In a letter sent last week, Democratic New Mexico U.S. Sen. Ben Ray Luján and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) pressed United States Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins for more details about her recently announced plan to require food benefit recipients to reapply.
Rollins first mentioned the possibility that Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program beneficiaries would have to reapply to the program during an interview on the right-wing Newsmax network.
The letter, signed by 30 Democratic U.S. senators, including Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, notes “serious concern” about a proposal to have people reapply to the program and says, “these changes appear to be duplicative of existing SNAP rules and designed to create more red tape for families seeking to put food on the table.”
The letter continues on to describe the disruption to SNAP that occurred during the 43-day government shutdown that ended Nov. 12.
In New Mexico, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham allocated $30 million in emergency funding to stopgap SNAP shortages, and state lawmakers held a special session and passed $162.5 million more to cover SNAP payments if needed. Food banks across the state also saw sharp increases in need.
“This reapplication requirement comes after repeated efforts to deny Americans in need of essential nutrition assistance,” the letter reads. “In addition to unprecedented cuts to SNAP enacted earlier this summer, decisions to disrupt food assistance during the shutdown have created additional uncertainty. We are therefore troubled that the Administration could choose, at this moment, to add additional red tape that creates duplicative and unnecessary barriers to accessing nutrition assistance for families.”
The letter asks Rollins to explain how the “reapplication” plan would differ from the current recertification process in which states assess recipients’ eligibility each year; how the plan would remain “consistent” with the program’s existing rules; and when the USDA planned to issue “rulemaking or guidance” on its reapplication plan.
In response to questions about the reapplication proposal, a USDA spokesperson previously said: “Secretary Rollins wants to ensure the fraud, waste, and incessant abuse of SNAP ends” and that “using standard recertification processes for households is a part of that work.”
New Mexico state Republicans also recently voiced concerns about SNAP fraud, and called upon the Legislative Finance Council to expand an audit of the program to include investigation fraud.
Luján, the ranking member of the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Food and Nutrition, Specialty Crops, Organics, and Research, last week, along with Klobuchar and the whole Senate Democratic Caucus, introduced a bill to repeal all SNAP-related changes in the recently enacted “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”