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(TNSres) -- The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities issued the following federal budget report:
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Performance Measures Should Also Emphasize Access, Customer Service
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SNAP Includes Extensive Payment Accuracy System
BY DOTTIE ROSENBAUM AND KATIE BERGH
In coming weeks the Agriculture Department (USDA) will release overpayment and underpayment error rates for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) for fiscal year 2023, based on the program's extensive quality control (QC) process. The 2022 error rates, the first national and state-level SNAP error rates published since before the COVID-19 pandemic, were somewhat higher than before the pandemic, largely due to states' ongoing challenges from the pandemic. This trend may continue in the 2023 error rates, as many of those factors were still in effect in 2023. Additionally, a policy change in 2022 -- to begin counting the entire benefit amount for cases with certain procedural errors as overpayments even if the household was eligible and received the correct benefit amount based on its income and other circumstances -- contributed to higher error rates for 2022 and likely will in 2023 as well.
SNAP error rates should be evaluated in the context of the program's key role in preventing a surge in food insecurity during the pandemic. Beginning in the spring of 2020, Congress and USDA provided for temporary measures in SNAP that increased benefits and gave states flexibility to prioritize processing new applications and keeping current participants connected to SNAP. These changes helped SNAP respond quickly to support individuals and families during periods of unemployment, earnings loss, and uncertainty. Largely thanks to these and other relief efforts, food insecurity overall held steady in 2020 and 2021, and for households with children it reached a two-decade low. (By comparison, in the Great Recession food insecurity rose by more than 30 percent.) In 2022, food insecurity rose as pandemic relief measures began phasing out, especially those outside of SNAP, and costs for food and other basic needs increased sharply.[1]
SNAP's relief measures, including both benefit increases and added state administrative flexibilities, remained largely in effect throughout fiscal year 2022 and well into fiscal year 2023. They helped households grapple with the continued effects of the pandemic, including food price inflation, and helped state agencies...