Federal cuts to food assistance through the budget reconciliation bill, better known as the “Big Beautiful Bill,” put more than 450,000 New Mexicans at risk of getting less in benefits, or losing their assistance altogether. But, state officials say they’ll do everything they can to fill gaps left by those federal cuts.
The New Mexico Health Care Authority estimates more than 20,000 New Mexicans will lose their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits. The rest of the recipients will see their monthly assistance drop by over 20%.
Secretary for the HCA, Kari Armijo, said she recognizes the potential consequences for the state, and that the HCA is working to reduce the impact to New Mexicans who rely on food assistance.
“We're going to do everything we can to protect their access to health care, their access to benefits, make sure that they can keep food on the tables,” she said. “We're going to do everything we can within the state's power, to really mitigate these changes for them and make sure that we're here for them.”
She said the agency will upgrade IT systems to be more efficient for customers, train staff, and hire more people to deal with expanded administrative burdens.
The state is also looking at different long-term solutions to fund SNAP, such as a trust fund similar to the existing Medicaid, behavioral health and early childhood trust funds.
“I can't say for sure where that will go,” she said, “but it's definitely a policy consideration that we've been talking about.”
Armijo said while the state will do everything it can do, it will be limited by fiscal and logistical concerns.
“We're gonna try. It’s all based on how much state resources we can afford, and we're doing a lot of work to really calculate how much it would cost to do all of that,” she said. “We're really thinking about partnerships in a different way. We're trying to tackle it from a variety of angles
The HCA is partnering with the Department of Workforce Solutions to provide employment support and ensure they have the proper resources to hire new employees and get all of their existing employees trained up.
One of the big changes coming down is a reduction in federal contributions to the administrative costs of running SNAP. Previously it was a 50/50 split between federal and state funds, but that will shift to federal funds only contributing 25%. The state will be on the hook for the remaining 75%.
Sovereign Hager, legal director for the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty, said that change alone is cause for concern.
“[It] is going to have a big impact on New Mexico, at a time when already our enrollment systems are pretty overwhelmed, where the state has struggled to process applications,” she said.
Moreover, federal funding to cover the cost of benefits themselves will be adjusted based on each state’s rate of errors. New Mexico’s rate is almost 15%, which would mean $153 million less coming to the state.
In all, the state expects to lose a total of $203 million in federal SNAP funding, according to the HCA. The Commonwealth Fund recently listed New Mexico as the state losing the highest proportion of SNAP funds, at nearly 44%. And that doesn’t account for any new costs as a result of these changes.
Hager said new work requirements, for example, call for beneficiaries to work 80 hours per month, and that includes people 18 to 64 years old, and parents of children 14 years and older. Exemptions for veterans, former foster youth up to 24-years-old, and even people experiencing homelessness will also be dropped in the coming years, meaning they, too, will have to hit that work minimum starting in 2030.
Ensuring beneficiaries are meeting that requirement will put a large administrative load onto the Income Support Division, Hager said.
Beneficiaries will also no longer be able to deduct utilities or internet costs from their income, reducing the benefits they receive.
What’s more, Hager said, is the maximum SNAP benefit was formerly tied to what was considered necessary for a full nutritious diet, which was adjusted based on inflation and increased food costs. The reconciliation bill removes that adjustment, freezing benefits at their current level.
“So in the long run,” she said, “we will see major depreciation of SNAP benefits and the amount of food that families can buy.”
Covering those newly created gaps would all be extra costs on top of the hundreds of millions the state will have to pay just to keep the program running, but Secretary Armijo said the Authority is going to try to make that happen.
“If there's a way for us to backfill some of that or replace federal funding cuts with state dollars, that's definitely something under consideration,” Armijo said. “But of course, as everyone knows, resources are limited, and so we're gonna have to really be smart about how we stretch those state dollars.”
Director of Policy for New Mexico Voices for Children, Emily Wildau, said if the state doesn’t manage to cover those gaps, the consequences could be severe and far reaching, with effects that ripple out into many other areas.
For example, Wildau said as people lose benefits, they may start skipping meals, which will impact their health.
“Particularly with these other cuts to Medicaid going on,” Wildau said, “you have folks who can't even afford to go access care when they need it, and they also can't afford to pay for that because they're trying to cover the food expenses that they no longer can cover anyway.
Wildau said the impacts are especially hard on families. For example, she said in a two-parent household, both parents would have to meet the work requirement in order to qualify for SNAP. That means stay-at-home parents will have to find work, which could add to child care costs, possibly offsetting the money saved through SNAP.
“I think that also points to, really, the cruelty of these work requirements,” she said. “You can't even choose to have a parent take care of their child.”
In addition, Wildau said many schools use SNAP enrollment to certify for free school meals through the National School Lunch Program. As people lose benefits, schools won’t be able to certify and the state will be responsible for covering more of those meals on top of the additional SNAP costs.
All of that will put more strain on food banks, which advocates say will not be able to bridge the gap left by cuts.
“They just can't do it. They do amazing work, and they're already stretched to the limits. They also are dealing with some uncertainty around portions of federal funding for certain food programs,” Wildau said. “It will become more taxing on the charitable side.”
Wildau said SNAP funds are also a huge economic driver, especially in rural areas.
“As those benefits go away and people are not able to spend those SNAP dollars in those local businesses, they are at risk of closing,” she said “Then there are rural communities at risk of losing the only grocery store that they have available to them.”
Wildau said it’s important for the state to act as soon as possible to respond to some of the future changes that are scheduled to begin over the next couple years.
“Even though there's an implementation delay for a lot of these things from this bill, this is an issue to solve today,” she said. “This is an issue to prepare for now, while we do have some time to figure it out,”
Secretary Armijo said the state is focused on preventing those negative outcomes.
“The federal changes don't change the mission of the Healthcare Authority, which is to make sure that we provide the highest level of health care and safety net services for New Mexicans in a coordinated and seamless system,” she said. “We are focused, laser-focused, on our mission now more than ever.”
For now, the state is still waiting for guidance on some of the changes coming down from the federal budget reconciliation bill, before discussing specific plans.
Support for this coverage comes from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
