by Henry Culvyhouse for Mountain State Spotlight, www.mountainstatespotlight.com
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As Congress moves toward cutting crucial funding that helps West Virginians — many of them elderly or disabled or children — get the food they need, state elected officials so far have no plan to reduce the harm.
Under a plan passed by the U.S. House of Representatives last week, funding for SNAP, formerly known as food stamps, and Medicaid would be cut to pay for tax cuts that disproportionately go to the wealthy.
On the day the bill passed the House, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota, who sits on the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee, which oversees SNAP legislation made a statement.
“House Republicans are pulling the rug out from under millions of families by taking away federal assistance to put food on the table,” she said.
Sen. Jim Justice, who sits on the same committee, did not respond to questions about the legislation.
Since its inception, SNAP has been 100% paid for by the federal government.
Under the current proposal, states would be required to chip in 5% to 25% of the cost, based on their rate of errors, meaning percentage of overpayments or underpayments of benefits. The changes would go into effect in October 2028.
The U.S. Senate is expected to start working on the bill when it returns to business on June 2. While moderate Republicans and hard-nosed deficit watchers are at odds over cuts to Medicaid, cuts to SNAP haven’t been a big topic of conversation.
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, who sits on the powerful Senate committee that decides how federal dollars are spent, said the cost-sharing arrangement was news to her during a press call last week.
“I am not sure how I feel. I don’t know how it would impact the state of West Virginia if it was a match,” Capito said. “I need to do my homework on that.”
Excluding COVID years — when West Virginia expanded SNAP to more families with children — the program has on average over the last decade served 280,000 people in the state at a cost of $484 million per year. However, the average payment error rate over that same time period would result in the state paying 15% of the cost, which equals roughly to $72.6 million to keep assistance going to the same number of people.
The amount states pay will vary from year-to-year, because the error rate changes. For instance, the state’s error rate in 2023 was higher than it’s been in the last decade, and under the new proposal, it would result in a 25% cost share or around $141 million.
In addition to sharing the cost of the assistance, the bill would require states to take on more of the program’s administrative costs.
But the governor’s office was already projecting about a $400 million shortfall in the next budget year, and that’s without the additional cost of food stamps.
“This is a brand new problem for the state,” said Sean O’Leary, a budget analyst for the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy.
Ideally, O’Leary said the state could raise taxes to pay for the new cost. But given the income tax cut passed on the state level and vows by the state’s Republican controlled Legislature to avoid raising taxes, that’s highly unlikely.
Instead, lawmakers could keep the same amount of people on SNAP by cutting other areas of the budget, like pay raises for employees or other social service programs, O’Leary noted. Or they could change eligibility requirements and reduce the number of people who get assistance.
And it’s not just beneficiaries who could lose out.
For every one dollar spent in SNAP, the United States Department of Agriculture estimates $1.50 is put back into the economy. That means SNAP spending can generate between $700 and $800 million in the state’s economy per year, either through people spending their food stamps, or being able to pay for other goods because they don’t have to spend cash on a certain amount of food.
But even with potential budgetary and economic losses coming down the line, state leaders have been mum about the changes.
In a joint statement, West Virginia House Speaker Roger Hanshaw and Senate President Randy Smith said they are monitoring what’s happening in Congress and staying in communication with decision makers in D.C.
“Any discussions of additional fiscal implications are premature,” the politicians said.
House Finance Chair Vernon Criss said he’s waiting to see what “the sausage factory” turns out in D.C, too.
Gov. Patrick Morrisey, who is charged with introducing the framework of a budget every year, did not reply to questions. Not that SNAP isn’t on his mind – last week, he announced that he was asking the federal government to stop West Virginians from using SNAP money for pop.
But up in D.C., West Virginia’s two U.S. Representatives, Carol Miller and Riley Moore, were busy congratulating themselves in helping move the bill forward. Amid the praise for tax cuts, neither said a word about the threat to SNAP.
