Republicans are defending recent legislation aimed at incentivizing states to fight erroneous payments through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) — but Democrats are picking a fight over a last-minute change they argue encourages states to have higher error rates.

Legislation passed out of the GOP-led Congress on Thursday that could see some states pay a share of benefit costs for SNAP, also known as the food stamps program, for the first time.

The federal government currently covers the cost of benefits, but under the plan that’s been tossed around by congressional Republicans over the past few months, some states would have to cover anywhere between 5 percent and 15 percent of the benefits costs if they have a payment error rate above 6 percent — which factors in over-and-underpayments.

However, changes were made to the text that allowed delayed implementation for the cost-share requirements for states with the highest error rates shortly before its passage in the Senate this week. GOP leadership sought to lock down support from Alaska Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, whose state had the highest payment error rate in the country in fiscal year 2024.

Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, said Republicans made the change to comply with chamber rules.

“You have to give those states time to adjust because about all they’re going to do is get down to that midrange, and then they’re still going to have to pay a penalty because they’re so high,” he said. “So, it’s about giving states a fair chance to adjust.”

Under the plan that was greenlit by Congress on Thursday, some states would begin contributing a share of benefit costs in fiscal year 2028, depending on their payment error rate. But the plan also allows for delayed implementation for two years for states with payment error rates if they reach around 13.34 percent or higher — an effort Republicans say is aimed at providing states like Alaska with much higher rates to bring them down.

Hoeven said the GOP-led agriculture committee, which crafted the SNAP pitch, “came up with a lot of proposals” trying to comply with restrictive rules governing a special process that Republicans used to approve the plan in the upper chamber without Democratic support. Under the rules, Hoeven said, “they always said you got to give states time to adjust in order to meet the test.”

Republicans say the overall proposal is aimed at incentivizing states to reduce erroneous payments. But Democrats have sharply criticized the plan, arguing it would encourage states with higher error rates to continue making erroneous payments.

“The most absurd example of the hypocrisy of the Republican bill: they have now proposed delaying SNAP cuts FOR TWO YEARS ONLY FOR STATES with the highest error rates just to bury their help for Alaska: AK, DC, FL, GA, MD, MA, NJ, NM, NY, OR. They are rewarding errors,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), top Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee, wrote this week as she sounded off in a series of posts on X over the plan.

In another swipe at the plan, Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) wrote on X that he had to text his state’s governor that 10 states with “the MOST ERRORS in administering the program” are “exempt from food assistance cuts,” at that Hawaii is not exempt because the governor has done “good work in reducing the error rate by 15 percent.”

The comments come as Democrats and advocates have argued the measure could lead to states having to cut benefits because of the shift in cost burden.

Recent figures unveiled by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) showed Alaska’s payment error rate hit 24.66 percent in fiscal year 2024. The national average was 10.93 percent. 

Murkowski said after the vote that she didn’t “like” the bill but sought to “to take care of Alaska’s interests.” But she also said she knew “that, in many parts of the country, there are Americans that are not going to be advantaged by this bill.”

“I don’t like the fact that we moved through an artificial deadline, an artificial timeline to produce something, to meet a deadline, rather than to actually try to produce the best bill for the country,” she said. “But when I saw the direction that this is going, you can either say, ‘I don’t like it and not try to help my state,’ or you can roll up your sleeves.”

Republicans also criticized Democrats for challenging a previous GOP-crafted SNAP provision that sought to provide more targeted help to Alaska, as GOP leadership sought to win Murkowski’s support for the bill, which ultimately passed the Senate in a tie-breaking vote. However, Democrats opposed previously proposed waivers for the noncontiguous states of Alaska and Hawaii, decrying “special treatment.”

In remarks on Wednesday, House Agriculture Chairman Glenn Thompson (R-Pa.) the Senate “had to add something to get to address that challenge that Alaska has.”

“The goal is, from a functionality perspective, they need to get their error rate down as soon as possible, because when the time comes, and they have to start to pay, they don’t want to be that high error rate that you’re coming in now,” he said. 

“In most states, Alaska would be a challenge, I think, but most states have been under 6 percent at one time in past years,” he said.

However, he also wasn’t “crazy about” work requirements exemptions for some Indigenous populations in the Senate’s version of Trump’s megabill that didn’t appear in the House bill, as Republicans seek to tighten work requirements.

“It’s what the Senate had to do,” he said, though he noted that “economic conditions are challenging on those sovereign lands and in high unemployment, high poverty.”

It’s unclear whether the carve-outs were the result of talks Alaska senators had with GOP leadership around SNAP in the days leading up to the Senate passage. The Hill has reached out to their offices for comment. 

The Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development said Alaska has “one of the largest indigenous populations in the nation,” with Alaska Natives representing 17 percent of the state in 2010.

At the same time, the Senate bill nixed temporary exemptions that had been preserved in the House bill for former foster youth, homeless individuals and veterans. 

Despite being preserved in the House plan, Thompson criticized the carve-outs, which were secured as part of a previous bipartisan deal in 2023.

“It cheats all those individuals from having access to that to us funding their SNAP Employment and career and technical education, because the whole goal here is to raise these people out of poverty if they’re struggling in poverty, because that’s how you qualify for SNAP,” he said. “And the fact is, they were made ineligible for the really great benefits.”

Other proposals in the party’s SNAP plan seek to limit the federal government’s ability to increase monthly benefits in the future, changes to work requirements and include a chunk of farm provisions. 

The plan comes as Republicans sought to find ways to generate north of $1 trillion in savings of federal dollars over the next decade as part of a major package that also advances President Trump’s tax agenda, which is estimated to add trillions of dollars to the nation’s deficits. 

Republicans say the proposed spending reductions, which are achieved also through changes to programs like Medicaid, are aimed at rooting out “waste, fraud and abuse” in the federal government.

But preliminary research released this week by the Urban Institute found that just the SNAP changes could affect about 22 million families, who researchers said could be at risk of “losing some or all of their SNAP benefits” under the plan.

Asked if last-minute changes to the plan to help other states and not his bothered him, Sen. Jim Justice (R-W.Va.), who ultimately voted for the plan, told reporters this week, “Yes and no.”

“But at the same time, I think they probably had more severe need and so I think it’ll be fine,” Justice, a former governor, said Tuesday. 

“If it’s like any business deal that I’ve ever seen in my life, you know, the parties of a good business deal walk away after they get something done, and they walk away, and they’re probably holding their nose a little bit, and they’re probably regretting certain things and saying, ‘Doggone, we didn’t do good on this and that and everything,’ That’s a good deal.”