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Planet Money

After the shutdown, SNAP will still be in trouble

with Nate Singer, Vicki Aguilar, Bridget Faust, Shelly Wickersham, Tina Kotek

Published November 1, 2025
View Show Notes

About This Episode

The episode examines how a new federal law, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, ties states' costs for food stamps (SNAP) to their payment error rates, shifting part of the financial burden from the federal government to states. Reporters follow Oregon official Nate Singer as he works to reduce the state's high error rate without making it harder for people like Safeway cashier and SNAP recipient Vicki Aguilar to access benefits. The story also explores the auditing system, the tradeoff between accuracy and accessibility, the perspective of Governor Tina Kotek, and the added pressure from a federal government shutdown threatening to suspend SNAP payments.

Topics Covered

SNAP benefits Food systems U.S. politics and elections Wealth inequality Government shutdown Food stamp administration Oregon state government Bureaucracy Government social programs

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Quick Takeaways

  • A new federal law ties how much states must pay toward food stamps to their SNAP payment error rates, creating major financial risk for states like Oregon.
  • Oregon's SNAP payment error rate has fallen from 23% to about 14%, but it still needs to get under 6% to avoid hundreds of millions of dollars in new state costs.
  • Most SNAP errors in Oregon come from honest mistakes, not fraud, often arising during complex eligibility interviews and data entry.
  • Tightening documentation requirements can reduce error rates but tends to lower participation by making it harder for eligible people to access benefits.
  • Oregon officials, including Governor Tina Kotek, face a dilemma between supercharging bureaucracy to cut errors or risking cuts to benefits or eligibility.
  • The federal government also cut in half the money it provides states to administer SNAP, even as it demands lower error rates.
  • SNAP auditors in Oregon re-interview and fully document a random set of cases each month, and the federal government then audits roughly half of those audits.
  • The government shutdown at the time of the episode threatens to suspend SNAP payments entirely, adding urgency for recipients like Vicki who are already struggling.
  • Oregon's leadership is publicly committed, at least for now, to keeping everyone currently on SNAP in the program despite the funding pressures.

Podcast Notes

Introduction and setup of the SNAP funding crisis

Introducing Nate Singer and the July 4th barbecue scene

Description of Nate at a Fourth of July barbecue reading legislation[0:24]
• Nate spends the Fourth of July at a barbecue in jeans and a T-shirt, flipping burgers for guests while carrying papers in his pocket.
• He is a father of four and prefers standing by the grill because it is less social, which he notes is ironic given his job in human services.
Nate's role in Oregon's Department of Human Services[0:50]
• Nate is a senior official at the Oregon Department of Human Services, running the division that signs people up for programs like food stamps.
• He is described as a quintessential bureaucrat who always carries a pen and highlighter, which his kids joke are like boring coloring books.
Nate reads the One Big Beautiful Bill Act during the barbecue[1:14]
• As he takes breaks from grilling, Nate pulls folded papers from his back pocket to read and highlight President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
• The bill has gone back and forth between the House and Senate, amended hundreds of times, but is now final.

Overview of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and its impact on food stamps

Cuts to SNAP and the shift of costs to states[1:35]
• The bill makes big cuts, including to food stamps, which Nate's division oversees.
• Nate is trying to assess how bad the bill will be for food stamps and for about one out of every six Oregonians, roughly 750,000 people, who rely on the program.
• The bill changes who qualifies for food stamps, how much they get, and crucially, who pays for the program.
• Historically, the federal government has paid for all food stamp benefits, but this law for the first time shifts some costs to the states.
Federal rationale: accountability and cutting waste, fraud, and abuse[2:46]
• Because states administer SNAP-reviewing applications and calculating benefits-White House and congressional Republicans argue states should be more accountable.
• They frame the change as a way to cut back on what they call waste, fraud, and abuse.

