Addressing mismanagement in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program will save an estimated $91 billion over ten years.
Senator Joni Ernst (R., Iowa) is rolling out a series of measures to cut spending in the GOP’s “big, beautiful,” bill including a proposal for ending mismanagement in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps.
In meetings and discussions with colleagues related to the GOP’s budget legislation, Ernst is pushing for the Snap Back Inaccurate SNAP Payments Act, a bill that tackles mismanagement in the food stamp program, which costs taxpayers close to $1 billion per month, National Review has learned.
“Bureaucratic blunders, lax oversight, and sloppy state management are leaving billions on the table,” Ernst said in a statement to NR.
“We need to snap back overpayments, hold states accountable, and ensure every error is counted—no exceptions. With $36 trillion in debt, we cannot afford to continue allowing billions in SNAP errors to be swept under the rug.”
The Snap Back Inaccurate SNAP Payments Act would tackle overpayments, which are benefits paid to ineligible recipients or to eligible households beyond legal limits.
Over a decade, the bill could produce nearly $91 billion of savings for taxpayers. In 2023, there was an estimated $10.73 billion of SNAP overpayments, excluding errors totaling $54 or less. The SNAP error threshold is now $56 as of this year.
Ernst’s legislation instructs states to collect SNAP overpayments, the main cause of wasteful SNAP spending and require states to pay back what they owe in excessive spending. It incentivizes improved management of funds by holding states accountable for payment error rates and requires all errors to be reported.
The SNAP legislation is one of several pieces of legislation Ernst is advocating for to reduce spending in the GOP’s marquee budget reconciliation package.
She is proposing the ELECT Act to eliminate the Presidential Election Fund, a taxpayer-funded pool of money for presidential campaigns that spent $320 million on Secret Service and $25 million on the Justice Department during the 2024 cycle.
She is also pushing for a measure to end unemployment payments for millionaires currently out of a job. In fiscal years 2021 and 2022, millionaires received a combined $271 million of unemployment income support, largely during 2021 when stringent Covid-19 prevention measures created global economic instability.
Moreover, Ernst is pushing for the Delivering on Government Efficiency (DOGE) in Spending Act to eliminate improper payments by instituting greater quality control at the Treasury Department, a piece of legislation NR previously reported on. An estimated $160 billion of improper payments took place in fiscal year 2024 across a variety of programs, with over 80 percent of those being overpayments, according to a report from the Government Accountability Office.
Another legislative item Ernst is backing is a bill to prevent federal employees from conducting union negotiations while they are supposed to be working. Her bill would combat taxpayer-funded union time by requiring federal employees to reimburse the costs of union-related activities, which was estimated at $160 million in 2019.
Ernst has also floated selling off six federal buildings, the Department of Agriculture South Building, Hubert H. Humphrey Federal Building, Frances Perkins Federal Building, James V. Forrestal Building, Theodore Roosevelt Federal Building, and the Robert C. Weaver Federal Building for a combined $400 million.
All told, these initiatives could produce tens of billions worth of savings for the “big, beautiful” bill as the GOP-controlled Senate figures out ways to lower the bill’s total cost.