Why is Oregon getting rewarded despite its high error rate? The short answer is, Alaska.
To get One Big Beautiful Bill passed, Trump needed the support of Republican Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski. And Alaska has consistently had the highest error rate in the SNAP program; in the most recent year, its error rate was more than 20%.
So the senior senator tied her support for the bill to whether Republicans agreed to give states with the worst error rates (anything more than 13.32% in the most recent year) a one-year pass.
In other words, the consequences match the financial offense, unless the offense was really bad, in which case the worst offenders—Oregon, Alaska, four other states, and the District of Columbia—get to skate for one year.
Libertarian think tank the Cato Institute believes the “carve-out” has incentivized states to keep their error rates high.
“These loopholes have broader consequences,” a March Cato blog says. The new requirements “also risk penalizing states with transparent quality control processes while rewarding those who game the system by underreporting improper payments.”
Oregon state Rep. Anna Scharf (R-Amity) agrees that states should be on the hook when they have a higher error rate: “State agencies need to do better and quit asking for more people and more money as the only solution to problems,” she said in an email.
Asked why Oregon’ s error rate has exceeded the national average for eight straight years, the Oregon Department of Human Services said the blame lies, for the most part, with applicants. The agency did its own analysis of the reasons for the most current error rate, and it concluded two-thirds of errors were the fault of end users, while state employees were responsible for the rest.
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