By Emily Wildau, MPP
June 20, 2025
This blog was last updated on June 30, 2025 to reflect changes to the cost sharing calculation and number of households with children ages 10-17 that are at risk of losing some of their SNAP benefits.
No one deserves to go hungry, and the vast majority of our friends and neighbors in New Mexico have held this fundamental belief for generations. But despite the proven success of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Congress is seeking cruel cuts to federal funding that will leave many families hungry.
Make no mistake – the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a budget reconciliation bill Congress is using to more easily pass controversial fiscal policy with a slim majority – will cause immense harm to New Mexico families and communities. The proposed SNAP cuts alone will raise food costs for the one in five New Mexico households receiving benefits, making it harder to afford not only food, but all other basic needs.
For the first time in history, the proposed changes will require states to pay for a significant portion of SNAP benefits, based on a single-year error rate of 6% or higher beginning in October 2027, and shifting to a three-year average beginning in October 2028. Only seven states have an error rate below this level, and the higher the error rate, the greater the share of SNAP benefit costs they will be required to pay. Instead of supporting the majority of states to improve error rates, this change will take a punitive approach, and force states to make sacrifices in their budget in order to remain solvent.
New Mexico’s most recent three-year average error rate is 12%, so this change will cost our state an estimated $153 million annually (at the time when these changes take effect) to maintain current levels of participation. While the state might be able to cover this cost in the short term, it will soon have to make difficult cuts to other critical programs. To put this into perspective, $153 million in the state budget could cover 2,400 teacher salaries, but New Mexico will have to instead use that money to cover SNAP benefits.
The bill also expands work requirements for SNAP, even though research shows these requirements are ineffective in increasing employment. Under this proposal, work requirements will be expanded to include older adults up to 65 and adults with children 10-17 years old. And in two-parent households, just one parent working won’t be enough to meet the work requirement – both parents will have to work, meaning some families will also have to scramble to find child care. In New Mexico, these changes will mean that 28,000 people in households with older adults and 27,000 people in households with children ages 10-17 would be at risk of losing some amount of their SNAP benefits. Exemptions to the work requirements for veterans, people experiencing homelessness, and former foster youth would also be eliminated.
While many pieces of this bill will hurt kids and families and worsen poverty, the changes to SNAP will mean more families will struggle to afford food at a time when grocery costs remain high. And aside from this direct harm, New Mexico will be asked to make an impossible decision as the state has to pay a large share of SNAP benefits for the first time: cut other critical programs to continue providing SNAP benefits to the one in five households who rely on the assistance, or make changes to SNAP that would limit participation to preserve spending for other programs. New Mexico and many other states might even be forced to opt out of SNAP entirely in the coming years, with the program becoming especially vulnerable to economic recessions instead of responsive to them.
Ultimately, the impact of the reconciliation bill will be food taken out of the mouths of kids and families, and this cruelty doesn’t reflect our values as New Mexicans.