A shopper who receives SNAP benefits inserts the EBT card into the register. (Photo: US Department of Agriculture)
The Republican spending bill signed by President Donald Trump last summer made it happen the deepest cuts in history to the largest federal anti-hunger program. That’s because millions of Americans and thousands of Ohioans are no longer receiving the benefits they qualify for, according to a fresh analysis of government data.
The man who conducted the analysis said the changes would make an already stern problem much worse.
“Food aid is terrible,” said Dayton resident Eric Pachman, founder of the nonprofit data analytics organization Data 4 People. “And now it will be much worse.”
In 44 states, a vast portion of the population eligible for food assistance did not receive it in 2023. And in half of the states – including Ohio – not even everyone who officially qualified as penniless received aid.
According to the organization, millions of Americans eligible for food assistance do not receive it despite their need analysis by Pachman i Data 4 People.
Provisions buried deep within Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Act” could create incentives for other states to limit access to similarly modest levels. If this happens, it could already worsen the situation in the country exploding inequality.
Holes in the safety net
Benefits under SNAP — the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — are modest at about $6.20 per person per day. However, they meet a critical need for people living near or below the official poverty line. People achieving 100% of this level live on just $15,650 per year for an individual and $32,150 for a family of four.
SNAP has been shown to assist people maintain employment and fill gaps between jobs. It has also been shown to assist children succeed in school. In 2024, Columbus-based Scioto Analysis estimated that the program kept 1.5% of Ohioans out of povertysecond only to Social Security among government anti-poverty programs.
The Data 4 the People study found that in 63% of U.S. counties in 2023, there was a discrepancy between Americans eligible for food benefits and those who actually received them.
That’s a coverage rate that Pachman described as “terrible.”
His analysis also showed a biased dimension of the problem. Over the past 15 years, states where Republicans controlled the governor’s office and both chambers of the legislature have provided SNAP to a much smaller share of residents below the poverty line than states with divided government or the Democratic trifecta.
Pachman said that beyond pointing partisan fingers, he hopes people will apply his findings to assist those in need more effectively.
“The issue here is not whether poverty in red or blue states has decreased or improved,” he said in his report. “It’s also not about the 1.6% percent of benefits that were wrongly awarded. It’s more about whether we collectively don’t mind that so many people living in poverty go without food assistance simply because of where they live and their state’s policies.”
Partisan comparisons
When last year’s government shutdown began on October 1, the Trump administration suspended SNAP benefits, even though two courts ruled that it did. he had no right. The decision cut off aid to 42 million low-income Americans and 1.45 million Ohioans and caused running through already overburdened food pantries.
Although benefits to hungry families have been blocked, U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said the SNAP program did “so bloated, so spoiled, so dysfunctional, so rotten that it’s astounding when you get down to it”
She pointed 686,000 cases of unduly granted benefits as evidence of massive fraud in the SNAP program. However, Pachman pointed out that this is an error rate of only 1.6%.
“Every program, every process, every system can have some level of failure,” he told the Capital Journal. “It’s not a surprise. The question is whether it’s too much.”
Pachman explained that for the simplest of processes – say, robots performing a elementary task – an error rate of 1.6% may be far too high. But what about a program that serves 42 million people and is administered at the federal, state and county levels?
“I would argue that SNAP is incredibly complex,” Pachman said. “For me, an error rate of 1.6% is fantastic. It seems very, very low.”
Pachman’s analysis also shows that partisan hostility to the food program is nothing fresh.
In 2010, fueled by sentiment against then-President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, Republicans took over state governments, taking control of governors and both houses of the legislature in 22 states, compared to Democrats’ 17.
According to Pachman, there was a subsequent discrepancy in the percentage of penniless residents receiving SNAP. With few exceptions, states with Democratic trifectas in government provided benefits to the penniless at much higher rates than states with Republican trifectas.
For example, in 2023, 154% of people living at or below the federal poverty guidelines were receiving SNAP in Democratic Massachusetts. In the Republican state of Wyoming, only 45% were.
Arkansas is a particular example of the partisan effect.
When control of the state government was still divided in 2014, food benefits went to 90% of Arkansans living at or below 100% of the federal poverty guidelines. But after nine years of solid Republican control – and after imposition exacting work requirements — this number dropped to 54% in 2023.
Pachman said the polarization of state government “has subjected SNAP members to more politicized views on food assistance.”
Will it get worse?
By cutting SNAP by $186 billion over 10 years, Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act imposes several fresh burdens on recipients and states administering benefits.
The Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services announced that starting this week, beneficiaries aged 55 to 64 and those with children aged 14 to 18 will be required to meet work requirement of 80 hours per month.
The Republican spending bill passed last summer also removed exemptions from work requirements for veterans, homeless people and older adults leaving foster care.
SNAP “is designed to supplement income, not replace it,” Matt Damschroder, Ohio’s director of Job and Family Services, said in a written statement.
“The most reliable path to long-term financial stability is employment,” he said. “A good job not only provides greater independence, but also a buffer against future disruptions to state aid.”
But when Arkansas experimented with similar work requirements for Medicaid participants in 2018, it didn’t produce the result that program supporters expected. The mandate caused confusion, 18,000 residents lost insurance, and the state’s employment level remained unchanged, Municipal Institute reported last year.
Most importantly, the law by imposition threatens to massively escalate states’ administrative costs penalties if they exceed error rates claimed by Ohio food bank operators impossibly low. For example, if Ohio’s error rate is as high this year as it was in 2024, the state would have to pay the feds $318 million– according to estimates by the Center for Social Solutions based in Cleveland.
The idea, Pachman said, is to create incentives for states to serve as few people as possible.
“If you limit access to the program, the error rate will be very low,” he said. “It just makes sense. If I never go out and drive, I can guarantee I’ll never be in an accident. It’s a very simple way to eliminate all car accidents – no one drives. That’s the incentive the federal government is sending now.”
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