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HARRISBURG — For days, Gov. Josh Shapiro has been warning of the devastating impact President Donald Trump’s domestic policy bill will have on Pennsylvania’s ability to feed its poor and disabled residents.
The Democratic governor even signaled this week that Trump’s bill might altogether end benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, that 2 million Pennsylvanians rely on to buy groceries and feed their families.
Now, with Republicans in Congress having approved and sent the massive, marquee bill to Trump’s desk, it is all but certain that Pennsylvania will need to scrounge up, at minimum, an additional $125 million in its budget in the next fiscal year to keep those benefits intact.
In the worst-case scenario, that tab could balloon to nearly $800 million, an amount that would likely require a large-scale tax hike or other major fiscal policy change to generate such vast revenue in a short period of time — a heavy lift in politically calm times, let alone in 2026, a gubernatorial election year. Pennsylvania already faces a structural deficit, with spending consistently exceeding the revenues it brings in.
At a recent news conference, Shapiro put it more bluntly: “Pennsylvania can't backfill those cuts … There's a real question as to whether or not we will be able to operate SNAP any longer.”
The legislation, dubbed the “one big, beautiful bill” and supported by the majority of congressional Republicans, seeks to extend tax cuts the president made in his first term in office. The legislation would pay for this in part with steep cuts to health care and food assistance programs used by millions of low-income and disabled Americans.
Congress finalized the plan Thursday, with the House giving its seal of approval following a near party-line vote in the Senate. The bill, which now awaits Trump's signature, would make sweeping changes both to how much states pay into managing the SNAP program within their borders and how much they pay to underwrite the food assistance benefits to consumers.
Currently, states pay half the cost of administering the program, while the federal government covers 100% of the cost of benefits. As of May, there were more than 1.9 million people in the food program in Pennsylvania alone. The majority of beneficiaries are children under 18 and adults over 55, according to the state Department of Human Services, which oversees SNAP.
It costs roughly $500 million annually to administer the food program in Pennsylvania, with the state kicking in half that amount, or about $250 million, according to legislative estimates of the program’s price tag.
Under Trump’s bill, federal lawmakers would increase states’ share of administrative costs to 75% starting in summer 2026 (it would not impact the current fiscal year budget, over which Shapiro and state lawmakers are still haggling). In Pennsylvania, that would require finding an additional $125 million to cover the extra cost.
More significantly, the federal bill could also force many states — Pennsylvania included — to have to find hundreds of millions of dollars to cover, for the first time, a portion of the cost of benefits.
The bill would do so by homing in on a state’s so-called “error rate,” which measures how frequently a state either overpaid or underpaid SNAP benefits to recipients.
Starting in fiscal year 2027-28, states with error rates over 6% would have to pay a portion, on a sliding scale of up to 15%, of the total cost of benefits to residents. In the most recent fiscal year, all but nine states had error rates higher than 6%, federal data show.
Pennsylvania pays out roughly $4.3 billion annually to SNAP recipients, according to the legislative estimates. Based on its current error rate of 10.76%, state officials would have to find a staggering $650 million — through new revenue sources, spending cuts, or a combination — to keep the program intact. However, that number could decrease, depending on what Pennsylvania’s error rate is in future years.
That rate has fluctuated over time.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Congress loosened the requirements for states to administer the program to make it easier for families to continue receiving benefits. In the three years prior, Pennsylvania’s error rate hovered between 5% and 7%. The most recent figure represents an improvement from the previous fiscal year, when the error rate was 16.6%, and brings Pennsylvania below the national average for the first time since 2019.
The decrease was the result of changes that included updated application and renewal forms, improved training for staff, and more regular monitoring of error rate trends, according to Ali Fogarty, a spokesperson for the state Department of Human Services.
The error rate mostly reflects “minor paperwork errors” like missing signatures or incorrectly calculated wages, Fogarty said, adding that states must report errors to the federal government for tracking purposes even when they have already been identified and corrected.
In a statement, U.S. Rep. Glenn Thompson, a Republican who represents north-central Pennsylvania, noted the improvement but said the current error rate is “still unacceptable to taxpayers and SNAP participants.” Requiring states with high error rates to cover some of the cost of benefits is the “only way” to give administrators “skin in the game,” said Thompson, who chairs the U.S. House Committee on Agriculture, which oversees the federal agency that administers SNAP.
States’ error rates vary widely, due to factors including administrative capacity and staff turnover, as well as demographics, said Lauren Bauer, a fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, a think tank.
The error rate, which is calculated based on a random sample of cases, doesn’t give a full picture of how effectively a state is running its program, she said. “It’s a very imprecise estimate that is now going to have very, very big consequences.”
The federal bill would also tighten or impose new work requirements on certain SNAP recipients, which Democrats have argued will result in current recipients being dropped from the program.
The state Department of Human Services estimates that the work requirement changes would cause 144,000 Pennsylvanians to lose SNAP benefits.
State Democratic lawmakers have, in recent days, stepped up their criticism of the GOP-backed federal bill, calling it cruel and asserting it will hurt the most vulnerable populations in order to continue tax breaks for rich constituents.
“No state has the capacity to take on the billions in cuts that are included in this bill,” state Sen. Vince Hughes (D., Philadelphia) said in a statement this week, adding that members of Congress who support the bill have “no regard for the health of Americans or anyone who is not a millionaire or billionaire.”
And Pennsylvania’s network of charitable food organizations would be unable to fill the hole: SNAP provides 9 meals for every one provided by those organizations, according to the state Department of Human Services.
Philadelphia has the highest proportion of residents receiving SNAP benefits, but other parts of the commonwealth also rely heavily on the program. In Fayette County, in southwestern Pennsylvania, 23% of residents are enrolled.
The proposed changes are “not good for our county, or any county in the U.S.,” said Vincent Vicites, a Democrat who serves as one of Fayette’s three county commissioners. Much of the county’s budget is taken up by services it’s required to provide by state law, leaving little leeway to make up for federal cuts, he said.
“That’s something we’ve never had to do.”
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