WASHINGTON — The number of people on food stamps plummeted over the past year after Republicans in Congress and the Trump Administration implemented more stringent requirements, and Louisiana saw steeper declines than most states.
Democrats and advocates for low-income people say the drop vindicates their concerns that the One Big Beautiful Bill Republicans passed last year will make people go hungry. But GOP leaders argue it’s proof that they are tackling abuse of the program, reining in its growing cost, and freeing people from dependence on government.
Louisiana Department of Health reports show the number of households in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program decreased from 396,857 in July 2025 to 320,603 cases at the end of this June — a decline of 19.2%.
That includes a decline of 18.6% in the New Orleans region; 20.1% in the Baton Rouge region; 17.2% in the Lafayette region; and 19.2% in the Shreveport region.
Monthly reports from the health department also show that most of the removals were for procedural reasons, like failing to provide required paperwork or complete interviews. In November and January, for example, 81.2% of removals were for procedural reasons.
An analysis of the data by Invest in Louisiana, a Baton Rouge-based group that advocates for robust government social programs, found that 75% of all closed SNAP cases were procedural.
“What concerns me is not the number by itself. It is that the state’s own records say most of these cases closed over paperwork rather than over eligibility,” said Tia Fields, a policy analyst for the organization who focuses on SNAP. “When people who qualify lose food assistance because a notice did not reach them, the state has not saved money. It has moved the cost to food banks, emergency rooms, and school cafeterias.”
The decline falls hardest on people with unstable housing, limited broadband, no reliable transportation, and rotating work schedules, Fields said.
Households participating in SNAP often cover multiple family members, including children. The Invest in Louisiana analysis of LDH statistics showed a 21.1% decline in the total number of individual SNAP participants from 805,633 to 635,406 between July 2025 and June 2026.
That tracks with an Associated Press analysis of U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics that found a 21.5% decline in Louisiana enrollments over a slightly different 12-month period, from April 2025 to May 2026.
The USDA data shows 5.7 million people lost their benefits since May 2025 — a 13% decrease for all 50 states. Louisiana’s SNAP decline ranks 16th nationwide by USDA metrics.
Regardless of how the stats were gathered and by whom, the decline is the largest Louisiana has seen since 1996.
Of the roughly 170,000 people who lost food stamps, roughly 82,000 were children — a 23% decline, the second-most precipitous in the country — and about 90,000 were adults, many of whom are seniors or disabled and living on a fixed income, Invest in Louisiana calculated.
The impact of declining food stamp eligibility is more than just a skipped meal.
SNAP eligibility plays into the calculations of which schools can offer children free breakfasts and lunches. And that automatic free meal certification plays into the formulas that set how much funding schools receive.
Also, according to LDH, SNAP beneficiaries use a debit-style card, known as the Louisiana Purchase card, to spend about $1.6 billion annually with 4,000 Louisiana retailers, many of whom are small family-owned businesses.
A political battle
Reductions to SNAP and other social programs like Medicaid are playing a major part in congressional midterm campaigns that will determine whether Democrats or Republicans control the U.S. House and Senate in 2027.
The decrease is much faster than predicted by the Congressional Budget Office last year when considering the impact of the new eligibility and recertification standards imposed by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025. OBBBA is the Republicans’ signature legislation, on which not a single Democrat voted. Its features are being rolled out for SNAP this year and next.
The new law increased the age of those who have to work to qualify for food stamps from 54 years to 64, and removed exemptions for veterans, 18-year-olds coming out of foster care, the homeless, certain disabled persons, parents with dependent children over the age of 14, non-U.S. citizens, along with others. States were limited in their ability to get federal permission to waive work requirements in areas with high unemployment.
Since July 4, 2025, when the new SNAP standards became law, state and federal agencies have been developing the rules for what data is necessary for an applicant to prove eligibility, such as recent wage statements and proof of citizenship papers.
Democratic candidates, generally, contend the decline was the inevitable outcome of OBBBA, which paid for tax breaks that mostly help the wealthy by cutting funds for social safety net programs like food stamps and health care. New work requirements, coupled with more verification and recertification procedures, are driving the drop in participation, Democrats argue.
“What we are seeing in Louisiana is exactly what many of us warned would happen when this so-called ‘Big Ugly Law’ was passed. Make eligibility more complicated, add work and reporting requirements, pile on more paperwork and bureaucracy, and people are going to fall through the cracks,” said U.S. Rep. Troy Carter, D-New Orleans. “For somebody living paycheck to paycheck, this is not some abstract Washington policy debate. This is what gets left out of the grocery cart.”
Republicans argue that changes to SNAP weren’t that dramatic and the expanded work requirement was not a chief cause for the decline. The enrollment drop is an effect of a successful effort to remove people who were fraudulently or improperly on the rolls, they say.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Benton Republican who is campaigning for GOP candidates around the country, wouldn’t comment on SNAP enrollment declines. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, a Jefferson Republican who also is on the campaign trail, didn’t respond to a request for comment.
But Johnson often repeats what he said in June: “Democrats will scream ‘cuts,’ but what they’re really defending is a wasteful program that discourages work, mismanages billions, and traps people in dependency. Republicans are proud to defend commonsense welfare reform, fiscal sanity, and the dignity of work.”
Johnson points to administration figures that showed a 17% increase in SNAP enrollment since 2019, with spending surging 83% from $60 billion to $110 billion annually.
The Cato Institute, a Libertarian think tank based in Washington, in an August commentary supported Johnson and GOP arguments writing that the decline “reflects states unwinding pandemic-era waivers and eligibility rules that kept caseloads elevated.”
Processing errors
The Louisiana Department of Health did not respond to questions about the SNAP decline, but forwarded a presentation on how the state agency is handling mistakes in administering the program.
Louisiana’s error rate was 8.14% in fiscal year 2025, which is better than the national 10.6% average but enough to cost state taxpayers about $160 million more, the document says.
The presentation says clients cause about 45% of the errors, such as missing forms or missed interviews. About 55% were the result of agency mistakes.
Louisiana Department of Health PowerPoint “Improving SNAP Payment Error Rates,” August 2026
LDH’s PowerPoint presentation noted staffing shortages – about 200 open positions in the SNAP program – because of hiring freezes and high caseloads. LDH took over administering food stamps without electronic verification tools for wages and shelter expenses, the document said.
Both issues are being addressed, according to LDH.
The statistics are being collected to demonstrate the “payment error rate,” which, starting next year, will be used to help determine how much federal money will be contributed to individual states based on their success of lowering the frequency of mistakes. OBBBA created incentives for states to annually control overpayments, underpayments and payments to unqualified recipients.
More changes on the horizon
SNAP in Louisiana is about to face another challenge: OBBBA also changed the amount the federal government contributes to a state’s total costs.
Legally, the federal government pays 75% of the program, though lately the federal government was picking up 90% and sometimes all the costs — largely because of COVID pandemic policies. Starting October 1, 2026, the federal government and the state will split the costs 50-50.
With OBBBA’s change in the state-federal portions, along with the shifts of up to 15% of benefit costs to states with payment error rates above 6%, Louisiana taxpayers could be on the hook for roughly $282 million, according to a recently released analysis by Food Research & Action Center, a Washington-based anti-hunger group.
U.S. Rep. Cleo Fields, who plans to run for his old state Senate seat after his district was redrawn to favor Republicans, noted that the state hasn’t budgeted for these expenses.
“There are only three ways to cover it,” Fields said. “Raise taxes, cut other services like healthcare and education, or push more people off the program to get the numbers down. I have not heard state leaders give an honest answer, and families deserve one.”
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