Oklahoma food banks lobby Congress to delay SNAP cost share plan

Washington, D.C. –

Nonprofits and charities fighting hunger in Oklahoma say there are more mouths to feed in the wake of the changes Congress made last year to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP.) Now, states with high error rates must begin covering some of the program’s cost a year from now. Food banks are asking Congress to delay that cost shift because they say the actions states like Oklahoma are taking are putting more families at risk.

Here is what some food bank advocates said while in D.C.

RELATED: How SNAP Benefits Work, Recent Challenges, and Oklahoma’s Future Risk

“We’re working with the members of our delegation to better understand the problems Oklahomans are facing with hunger issues. There’s been an increase in the delays on SNAP benefits. We’ve had people face three-hour wait times calling in, trying to renew their benefits. Because of the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill last year, we face an error rate problem in Oklahoma that we have to shrink beneath 6% to make sure the state is not penalized, and so the state is doing what they can to try and clean up those issues, but a lot of Oklahomans are suffering.”

When you see the SNAP benefit lost, you’re seeing that shift go over to charitable services and churches. But when people don’t have that extra little bit of income, tithing is down churches, therefore, the churches can’t provide more food bags out to support the needy. So, it’s an escalating problem that really has to be met before the end of the year.

“This year, most important is the SNAP error rate cost share that is looming over the heads of every state in the country, causing more than 140,000 Oklahomans to lose access to SNAP over the last year, and really just having horrible repercussions for our charitable sector, for families, for kids, for seniors. And we’re just asking for more time to let states do this right, so we don’t have this sort of human churn and, you know, unintended consequences that have come with it so far.”

“So, in reality, some of the changes to eligibility have done what they’re meant to do–it has knocked people off the program, not necessarily gotten them back to work, but it has knocked them off. Those that, you know, the policy said should no longer have access. A whole lot of people who do qualify and who should have access to the SNAP are falling by the wayside, because naturally, you know, states are not punished if they don’t give the benefit to somebody who’s qualified. They are punished if they pay that person slightly too much in the benefit, right? And so, states have all created a ton of barriers, a ton of paperwork requirements and all these other hurdles people have to jump through to prove accuracy. And the result is people giving up, people being rejected when they shouldn’t be. I mean, frankly, the amount of hopelessness you hear from folks who are waiting three, 4 or 5 hours on the phone only to be told they don’t have the right paperwork, or standing in line all day at DHS. You know, when a working mom has to take ten hours off of work to try and get SNAP, eventually that math doesn’t map and they just give up. And that’s what we’re seeing across the state and across the country. “

“Our organization sees a lot of people in the gap, we call it. So, people that don’t make little enough to qualify for SNAP benefits or other benefits, but they don’t make enough to prepare or plan or be prepared for unexpected expenses like, say, your state experiences 100 degree weather for several weeks in a in a row, and you have double the utility bill, or your car breaks down, or you need new tires, or you have several kids in their home from school for the summer, and all of a sudden your grocery bill triples because you need them fed at your house… those kinds of things. We see a lot of guests like that. We see thousands of households a month, and we’re and we’re prepared to do so. And we’re so happy to. But part of what happens when people need a government assistance program for a time and our on it and don’t need us, but then it fails them. Now they’re going to come to us too. So this increased guest influx we’re seeing, like, I hear all the time in Oklahoma, ‘well, our charitable food systems will fill in because that’s what we do, we help each other.’ And I want so desperately to say that we can just do that, that we can solve all the problems, ‘Oh, yeah. Let’s just let’s stop the entire government program and we can feed the community, and that’s the answer to everything.’ But especially with this last circumstance, we’ve found that the controversy surrounding SNAP and the overall belief that, you know, the cutbacks are just getting rid of waste, fraud and abuse, maybe these were people that didn’t need to be on SNAP anyway. So, the overall public perception is, ‘oh, that’s not actually people that need groceries. So, as opposed to the government shutdown, when we saw donors beating down our doors to help support us so that we could support others, I mean, through this last increase, we haven’t really seen that same response. And I’m hearing that from my friends serving all across the state. So we’re trying we’re trying to meet the needs of our community, but there are a lot of people who have gotten kicked off SNAP, just because they can’t recertify, they can’t get through, they can’t get in for an appointment because of short staff and long call waits and and extra paperwork that’s been demanded, and we’re hearing these stories over and over and over, and some families that are just giving up, even though they can greatly benefit from the program, because they don’t have the time and energy to keep knocking on the door. So, we’re doing our best to meet these needs, but, I’m learning through these days how important it is to come here and thankful to Oklahoma for making this trip possible so that we can tell our elected officials who work for us the stories that our guests are experiencing back in our state.