Craig Gundersen, Ph.D., the creator of Feeding America’s Map the Meal Gap and a professor at Baylor University, is an expert on food insecurity and SNAP. He’s a well-known speaker and researcher on both topics, and has spent much of the last 30 years of his academic career helping to prove the value of SNAP, which he calls an “amazing” program. “I’m a huge fan of SNAP,” he said.
NOTE: This updated version of the article includes a correction (see **) related to Gundersen’s position on work requirements in SNAP, clarifying that he is firmly against them.
So it may be surprising to hear him be relatively neutral about the changes expected to come to SNAP as the budget reconciliation legislation passed by the current administration goes into effect. “For the life of me, I can’t figure out why people think this One Big, Beautiful Bill Act will have any major implications for SNAP,” he said.
Gundersen’s take runs counter to the assessment of many food-security advocates. Feeding America, for example, called the bill a “significant setback,” while the Food Research and Action Center emphasized that “the damage of this bill will be staggering.”
Gundersen in contrast put forth three main reasons why he believes the SNAP cuts will not be so bad. The first has to do with the Thrifty Food Plan, which is an estimate of the cost of a healthy diet used by the USDA to determine SNAP benefit amounts. Under the new law, the USDA will revert back to a method of increasing the Thrifty Food Plan amount according to the rate of inflation. “In essence, the Thrifty Food Plan changes have to be revenue-neutral,” Gundersen said, adding, “That’s not a big deal.” He noted, “Until 2021, under both Republican and Democrat administrations, it was always revenue neutral. So we’re just going back to what it always has been.”
Secondly, Gundersen acknowledged a “huge decline” in federal funding for SNAP, but noted that the states will be required to fill in the gaps. Under the new law, all states will have to pay 75% of the costs of administering SNAP, up from 50% currently. In addition, states could end up paying anywhere from 5% to 15% of the benefit cost of SNAP, depending on their error rate. Gundersen is taking these changes in stride. “It’s not a cut, it’s just a matter of who pays for it,” he said, adding, “They [the states] can’t say we’re going to deny people SNAP benefits.”
Finally, Gundersen has stated repeatedly for years in print and in presentations that work requirements in the context of SNAP are an awful idea. This is for many reasons, but perhaps most importantly, because SNAP is an anti-hunger program and, therefore, receipt should not be dependent on whether someone works.**
Still, Gundersen does not view the work requirements added to the law as unreasonable. Under the new law, able-bodied adults will have to work until age 64 (up from 54), as will adults who have children aged 14 or older. Veterans, homeless people and young adults recently aged out of foster care will also face new work requirements. At the same time, the law newly exempts American Indians from work requirements.
In Gundersen’s view, setting the work requirement to age 64 adheres to the standard followed by the general society. Similarly, requiring people to go back to work once their youngest child reaches 14 is not unreasonable. “We know a lot of people go back to work after their children get out of elementary school, or even go to school, so it’s not a crazy requirement,” he said.
Counterpoints to Gundersen’s general arguments are not hard to come by. There does not appear to be a guarantee, for example, that states will step in to fill in the gaps left by decreased federal funding. At a Congressional hearing held Sept. 9, a panel of three expert witnesses said states could choose to opt out of providing SNAP if they were not able or willing to pay the extra costs. Similarly, a September report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities emphasized that states could choose to restrict eligibility for SNAP or “terminate food assistance entirely” by opting out of the program.
Gina Plata-Nino, Interim Director of SNAP at Food Research and Action Center, said FRAC has already heard from states that are considering pulling out of SNAP because of the increased costs. At the very least, she said, states will be forced to make difficult decisions and potentially make other cuts to their budgets, such as in education or universal school meals, to accommodate the expanded SNAP costs. “SNAP doesn’t operate in and of itself,” Plata-Nino said. “It’s part of a bigger ecosystem.”
In terms of work requirements, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office in August released a report in which it estimated that the new work provisions would reduce participation in SNAP by about 2.4 million people a month between 2025 and 2034. The same report estimated that the changes to the Thrifty Food Plan would cause the average monthly SNAP benefit to decrease to $213 by 2034, down from a projected $227.
There’s no telling exactly how the full range of SNAP cuts will impact the levels of U.S. food insecurity. That’s especially true now that the USDA has announced its plans to end its annual survey that tracks food insecurity levels. Some provisions, such as expanded work requirements, have already started to go into effect, while others, such as the cost-sharing for states, will not roll out until fiscal 2027.
It’s fair to say, though, that most people working on the front lines of hunger relief expect their lines to get longer, not shorter, as the cuts kick in. – Chris Costanzo
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