Payment error rate and Oregon's new financial exposure

Definition of the payment error rate and its link to state costs[2:58]
• The bill ties how much states must pay for SNAP to a statistic called the payment error rate.
• The payment error rate reflects whether the state is accurately determining how much people should get in food stamps and, if not, how far off they are.
• The higher a state's error rate, the less the federal government will pay for that state's food stamps in the future.
Nate's calculation of Oregon's risk[4:11]
• Oregon has had a stubbornly high error rate, and although Nate has made progress reducing it, it is still not near the new target.
• At the barbecue, Nate quickly does the math: if he can get Oregon's error rate below 6%, the federal government will continue to cover all food stamp costs.
• If Oregon fails to reach that threshold, the state will owe about $250 million a year for food stamps.
• This effectively makes the fate of Oregon's SNAP program heavily dependent on Nate's success in reducing the error rate.
Framing the challenge to Nate[4:17]
• The hosts frame the situation as a challenge set up for Nate by the law, asking if he is up for it.
• Nate hesitantly answers yes, and then tries again with more confidence, highlighting the pressure he feels.

Context: current events around SNAP and the broader stakes

Hosts introduce the episode's angle and the shutdown backdrop

Planet Money hosts and immediate SNAP concerns[4:38]
• Hosts Nick Fountain and Jeff Guo welcome listeners to Planet Money.
• They note that because of the government shutdown, people may not receive their food stamps at all, which is a huge immediate issue.
Framing the episode's main focus[4:59]
• The hosts argue that, beyond the shutdown, the funding shift created by the new law is arguably a much bigger long-term deal for SNAP.
• They set up the episode as a trip to Oregon to see how Nate will try to cut Oregon's error rate by more than half without pushing people off SNAP or making them go hungry.

How SNAP works in Oregon and the nature of errors

Oregon's progress and remaining gap on error rates

Oregon's historical error rate performance[6:30]
• Nate, as director of the Oregon Eligibility Partnership, has been working for a couple of years to lower Oregon's SNAP payment error rate.
• When he started, Oregon's error rate was 23%, making it third worst in the nation.
• He has since reduced it to 14%, which moves Oregon to ninth place, but still far above the 6% threshold needed.

Basic mechanics of SNAP eligibility and benefit calculation

Rules and information used to determine eligibility[7:03]
• Each state determines who qualifies for SNAP and benefit amounts based on complex rules set by Congress.
• States ask about income, bank balances, household size, and expenses, then run these answers through a formula to calculate benefits.
• In Oregon, a single person must earn less than about $31,000 a year to qualify, and a family of four must earn less than about $64,000.
• The average benefit in Oregon is about $5.75 per person per day.
How errors are defined and measured[7:59]
• Sometimes states give out too much or too little in SNAP benefits; giving too little is less common.
• If a case is off by more than $57 in a given month, the federal government counts it as an error.
• The payment error rate is the percentage by which benefits are off overall across the state over a year.
• Reducing errors depends heavily on asking the right questions during eligibility interviews.

Case study: Vicki Aguilar's experience with SNAP

Meeting Vicki and her financial situation

Introduction to Vicki[8:37]
• Vicki Aguilar describes herself as 59 and single and says she loves it.
• The reporters meet her outside her mother's house in Salem, Oregon, sitting by a wheelchair ramp facing a flagpole with an American flag.
Vicki's recent SNAP use and grocery habits[9:03]
• Vicki received her EBT (food stamp) card refill the day before and went to two grocery stores, Winco and Safeway, looking for deals.
• She notes Safeway is usually not cheaper than Winco, but explains that using the Safeway app can yield deals, even though the host expresses dislike for the app.

How Vicki's employment situation led her to apply for SNAP

Job history and loss of primary income[10:16]
• Vicki recently had two jobs: part-time nights at Safeway and full-time as a caregiver for her uncle.
• She cared for her uncle at home for 16 years, earning $22 per hour as a home health aide.
• Her uncle had stage 2 bladder cancer, was a quadriplegic with a tracheostomy, and eventually chose hospice because he was tired and his condition would worsen.
• He passed away on August 21, which ended Vicki's full-time caregiving job.
Financial strain after losing her caregiving job[10:01]
• After his death, Vicki was left with only her part-time Safeway job and began to run short on food.
• Her only income became her Safeway wages, which she describes as not paying well; she states she earns about $1,550 (context suggests per month, but she only says the number).
• She requested more hours at Safeway but was not given them, leaving her barely able to cover rent.

