No matter the outcome of next week’s election, we can be certain that the new President and Congress will confront urgent policy and legislative challenges. One priority issue for the new Congress will be renewing the Farm Bill.

True to its name, the Farm Bill authorizes a wide range of programs to support farmers and ranchers nationwide. But it also authorizes the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly called food stamps. SNAP is among the largest safety net programs for low-income households, and accounts for the vast majority of Farm Bill spending – projected to be almost 80 percent of the $1.5 trillion dedicated to Farm Bill programs over the next decade. 

One major concern regarding SNAP is its significant growth in recent years. Even after adjusting for inflation, SNAP expenses have risen by 40 percent since the 2018 Farm Bill—from $81.2 billion in 2018 to $113 billion in 2023. Moreover, SNAP serves a growing share of the population. In 2008, just 9 percent of the US population received SNAP, while in 2023, 12.6 percent did. Despite increases in spending and caseloads, SNAP still struggles to connect low-income households to employment and improve health and nutrition, all while suffering from many administrative issues.

Over the past year, Les Ford and I convened a group of SNAP experts to develop a framework to reform SNAP. Our objective was to identify the core areas in which the program has fallen short and develop a comprehensive set of solutions to improve its effectiveness. Our solutions are designed to meet the long-term goals of the program, and their relevance are not limited to the next Farm Bill. Our group shared a core belief that SNAP requires fundamental reform to fully achieve its potential in reducing food insecurity, enhancing nutrition, and supporting upward mobility.

Our “Reform Framework for SNAP” identifies five priority areas, which I summarize below to include our key findings and recommendation:

Program Administration. Given that 100 percent of benefits are funded by the federal government, SNAP’s current financing structure offers states little incentive to target program resources efficiently and to improve participant outcomes. We propose to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of SNAP by shifting some of the financial responsibility for the program to states. Increasing the incentive for states to control costs, combat fraud, and improve participant outcomes will lead to a better SNAP.

Eligibility and Benefit Levels. SNAP eligibility levels and benefit levels have increased in recent years in ways inconsistent with the original intent of the program. We propose ways to target SNAP resources more effectively by rolling back the improper Thrifty Food Plan reevaluation, ending broad-based categorical eligibility, and eliminating benefit cliffs that often prevent households from achieving upward mobility.

Employment and Poverty Reduction. Too many SNAP participants face employment disincentives due to design flaws in the way SNAP benefits are structured, and existing aspects of the policy explicitly designed to encourage work have been undermined by the states. We propose tightening and expanding work requirements, while redesigning the benefit structure to offer predictable and reasonable benefit reduction rates. 

Nutrition Improvement. At its core, SNAP is a nutrition program. However, too many SNAP participants suffer from diet-related diseases that limit their quality of life and prevent stable, long-term employment. We propose to refocus the program on nutrition improvement by establishing nutrition as a core SNAP goal, proposing policies that restrict non-nutritional foods from the program while incentivizing nutritious foods, and requiring retail stores to share their data to better inform SNAP’s contribution to diet quality. 

Program Integrity. Policymakers, participants, and taxpayers need assurance that SNAP funds are used properly and waste is minimized. We identified numerous ways the program can be manipulated to support fraud and abuse. We propose ways to incentivize states to prevent errors and fraud from the start, including assuming a larger financial stake in the program, while also recommending several program changes, including limiting self-attestation as an eligibility verification technique, allowing states to retain a larger share of fraudulent benefits recouped, and tightening the criteria for authorizing SNAP retailers.  

The new Congress will likely turn to legislating a new Farm Bill after the first of the year. Our “Reform Framework for SNAP” offers policymakers a roadmap for addressing SNAP’s most fundamental weaknesses.