’s a self-adjusting program, where if somebody is underpaid, the next month they will get a little bit extra to compensate, to correct that,” Ojile outlined. “If they’re overpaid, that’ll be translated into how much they receive the next month.”
States with a high error rate for two consecutive years are currently charged a penalty. Only one state has never had an error rate above 6% since recording began in 2003. In 2023, the Kentucky error rate was relatively low, at just over 7%, still enough to trigger the loss of some federal money under the new bill.
The Senate bill also reduces the federal share of administrative costs by half, pushing states and counties to cover 75% of the total. Ojile argued reducing the funding would make it harder to improve the error rate. And with more than 500,000 Kentuckians on SNAP, he doubts the state could handle the added costs.
“It’s going to be very, very bad for SNAP in every state but especially Kentucky,” Ojile cautioned. “If the General Assembly decides that they’re unable to pony up $200-plus million a year for the program, one of the most important social safety nets could just collapse in the Commonwealth.”
Kentucky saw $1.3 billion spent into the economy via SNAP last year. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates SNAP produces $1.50 in economic activity for every dollar spent.
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