The 2026 legislative session is moving quickly as state lawmakers begin talking about the many policy issues that are before them this year. Among those issues is one of the most widely-used federal welfare programs in the nation.
On Thursday, Republican State Reps. Pam Altendorf and Nolan West unveiled a bill to bring down Minnesota’s error rate within the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), a federally-funded food assistance program for low-income individuals.
In Minnesota, SNAP benefits are administered by counties, but the benefits themselves are funded by the federal government.
According to Altendorf and West, their bill would require Minnesota counties to verify that SNAP recipients are eligible for benefits before those SNAP benefits are actually issued, a safeguard that Altendorf said was previously in place until 2010.
Altendorf said her bill would not only stop SNAP fraud on the front end but also bring down Minnesota’s SNAP error rate.
At their press conference, Altendorf and West explained that Minnesota has a SNAP error rate of 9%, meaning 9% of SNAP payments are either overpayments or underpayments. West said that two-thirds of Minnesota’s SNAP errors are due to overpayments.
Under the One Big Beautiful Bill passed last year, states that fail to bring their SNAP error rate below 6% will be forced to pay for a percentage of those benefits.
According to Altendorf, there are over 440,000 people on SNAP benefits in Minnesota, which amounts to $875 million in benefits. If Minnesota cannot get its error rate under 6%, then Minnesota counties would collectively have to pay $86 million to the federal government.
Calling her new proposal a “good governance bill,” Altendorf said her bill would help address Minnesota’s SNAP error rate.
Given Minnesota’s divided legislature, any successful legislation will need bipartisan support in order to pass this year. Altendorf said she will be reaching out to DFLers to build support for her bill and said she thinks Democrats “would fully support this bill.”
Earlier this month, a Minnesota woman was sentenced in a SNAP fraud case that charged her with stealing $325,000 in SNAP benefits.
At Thursday’s press conference, Altendorf said Minnesota was among 21 states that did not comply with a recent Trump administration request to review state SNAP rolls.
According to Altendorf, a review of the other 29 states found that 500,000 people received double benefits, 350,000 received benefits from multiple states, and there were nearly 200,000 people enrolled in SNAP who were dead but benefits were still being issued.
Luke Sprinkel
Luke Sprinkel previously worked as a Legislative Assistant at the Minnesota House of Representatives. He grew up as a Missionary Kid (MK) living in England, Thailand, Tanzania, and the Middle East. Luke graduated from Regent University in 2018.