Vicki's application for SNAP and the interview process

Initial visit to the DHS office[10:30]
• Vicki went to her local Oregon Department of Human Services office when she was struggling.
• The office was busy; the receptionist asked basic intake questions like her Social Security number and birthdate.
• She was given an application with more detailed questions and an EBT card labeled "Oregon Trail" with a covered wagon image, though it had no money on it yet.
• The receptionist told her she would need to wait for a call from an eligibility worker who would ask more in-depth questions before benefits could be loaded.
How errors can enter during the eligibility interview[11:06]
• The hosts explain that the interview with an eligibility worker is the point where many errors that affect the state's error rate can be introduced.
• They identify three main sources of error: the interviewer not asking all or the right questions; the applicant not answering accurately or honestly; and simple typos.
• Vicki did not wait to be called; she called the office herself and reached a woman who began asking her detailed questions.
Specific questions asked and error-checking during Vicki's call[12:14]
• The interviewer asked who Vicki lives with (she lives alone), how much she pays in rent, and what she pays for gas, electric, and her cell phone bill.
• Those bills are part of the factors, under Congressional rules, that go into calculating SNAP benefits.
• The interviewer asked about income and had Vicki read information from a pay stub, specifically the gross pay.
• Vicki initially misread the pay stub and gave the net pay instead, but the worker, who had access to a payroll database, questioned it and prompted her to correct it.
• Vicki says she was not trying to commit fraud; she was just confused by the pay stub.
• The worker's double-checking helps prevent an inadvertent error in the benefit calculation.
Vicki's view on fraud in the system[13:09]
• When asked if she thinks there is a lot of fraud, Vicki says yes, based on her experience as a cashier.
• She has seen customers use multiple EBT cards at her line and feels that if it is not their card, they should not be using it, even if it might be a family member's card.

Distinguishing fraud from inadvertent errors in Oregon

Scale of confirmed fraud versus overall errors[13:40]
• Oregon has a special investigative division that looks into food stamp fraud; if people are caught, they must pay back the money.
• In the previous year, Oregon had 34 confirmed cases of SNAP fraud out of 750,000 recipients.
• Nate says the vast majority of errors that affect the state's error rate are not from fraud but from inadvertent, honest mistakes like Vicki's misreading of her pay stub.
• Vicki's case illustrates how a simple confusion about gross versus net pay could have led to an error if the worker had not checked a payroll database.

Inside Oregon's eligibility offices: how staff try to prevent errors

Observing an eligibility worker: Bridget Faust

Bridget's background and role[14:37]
• Reporters visit the same Oregon DHS office where Vicki applied to observe eligibility workers.
• They sit with eligibility worker Bridget Faust, who is a former food stamp recipient herself and has a framed picture of actor Nicolas Cage in her cubicle.
Training and tools to lower the error rate[15:03]
• Bridget says she is aware of the push to lower the error rate and understands she is the first line of defense against errors.
• Her supervisors have held many trainings to shift her role from mere data entry to a more analytical role, listening carefully and making sense of client answers.
• She now uses a checklist to ensure she asks all required, even awkward, questions.
• Nate's team has added computer system nudges that flag discrepancies, prompting Bridget to double-check answers that do not make sense (e.g., high rent with very low income).
Constant policy changes and the challenge they pose[15:52]
• Bridget notes that the questions and rules she has to follow change frequently.
• While she is being observed, a new email arrives titled "HR1 updates and resources," giving new guidance about the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
• She says they get a lot of such emails, and each small policy change tends to increase the error rate because staff must constantly adapt.

