NCSL Updates
NCSL Supports Child Care Access and Affordability
NCSL encourages Congress to update the Child Tax Credit, Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit and 45F Tax Credit to help states improve child care access and affordability. Read the full letter.
Congressional Updates
House Considers Historic Shift: States Would Bear SNAP Costs for the First Time
The House Agriculture Committee is expected to mark up its reconciliation bill this week, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is front and center of negotiations. The nation’s largest anti-hunger program (formerly known as food stamps) provides food assistance to 42 million low-income people; the benefit is fully paid by the federal government, while administrative costs are split with the states.
A new proposal would shift a percentage of the benefit cost to states for the first time in the program’s history and would tie the percentage to a state’s payment error rate: States with higher error rates would pay a higher percentage than states with lower error rates, and the low end of the cost share could start at 10%, according to some reports. In 2023, state error rates ranged from 3.42% to 60.37%—including 28 states with error rates over 10%, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Specifics of the plan have not yet been released, but for context, if a 10% cost share were applied across the board, states would be looking at an $89 billion price tag over 10 years, according to modeling by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.
The error rate measures the accuracy of each state’s eligibility and benefit determinations—the percentage of SNAP funds that were paid to ineligible households or were overpayments or underpayments. Details regarding the percentage that each state would pay are not yet available.
To help grasp the impact of proposals to reduce the federal share of SNAP funding, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities modeled a 10% cost shift in terms of other state budget priorities. If a 10% cost shift had been in place last year:
- Pennsylvania would have had to pay close to $427 million to avoid an interruption in food benefits to families, about 1.5 times what the state spends on its entire community college system or about twice what it spends annually on environmental protection programs.
- Iowa would have paid almost $53 million, roughly equivalent to what the state spends annually on its agricultural department and on efforts to help people access addiction treatment, combined.
- Kansas would have paid about $41 million, the equivalent of salary costs for about 725 of its public-school teachers, more than double the state’s annual spending on its Office of Veterans Services and nearly all of what it spends on its state Bureau of Investigation.
States are facing tough choices regarding how or whether to backfill federal funding changes, raise revenues, reduce benefits and/or limit eligibility.
Read more about other SNAP proposals under consideration as part of the reconciliation process as well as other safety net programs, including Medicaid.
CALL TO ACTION
The time is now to contact your congressional delegations for more information and/or share your perspectives on these proposals. Markups are happening in the coming hours and days!
Congress Weighs Eliminating Social Services Block Grant, Sparking Debate Over Aid for Vulnerable Communities
Among the list of potential reductions being considered by Congress to help fund the administration’s budget priorities: the complete elimination of the Social Services Block Grant, a flexible grant that states and territories can use to help at risk children, older adults and families. In 2022, states received $1.6 billion in SSBG funds, which reached over 20 million people—45% of whom were children, according to the Administration for Children and Families.
States may spend SSBG funds on a variety of social service programs, but the highest share of spending in fiscal year 2023, $971 million, went to child welfare and child protective services, counseling and support services. The same year, 44 states spent $208 million in SSBG funds for 1 million vulnerable adults. States also have the option to transfer up to 10% of their Temporary Assistance for Needy Families funds to SSBG; in FY 2021, states transferred $1.14 billion from TANF to SSBG. The Center for Law and Social Policy estimates that proposed cuts to TANF that are also being considered as part of the budget reconciliation process, combined with the elimination of SSBG, would risk nearly 40,000 children losing access to child care.
State Use Examples of SSBG Funds (compiled by Child Welfare League of America)
- Georgia: Funds used for Critical Adult Protective Services, including intake staff and travel reimbursement for home visits.
- Hawaii: Funds used for training and for essential staff investigating abuse of vulnerable adults.
- Indiana: Serves 30,000 older adults in Northern Indiana and provide home-and community-based services to 49 clients through SSBG. Nearly half of these older adult clients are at a high nutritional risk, and 98% of all clients have at least one critical need that is being met by this program.
- Missouri: Adoption and foster care programs, serving nearly 25,000 children annually. The Missouri Department of Social Services noted that loss of SSBG funds would be “catastrophic” for these foster care and adoption programs, as the state would not be able to make up the funding and would have to make significant cuts.
- New Jersey: In federal FY 2025, New Jersey received $43.3 million in SSBG to fund case management for children and families involved in the child protection system and in adoptions. It also funds staff salaries, building security and general maintenance.
- Pennsylvania: Erie County uses SSBG funds for mental health administrative case management. Without these funds, the county would face a 25% reduction in its funding for these services, which coordinate supports for about 1,350 individuals. Crawford County uses its SSBG allocation to support in-home community habilitation services for individuals with intellectual disabilities and to support mental health services at the county drop-in center, which saw a caseload of 743 individuals in 2024.
- Texas: Meals on Wheels Plus, Inc., which serves 1,738 clients in Abilene and an additional 14 small rural communities across five counties in central Texas, depends on SSBG funds for nearly half of its total budget. This organization does not receive any other federal dollars and experienced a significant funding shortfall last year, with SSBG funds covering meals for only 1,000 clients, leaving 300 individuals on a waitlist to receive critical services.
The flexibility of SSBG allows each state to address its unique circumstances by spending federal funding on services that are most needed. The elimination of SSBG would shift the cost of programs supported by this funding onto states, most of which are already facing tight budgets for social services programs.
Additional Resources:
CALL TO ACTION
The time is now to contact your congressional delegations for more information about this proposal and/or to share your perspectives. Markups are happening in the coming hours.
Court Updates
Court Ruling Blocks ED From Canceling Education Stimulus Funds to States
The ruling applies to the 16 states and Washington, D.C., which sued the Department of Education over the funding cancellation. The ruling also prohibits the department from making changes to the states’ previously approved spending extensions without at least two weeks’ notice. Prior to the announcement, over 40 states had been granted an extension to spend the remaining $3.6 billion in Education Stabilization Funds through March 2026. Read more