By Tim Hundt
June 25, 2026
According to reporting from The Associated Press, the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’, a massive tax-and-spending law signed by President Donald Trump shifts a significant portion of the financial burden for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) onto state governments. According to a press release from Gov. Tony Ever’s office, the bill cuts essential SNAP assistance, known in Wisconsin as FoodShare, by about 20% while increasing red-tape requirements and gutting nutritional education programs.
Crucially, the law introduces strict new financial penalties based on a state’s payment “error rate,” which refers to the percentage of benefits paid above or below what recipients should have actually received due to mistakes. According to the AP, starting in October 2027, the federal government will no longer cover the full cost of SNAP benefits for states with an error rate of 6% or higher. States with error rates between 6% and 8% will be forced to pay 5% of their total SNAP benefit costs, with the penalties sliding up to 15% for states with error rates over 10%.
The potential impact on Wisconsin taxpayers and the financial threat to Wisconsin was severe. According the governor’s office, Wisconsin taxpayers could have been forced to pay an estimated $205.5 million in new penalty fees to the federal government next year. This staggering fee would be stacked on top of an estimated $284 million the state is already projected to pay in future budgets due to the new law’s mandates.
If the state had been forced to shoulder these costs, the downstream effects could have been devastating. According to the AP report, states burdened by high error rates will have to make choices to fund SNAP benefits that could include cutting budgets for public schools, law enforcement or mental health care. Other states are even considering making it harder to stay in the program or withdrawing from federal food aid entirely.
Wisconsin managed to avoid these exorbitant costs through proactive legislative action. Gov. Tony Evers sounded the alarm last summer regarding the law’s impending penalties and spent months working to secure necessary funding from the Republican-controlled Legislature.
To prepare for the federal shift, the state needed upfront funding to implement the new requirements and hire more quality control staff across the state. Early this year, Evers signed a bipartisan bill, 2025 Wisconsin Act 116, that provided over $72 million in additional state resources to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services to support the FoodShare program and actively keep error rates low.
The result is Wisconsin is one of the few exempt states and these targeted investments ultimately protected the state’s budget. According to the reporting from the AP, Wisconsin is one of just nine states nationwide whose error rates were low enough to win an exemption from the new cost-sharing requirements. According to a press release from the governor’s office, Wisconsin’s official error rate came in at 5.72%, sliding safely under the 6% threshold.
While the state is safe for the upcoming cycle, Gov. Evers cautioned that the threat is not permanently gone. According to the governor’s office, there is no guarantee Wisconsin taxpayers won’t be on the hook in the future; if the state’s error rate slips above 6% under future administrations, taxpayers will once again face up to $205 million in federal penalty fees.
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