A dramatic decline in SNAP enrollment
Marketplace All-in-One
Marketplace
4.5 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 2 July 2026
⏱️ 8 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It's been nearly a year since President Donald Trump's big tax bill. The law makes it harder to qualify for programs like SNAP and includes new work requirements. Some states are already seeing sharp drops in SNAP enrollment as they implement the changes in the law. By some measures, participation in the program is down by nearly 10%. Then, we'll continue to examine the history of the U.S. economy.
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| 0:00.0 | One year of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and more than 250 years of the American economy. |
| 0:08.6 | From Marketplace in Washington, I'm Kimberly Adams. We're just a couple of days shy of the one-year |
| 0:13.6 | anniversary of President Trump signing his big tax and spending bill into law. Changes in the law |
| 0:19.5 | make it harder to qualify for programs like |
| 0:21.7 | food assistance, and some states are already seeing dramatic declines in SNAP enrollment. Marketplace's |
| 0:27.6 | Nancy Marshall-Genzor reports. The impact of the huge tax and spending law, also known as HR1, |
| 0:34.4 | hit SNAP beneficiaries before the law was even a year old. Ed Bolin at the Center on Budget and |
| 0:40.4 | Policy Priorities says between the law's July 2025 enactment and March of this year, |
| 0:46.1 | Over 4 million people have dropped off SNAP. That's close to 10% of the overall case load. |
| 0:52.4 | The law now requires new groups of recipients to prove they have a job, |
| 0:56.8 | like adults without a disability up to age 64 who don't live with dependent children or who live |
| 1:02.4 | with kids over age 14. Boland says the new requirements also apply to young adults, aging out of |
| 1:08.5 | foster care, veterans, and people experiencing homelessness. |
| 1:12.6 | Historically, we know people lose benefits when they're subjected to that work requirement |
| 1:16.9 | because they're unable to prove that they're working enough hours to stay eligible. |
| 1:21.1 | About 85% of SNAP households do include a working adult, according to Census Bureau data. |
| 1:28.0 | Boland says the drop in SNAP recipients is also due to new rules for states. |
| 1:32.8 | They decide who qualifies and who doesn't, and sometimes they make mistakes, awarding a |
| 1:37.6 | SNAP applicant too much or too little. |
| 1:40.4 | Right now, the federal government pays for 100% of SNAP benefits, but if a state's error rate reaches 6%, they have to pay part of that cost. |
| 1:49.1 | Gina Plata Nino at the Food Research and Action Center says that's something the states are taking great pains to avoid. |
| 1:57.0 | She says they're imposing more requirements for benefits, but staffers are overwhelmed by the additional paperwork. |
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