Use of an AI tool, Eligibility Bot (Ellie)

Purpose and function of Ellie[16:43]
• To cope with frequent policy changes, Nate has created an AI tool called Eligibility Bot, nicknamed "Ellie."
• When Bridget encounters a complicated case, she can query Ellie to get the most up-to-date policy information more quickly than before.

Live example of a phone eligibility interview

Conducting the SNAP interview[17:10]
• Bridget calls a client for a scheduled appointment and confirms he is applying for SNAP benefits.
• It is a relatively simple case; she uses her checklist, the state website for data entry, and a separate system to double-check income.
• She confirms details such as his marital status and separation status, and at the end of the call, informs him he is approved for SNAP benefits.

How Oregon measures errors: auditing by Shelly Wickersham

Role and approach of the SNAP case auditor

Introducing Shelly and her job[18:00]
• Shelly Wickersham is part of an 11-person team in Oregon tasked with finding SNAP errors and reporting them to both the state and federal governments.
• She conducts audits of SNAP cases and has to persuade recipients to cooperate, even though people are rarely happy to be audited.
• Shelly sometimes tells people that having their case selected is like winning the lottery, trying to reassure them that things will be okay.
• She recounts a client joking that if he actually won the lottery, he would not need food stamps.
Persistence in obtaining documentation[18:54]
• Shelly says there is no set limit on how many times she can call; she will keep calling because she needs the information.
• She reasons that if recipients are annoyed by her calls, they should just provide the requested documents, because she is determined to get them.

Interaction between state and federal oversight

Sampling and recalculating cases[19:29]
• Shelly's team randomly selects about 100 SNAP cases each month out of over 750,000 Oregon recipients.
• They re-examine these cases in detail to determine what the benefits should have been and compare that to what was actually provided.
• Shelly effectively redoes the entire eligibility interview but is required to leave no stone unturned.
More intensive questioning and documentation in audits[20:46]
• Shelly asks exhaustive questions, including for elderly clients, such as whether they are in school or have daycare costs, and looks for any side income.
• She even asks about income from cans and bottles because that counts as income.
• She also gathers proof for everything-rent, utilities, interest from bank accounts, and more-and spends much of her time chasing documentation.

Tradeoff between thoroughness and accessibility

Difference between audits and initial eligibility interviews[20:25]
• Initial eligibility interviews are often clients' first contact with the SNAP system, so workers like Bridget try to balance following guidelines with getting food to people who need it.
• During initial interviews, workers generally are not very pushy and do not require extensive documentation, as a deliberate choice by Oregon.
• Shelly, by contrast, must ask every possible question and obtain full proof as part of her auditing role.
Effect of documentation requirements on participation[21:42]
• Nate has consulted with states that have low error rates, and they report that they ask for more documentation, sometimes multiple times per year.
• Those states tend to have lower participation rates in SNAP, suggesting that stricter documentation discourages some eligible people from applying or staying on the program.
• Providing documents can be hard for many clients, which helps explain why stricter verification can reduce participation.
• The hosts joke that not everyone can be as charming as Shelly in persuading people to hand over documentation.

How the federal government finalizes Oregon's error rate

Federal re-audit and calculation[22:37]
• After Shelly's team completes its audits, the federal government re-audits about half of those cases to ensure accuracy.
• They then compile all the audited cases to determine the official payment error rate for Oregon.
• At the time of the episode, Oregon's official error rate is around 14%, meaning, without improvement, the state will have to start contributing significantly to SNAP costs.

Nate's final push and the limits of technical fixes

Incremental system improvements Nate is implementing

Improving income verification systems[24:58]
• Over the past few months, Nate has been working nonstop on ways to reduce the error rate further.
• He notes that the current income-checking system that caught Vicki's mistake was "janky," so he has been working to integrate it directly into the eligibility workers' primary system.
• Nate says this integrated function is built, tested, and scheduled to roll out the following week, allowing staff to see income data directly and pull it up easily.
Expected impact and remaining gap[25:34]
• Nate hopes that incremental tweaks like the improved income verification integration can reduce Oregon's error rate to about 10% within the year.
• Reaching 10% would save Oregon from the worst financial consequences but would still be above the 6% target needed to avoid paying toward benefits.
• Asked where the remaining 4% improvement would come from, Nate describes it as "a mixture of a hope and a prayer."

