How Iowa Republicans are rewarding waste

You might have missed it, but Iowa’s congressional delegation just made it easier for states that make the biggest mistakes distributing federal nutrition assistance to delay paying for their inefficiency.

Meanwhile, they voted to move faster to punish states like Iowa that are more efficient.

This would be unbelievable if it weren’t … well, true.

I haven’t seen local reporting zeroing in on this quirk, but several national news outlets have reported on it. The gist of the story is this: States with payment error rates above 13.33% in their SNAP programs will get until fiscal year 2030 before penalties kick in. However, states with error rates far below that mark will get punished two years earlier, in 2028.

This provision appears to have been driven by a last-minute change to Donald Trump’s big tax and spending bill to try to secure the vote of Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska, which has the country’s highest payment error rate. But because of Senate rules, the provision couldn’t single out Alaska, so it was rewritten for other states to benefit, too.

Either way, the scheme apparently worked. Murkowski voted for the bill.

Error rates in SNAP aren’t evidence of fraud. But they are an indicator of inefficiency in a system that experts say is administratively complex. Alaska’s error rate in 2024 was a whopping 24.66%.

You’d think Congress would want to get this under control faster. But no. The states with lower rates will be punished first. Meaning, perhaps, Iowa, which had the 11th lowest payment error rate in the country, at 6.14%.

Under the new law, states with error rates of 6% or more will have to shoulder some of the program’s benefit costs, which will undoubtedly put stress on their budgets. Already, Iowa’s budget faces an operating deficit.

Alaska’s payment error rate was four times Iowa’s. Yet, Iowa faces the possibility of being punished first, and not a single member of Congress from this state is objecting. They actually voted for it.

The benchmark for error rates will be in 2025 or 2026, so Iowa still has time to avoid the penalties.

Worse than the unfairness, some critics say this provision will probably incentivize some states to disregard their error rates in order to avoid being penalized in 2028. Overall, 9 states and the District of Columbia had error rates exceeding 13.33% last year.

Another 11 states are below that mark but still in double digits.

I understand these absurdities can come about when congressional leaders have to make deals to eke out votes from reluctant members of their party, especially for legislation that’s a priority for the White House. Still, regular Americans outside the clubby atmosphere of Congress—the ones who have to pay the bills—hate this kind of nonsense.

Remember the “ Cornhusker Kickback,” the Medicaid incentive for Nebraska that helped secure the vote of Sen. Ben Nelson for the Affordable Care Act? Sen. Chuck Grassley joined other Republicans to gripe about that deal. Yet they’re all-in for the Murkowski Payoff.

If anything, this proves that despite all the bloviating about DOGE reforms, not that much has changed in Washington, D.C.

I also should note at this point that SNAP’s error rates aren’t as bad as the mistakes made in other areas of the federal government. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says the “tax gap,” the gulf between the amount of income taxes owed and what is actually paid, is worse than the errors made in SNAP. And the tax gap, which mostly benefits the rich, costs the American taxpayer hundreds of billions of dollars a year.

Still, Republicans target the hungry, not the wealthy and well-connected.

Republicans also don’t seem to be worried about the time it takes to process SNAP applications. Iowa had one of the worst timeliness rates in the country in 2023, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In fact, nearly three dozen states are out of compliance with the law in this area, according to the USDA.

I’ve written previously about how the Big Ugly Bill will cut health care for Americans by $1 trillion over 10 years.

Contrary to what Republicans claim, the victims of their “work requirement” won’t be young, lazy men, but mainly middle-aged women and others who can’t navigate the bureaucracy or who face terrible obstacles in life already.

Over a decade, the Congressional Budget Office predicts nearly 12 million people will lose health insurance because of this law.

The CBO also projects Republican cuts to the SNAP program will amount to$186 billion over 10 years. This includes$1 billion in Iowa, according to the Iowa Hunger Coalition. And all so Republicans could pass permanent tax cuts that mostly go to the wealthy and add$3.4 trillion to the national debt.

The kicker is this law might not have been passed had it not been for the sweetheart deal that gave special treatment to Alaska—and left dozens of states like Iowa out in the cold.

Ed Tibbetts’ writing can be found at Along the Mississippi, part of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative.