The new plan of the country’s Government is to dismantle the SNAP program and rebuild it from zero. A brilliant plan in the head of someone who surely has not thought that a total of 41 million families depend on SNAP in order to eat.
According to the Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, the decision comes because there are 186,000 fraudulent beneficiaries who would already have died and more than one million duplicates between states (but careful, this information is still not 100% verified…) And to this she also adds that only in the first months of 2025 a hole of 102 million dollars was uncovered…
Basically they want to “clean” the SNAP system, but there are millions of families who could be left without any type of federal aid right after spending a month without their SNAP payment because of the government shutdown… Is the government thinking about our neighbors or only about the money?
The SNAP program
SNAP is the largest food assistance program in the country, but it was already left quite damaged after the federal shutdown, when thousands of families were left without their November payment and had to juggle with whatever was left from other months (if anyone had anything left, of course…) But according to the government, that chaos revealed that the SNAP system is broken inside (according to them), they believe it is fraud, that it is a waste and that many people abuse the system (people like to eat, Rollins).
So they are going to propose much more demanding verifications and much stricter rules…
“The fraud”
According to reports, at least 226,000 fraudulent applications were detected, 691,000 illegal transactions and more than 102 million dollars disappeared.
A good part of this fraud comes from card cloning, electronic thefts and claims made without the real beneficiary knowing.
The longest shutdown in the U.S.
According to Rollins, the 43 day Government shutdown was for them like putting a giant magnifying glass on the program, they found failures that went unnoticed and it has given the government the perfect excuse to dismantle the program and make it completely new.
How will the changes be?
The reforms that have been proposed were already on the table. There will be much tougher work requirements through the “One Big Beautiful Bill”, which will force millions of adults (considered able to work) to show work activity in order to keep SNAP.
On the other hand, it will not matter when you renewed for the last time because if it is approved, all the people who receive SNAP would have to apply for the benefit again from zero. Very intelligent on the part of the USDA.
“Help the vulnerable and expel the abusers”
Rollins says that the objective is not to reduce SNAP, but to protect it for those who “really need it”, and Trump has repeated the same idea, of course: “SNAP is for people with real hardship, not for those who simply decide not to work”.
Reactions:
Social organizations fear that millions of vulnerable households will be left out because of administrative errors or requirements impossible for them to meet, but conservative sectors celebrate this reform because for many of them, this credit (which we remind, feeds 41 million families) is a “waste”.
Being completely honest, changing the system all at once will make millions of families go hungry for many weeks… you do not have to be very smart to imagine the catastrophe that this change could cause.
What will happen now with SNAP?
- Review and cross checking of state data.
- New rules and regulations.
- Reinforced coordination between states to apply the changes.
- When will it be?
It is estimated that by early 2026 the first changes will begin to be applied.
In the coming months, the important thing will be to see how these rules are applied, how many beneficiaries are affected and whether this reform manages to balance efficiency, control and social justice…