Recognizing the tradeoff ceiling and the need for policy-level decisions

Nate's sense of having nearly exhausted low-burden options[26:13]
• Nate says he believes Oregon is approaching the point where there are limited opportunities to reduce the error rate further without changing how they approach SNAP.
• He acknowledges that further reductions would likely require steps that could make it more onerous for people to sign up for or maintain benefits.
• He emphasizes that decisions about making such fundamental changes are above his pay grade and lie with higher-level officials.

State-level political response: Governor Tina Kotek

Governor Kotek's background with SNAP and administrative simplification

Governor's early career on SNAP accessibility[27:06]
• Governor Tina Kotek joins the episode via a recording from a sound booth at the Oregon State Library because she is busy and it has been a "weird month" in Oregon.
• She explains that her first job with the state involved simplifying the food stamp application, which used to be 20 pages; her role was to try to reduce it to four pages.
• This experience reflects her longstanding focus on making SNAP more accessible.

Governor's awareness of the error-rate issue and fiscal constraints

Acknowledgment of Nate's project and fiscal reality[27:06]
• Governor Kotek says she is aware of Nate's efforts to lower the error rate.
• She states there is not $200 million or $150 million "sitting on a shelf" to cover the federal reduction, implying the state budget cannot easily absorb the new costs.
• She warns that if this funding gap is not resolved, people will be unable to go to the grocery store and buy their own food.

Governor Kotek's critique of using error rates as the main accountability metric

View on the legitimacy of tying costs to error rates[28:10]
• The hosts summarize the federal government's moral justification: since states administer SNAP, they should care about waste, fraud, and abuse, so tying costs to error rates encourages diligence.
• Governor Kotek responds that while everyone wants to minimize waste, fraud, and abuse, using the error rate as a key signifier of that is faulty.
• She suggests the federal government could simplify the program's rules to make it easier to administer; then error rates would be more meaningful as performance indicators.
• She argues that currently the program is so complex that tying state funding to error rates is problematic.

Double whammy: more pressure with less administrative funding

Impact of administrative funding cuts[29:26]
• To reduce its error rate, Oregon would have to "supercharge" its bureaucracy, which would make it harder for people to sign up and would also cost more.
• The One Big Beautiful Bill Act also cut in half the federal funding that states receive to administer SNAP.
• This creates a double pressure: states are told to increase bureaucracy to reduce errors or lose federal support, while at the same time receiving less administrative money to do that work.
Federal agencies' silence during the shutdown[30:16]
• The reporters say they reached out to the White House and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (which runs SNAP) several days earlier but did not receive substantive responses.
• The White House sent an automatic reply stating that the government shutdown was delaying their responses.

Oregon's limited options if the error rate remains high

Likely failure to meet the 6% target and possible paths[30:30]
• The hosts say the chances of Oregon getting the error rate low enough to maintain full federal funding are "pretty minuscule" unless the state makes it harder for people to get food.
• If Oregon cannot find state money to cover its share, it faces two main options: shut down the SNAP program or shrink eligibility so fewer people qualify.
• The hosts note they have heard from some sources that certain states are considering shuttering their SNAP programs.
Governor Kotek's current stance on reducing eligibility[31:03]
• Asked if she is willing to go down the road of shrinking eligibility, Governor Kotek replies, "At the moment, no."
• She says that, for now, Oregon is committed to keeping everyone currently in the program, including people like Vicki.

