ANNAPOLIS — It won’t happen immediately, but advocates and state officials are predicting that changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in the budget reconciliation bill signed last week will deliver “a devastating blow” to many of the 680,000 Marylanders who get SNAP benefits.
The biggest change that recipients will see are new work requirements for some able-bodied recipients that analysts say many Marylanders simply will not be able to meet, for a number of reasons.
The bill also includes a massive shift in costs from the federal to the state governments. Currently, the administrative costs for the program are split 50/50 and the federal government pays for all the costs of the actual benefit.
Beginning next year, states will pay 75% of administration, at a cost of $172.5 million, according to estimates from the Maryland Department of Human Services. A year later, they will pay for up to 15% of the actual benefits, according to a formula based on current performance.
Maryland will pay the most, 15%, at a cost in current dollars of $240 million.
The bill also caps future benefit increases at the rate of inflation and limits eligibility to citizens and lawful permanent residents; refugees and asylum-seekers would be kicked off the program.
The Urban Institute estimated this month that about 369,000 Maryland families would lose some or all SNAP benefits. Of those, 81,000 would lose an average of $150 a month — the current average monthly benefit in Maryland is $180 — and 51,000 families with children would lose an average of $81 a month.
“We are really trying to get our head around these impacts,” Maryland Human Services Secretary Rafael López said in an interview last week.
“They are massive. They will be felt across the state.”
While some of the cuts will take some time to be felt, López said that “at the end of the day, they are still cuts to benefits for Marylanders.”
The cuts were included in H.R. 1, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed by President Donald Trump on the Fourth of July. The bill also makes deep cuts to Medicaid and cuts taxes, with a bottom line that it could add $3.4 trillion to the federal deficit over the next decade.
For SNAP nationwide, the Urban Institute report estimates that some 22.3 million families will lose “some or all of their SNAP benefits,” and 5.3 million of those families will lose an average of $146 per month.
Ayesha Holmes, Maryland director of No Kid Hungry, said these changes are “a devastating blow” to working families.
“These extra burdens that are being added to families are difficult. They’re going to be hard to overcome,” she said.
Of the more than 680,000 Maryland residents who rely on SNAP currently to feed themselves and their families, more than 270,000 are children, according to DHS.
Holmes said that while Maryland’s legislators and other state officials understand the impact of these cuts, the amount of funding needed to support SNAP can really only come from the federal government.
“Unfortunately, what’s happened in Washington is really going to put not just Maryland, but all states at a disadvantage by hurting our most vulnerable,” she said.
“It’s going to hurt us all.”
She added that the full impact of the SNAP changes will also depend on how many people will be able to find work that satisfies the program’s new eligibility requirements, which requires most able-bodied recipients to work at least 80 hours a month, or 20 hours a week.
“If folks are able to get the job that meets this work requirement standard, they’ll stay on the rolls,” Holmes said.
“If, for some reason they’re not, then they won’t. And people, I imagine, will do their best. But even with everything going right, people lose their jobs. People get sick and their kids get sick.”
“Families are going to have to make some tough choices, and it’s at the point where the people do that is when we will really see the impact,” she said.
SNAP cuts could also affect some businesses in the state: For groceries that get a significant amount of their business from SNAP recipients, the reductions could pose a threat.
Maryland Retailers Alliance President Cailey Locklair said there’s no indication yet whether that will happen.
But any reduction in consumer spending could have a serious impact on grocers, she said, given the industry’s low average profit margins of 3% or less.
“I have some retailers where the majority of the revenue that’s coming in is from individuals who are receiving benefits,” Locklair said. “So the sheer viability of some of those brick-and-mortar retailers in communities that are underserved is going to be contingent on the same level of spending going on.”
Leah Aiello Paley, CEO of the Anne Arundel County Food Bank, said she expects there will be a greater reliance on charitable and nonprofit organizations, including food banks and pantries, as a result of these benefit reductions. But there’s only so much they can do.
“We’re in a position to try to rise to the occasion and meet the need as best we can, but there’s no way with dramatic cuts to the program that food banks and pantries are able to do so,” Paley said.
She said the food bank hasn’t seen any significant increases in demand yet, and currently provides service to an average of almost 50,000 a month across its 110 distribution locations in the county.
Paley noted that changes to SNAP benefits could alter eligibility to other assistance programs, such as free or reduced-price meals in schools. That could lead to kids going to school hungry, she said, because their family is food insecure and they can no longer get fed at school.
“That’s just screaming behavioral and emotional health issues in the classroom,” Paley said.
“You think about this cycle of if you have a student who cannot learn because they are hungry, and over time what that impact is to them in terms of achieving economic and educational outcomes, we are in for a very rude awakening,” she said. “And it certainly is very scary to think about the short-term and the long-term impact on families.”