Food Programs — News & Analysis

SNAP Tracker: People Are Losing Food Assistance as the 2025 Republican Reconciliation Law Is Implemented (August 5, 2026)

August 5, 2026 — SNAP participation nationwide has fallen by more than 4.5 million people, or 11 percent, between the reconciliation law's July 2025 enactment and April 2026, the last month with data on all states, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities tracker maintained by Dottie Rosenbaum, Joseph Llobrera, Catlin Nchako, and Luis Nuñez. Measured over the full preceding year the drop is more than 4.9 million, or nearly 12 percent. Participation has declined in every state except Alaska, by 5 percent or more in 44 states and by 10 percent or more in 23 states. The last comparable decrease over so short a period — leaving aside temporary spikes following natural disasters — came nearly three decades ago, after Congress enacted deep cuts to the program then called Food Stamps in 1996; participation fell 11 percent, or 2.7 million people, over the nine months from March to December 1997. CBPP notes these declines began before some of the law's major changes were fully in effect, and expects the harms to grow as states implement eligibility restrictions and act to lower their error rates.

The state-level detail is stark. Arizona participation fell 55 percent from July 2025 to April 2026, moderating to 48 percent in state data through June following slight increases in May and June. Compared to 12 months earlier, declines reached 21 percent in Louisiana, 19 percent in Florida (21 percent in state data), and nearly 18 percent in Oklahoma. In the 22 states with published or shared child participation data, the number of children receiving SNAP has fallen by 1.1 million since July 2025 — children account for nearly half of the 2.6 million people no longer receiving benefits in those states — and CBPP judges it very likely the national figure exceeds 1.5 million. Texas alone accounts for a decline of 651,954 participants, including 344,147 children; Arizona's child decline of 182,058 represents 49 percent of that state's child caseload. Meanwhile national unemployment has held flat at about 4 percent since July 2025 per BLS data, falling in only 13 states and the District of Columbia and by less than a percentage point. CBPP concludes it is very unlikely that reduced need is driving the decline.

The tracker attributes much of the drop to how states are responding to the coming cost shift. Error rates — measures of over- and under-payments arising mostly from unintentional mistakes rather than fraud — will determine what each state owes, with fiscal years 2025 and 2026 rates setting payments for fiscal year 2028, the first year the cost shift takes effect. Because most states will have to pay between 5 and 15 percent of benefit costs, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars annually in many states, they face strong incentives to reduce error rates quickly. Policies adopted toward that end — more frequent verification of income and expenses, for instance — are likely to push eligible households off the rolls through administrative burden, and, as CBPP points out, wrongly denying or delaying benefits to an eligible household does not count as an "error" under the formula. The law's short implementation timeline and its cut to federal administrative funding compound the strain on state agencies already facing application delays and long call center waits, and SNAP additionally faced what CBPP describes as the Trump administration's illegal refusal to deliver benefits during the late-2025 government shutdown. CBO estimates the law cuts SNAP by nearly $187 billion through 2034, the largest cut in the program's history.

Source data: CBPP downloadable tracker data (XLSX) · CBO SNAP estimate