Return to Vicki amid shutdown and future SNAP uncertainty

Checking in with Vicki after the initial visit

Vicki's immediate situation and reaction to shutdown news[31:20]
• The reporters call Vicki a few days later to follow up; she answers while getting ready to go to work at Safeway, having been called in early.
• They ask about the current news that, due to the shutdown, the administration has said SNAP funds are running out and the program will be suspended for the first time in history.
• Vicki says she feels sorry for other people whose groceries she scans and worries about how they will manage.
• When asked if she will be okay personally, Vicki says she will be fine, able to get by on simple meals like cereal, milk, and eggs, and does not mind having breakfast for dinner.
Vicki's job search efforts[32:46]
• Vicki says she has been putting in job applications but has not gotten any responses yet.
• She plans to go to a job center the next day to get help reviewing and polishing her résumé.
• She ends the call because she has to leave for work, thanking the reporter for reaching out.

Outro and additional resources

Directing listeners to further SNAP coverage and help

NPR coverage and hunger relief resources[31:51]
• The hosts mention that NPR colleagues are closely covering developments with SNAP on npr.org and on the radio.
• They say there are resources for people needing hunger relief and that links to those will be included in the show notes.

Credits for the episode

Production, editing, and fact-checking team[32:07]
• The episode was produced by James Sneed and Willow Rubin, edited by Marian McKeown and Jess Jang, and fact-checked by Sierra Waters.
• Engineering was by Debbie Daughtry and Robert Rodriguez, and Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive.
Hosts' sign-off[32:46]
• Hosts Nick Fountain and Jeff Guo sign off, thanking listeners and concluding the episode.

Lessons Learned

Actionable insights and wisdom you can apply to your business, career, and personal life.

1

When accountability metrics are tied directly to funding, they can create powerful incentives but also unintended tradeoffs, such as pushing agencies to choose between accuracy and accessibility for the people they serve.

Reflection Questions:

  • • What performance metrics in your work or life drive your behavior in ways that might conflict with serving people well?
  • • How could you redesign one important metric you track so that it balances accuracy with fairness and accessibility?
  • • What specific decision are you facing now where a narrow metric might be leading you to overlook broader human impacts?
2

Complex systems with constantly changing rules are prone to errors, so investing in clear processes, training, and tools that make the correct action the easy action is crucial.

Reflection Questions:

  • • Where in your own workflows do frequent rule or requirement changes create confusion and mistakes?
  • • How might adding checklists, nudges, or automated checks reduce errors in a process you manage?
  • • What is one small system or tool you could set up this month that would make it harder for you or your team to get important details wrong?
3

Thorough verification and documentation can improve accuracy but often increases friction for users, so leaders need to consciously decide how much burden they are willing to place on people in exchange for tighter control.

Reflection Questions:

  • • In what areas are you asking others (customers, colleagues, family) for more proof or detail than is truly necessary?
  • • How could you redesign one onboarding or approval process to collect only the information that meaningfully changes outcomes?
  • • What is one step you could remove or simplify in a current process to make it more user-friendly without sacrificing essential safeguards?
4

Frontline workers can dramatically reduce costly mistakes when they are empowered and trained to think critically rather than just follow scripts, supported by systems that surface discrepancies in real time.

Reflection Questions:

  • • Where in your organization or daily life are people treating their roles as pure data entry instead of problem-solving?
  • • How could you better equip yourself or your team with information and authority to question and verify inputs as they come in?
  • • What is one training or practice you could introduce that encourages people to pause and ask, "Does this make sense?" before proceeding?
5

Policy decisions made far from the ground-like cutting administrative funding while demanding higher performance-can create impossible pressures unless leaders at all levels communicate constraints honestly and advocate for realistic designs.

Reflection Questions:

  • • Which top-down rules or expectations in your work or community feel misaligned with the resources you actually have?
  • • How might you better communicate upward about the tradeoffs and limits you see on the ground?
  • • What is one conversation you could initiate this week to clarify expectations or push for a more realistic balance between goals and resources?

Episode Summary - Notes by Parker

After the shutdown, SNAP will still be in trouble
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