WARRENTON, Mo. — Distributing food stamps could become much more difficult in Missouri’s food assistance system, which a federal judge has already called “broken and inaccessible.”
The state relies heavily on federal funding to run the food stamp program, which provides food to about 42 million people nationwide. But a new federal law restructured the nation’s food assistance, requiring more people to work to qualify for assistance and shifting more of the program’s costs to states over the next decade. Meanwhile, many Americans are struggling to afford groceries, and state governments are scrambling to help them.
For example, more than a year ago, a federal judge ruled that Missouri’s food assistance system was “overwhelming,” unfairly denied assistance to applicants and left many people hungry “as a direct result of the system’s inadequacies.” Judge Douglas Harpool ordered the state to resolve the issue.
Despite the court order, not much has changed, according to a KFF Health News analysis of state performance indicators.
Missouri’s ongoing problems portend problems ahead for state food assistance programs nationwide. Food assistance advocates say Missouri is just one example of a nationwide problem in which strained state systems struggle to provide timely assistance. For example, low-income people in Alaska Facing chronic backlog The state has spent years trying to fix the problem.
Last year, then-United States Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack sent a letter to 44 governors urging faster application processing and improved accuracy of benefit determinations.
The administrative uproar adds to concerns about funding due to the recent federal government shutdown. The Trump administration refused to use emergency funds to keep food assistance programs running, and food benefits were cut off for millions of people, including in Missouri, on Nov. 1 as the shutdown entered its fifth week. Two federal judges ordered the Trump administration to pour emergency funding into the program.
The shutdown ended Nov. 12, and Missouri said SNAP recipients began receiving full benefits three days later. Then, as Thanksgiving approached, delay in benefits Some states are still reporting it.
Even after the shutdown, the state will have to do more with less. Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act would cut federal funding for food assistance programs by billions of dollars and place more administrative and financial burdens on states.
The bill signed by President Donald Trump in July cuts $187 billion over the next 10 years from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as Food Stamps (SNAP). According to the Congressional Budget Office, this amounts to a 20% cut.
One of the most important and immediate changes is that more people will need to work to qualify for assistance. They say the change will leave at least 2.4 million Americans without assistance. analyze From the Bipartisan Congressional Research Service. The analysis predicts that many people will lose their benefits because work requirements make it more difficult to apply.
He said expanding work requirements would harm some of the country’s most vulnerable people. ed bolenHe leads the food aid strategy at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
But conservative Government Accountability Basea group that has worked to advance similar policies in the state, says the requirement is necessary to maintain support for the “truly needy.”
‘Missouri’s Definite Strain
Some Missourians were already struggling before Trump signed the bill.
Kelly Thweatt, 64, said she received a notice in the mail saying her food benefits had been cut. She didn’t understand why because her income hadn’t changed, she said recently outside a SNAP office 60 miles west of St. Louis.
She said she has about $300 left over from Social Security each month after paying for a spot at a mobile home park in Warrenton. The roughly $300 in SNAP benefits she received each month helped her survive.
Because Thweatt is not yet 65 years old, new federal work requirements apply.
more 150,000 Missouri residents They are at risk of losing some of their food aid due to new work requirements that took effect on November 1.
For Thweatt, finding work can be difficult. She has been out of the workforce for almost 20 years.
Food aid provides a lifeline to more than 650,000 Missourians. That’s more than eight people in a sold-out crowd at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, where the NFL Chiefs play. The program helps feed 20 percent of Missouri children each month, according to the Missouri Foundation for Health, a nonprofit charity. (The foundation provides financial support to KFF Health News.)
Recent federal changes should remove additional administrative hurdles for more seniors, parents, veterans, homeless people, and youth in former foster care to receive food assistance. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
For years, thousands of Missourians have struggled to receive food assistance. This is primarily because applicants must complete a phone or in-person interview. But many Missourians are unable to contact state employees.
Applicants spent hours waiting or standing in line outside state offices, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court in 2022. At times, so many people were on hold that the phone system began disconnecting people, according to the lawsuit.
Some Missouri SNAP offices only have one employee, adding to the burden, according to Harpool’s May 2024 order.
In a statement provided to KFF Health News, the Missouri Department of Human Services said having one employee may be appropriate in some areas because demand varies by region.
In Warrenton, makeshift phone booths line the walls of a food assistance office. People sit in cubicles with desks and use phones to complete interviews with officials elsewhere. A sign on the floor asks applicants to “please be patient with our progress” as the state works to improve the technology.
Harpool’s order said the “evidence is undisputed” that Missouri’s food assistance system has “unacceptable wait times” and that thousands of requests “cannot be completed.” These problems put Missourians at risk of not receiving assistance “every time” they apply for food benefits, the judge wrote. To remain in the program, most households must submit documentation and complete interviews on a regular basis.
A KFF Health News analysis of Missouri SNAP reports found the same problems persisted for more than a year. Nearly half of the applications denied in the 16 months following the judge’s order were denied at least in part because interviews were not completed, according to data the state submitted to the court as part of the order. This means the state’s system is failing the most vulnerable, the judge said.
In an order issued in May of this year, Harpool found that Missouri had failed to demonstrate significant improvement and that some measures had worsened its performance. Harpool wrote that the state did not document that it added an additional staff member or invested additional resources to process applications more quickly.
The Missouri Department of Human Services said the state Legislature has provided funding to hire temporary workers from other locations so employees can process SNAP applications.
To complete the interviews required for food assistance, the agency said it makes multiple attempts to contact applicants once an application is received.
Katie DeeblerAn attorney with the National Center for Law and Economic Justice, who represented Missouri in the case, said: “These are your neighbors, your children’s classmates who go hungry when the system doesn’t work.”
problems ahead
About 68% of state food assistance recipients are children, adults over 60 or disabled, according to the Missouri Foundation for Health. Many people who can work are already working.
Christine WoodyMissouri lacks the money and will to fix its food assistance system, said the food security policy manager for Empower Missouri, a group that works to reduce poverty in the state.
Woody and other advocates worry that federal changes will undermine the nation’s strongest defense against hunger.
“For states like Missouri that are already struggling to run their programs, these new regulations could not come at a worse time,” said Bolen of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Missouri foreshadows the problems that lie ahead for other states, he said. Many states, like Missouri, are reluctant to fund food assistance programs. And now they will have to use state money to fill the gap left by federal cuts, which “is causing the state to fail,” Bolen said.
Those who support change see it differently. House Speaker Mike Johnson previously described cost shifting to states as “moderate” and said it was necessary to reduce fraud. “There’s not enough skin in the game,” he said. He said this on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” The budget bill is about to be passed.
Still, if the state can’t come up with the money to fill the gap, Bolen said, it will be left with two options. Either make it harder for people to qualify for SNAP or end the program altogether.
For Tweatt, the change came at a particularly difficult moment. A few months ago, she lost her life partner of 30 years, which left her reeling and struggling to cope with basic needs. She doesn’t turn 65 until April. This means she will be subject to expanded work requirements until then and may need to prove she has a job to keep the remaining $220 in monthly food allowance. State officials said they will apply work rules to her case when she gets her renewal. Thweatt’s car needs repairs and her license plates are about to expire, she said. She doesn’t have the money to solve both problems.
She said she was selling everything she could, including her antique bedroom set, to buy essentials.
“You can be satisfied with a bag of chips a day,” Thweatt said. “So if that’s what I need to do, that’s what I need to do.”
