* First, some background…

If current trends continue, Illinois will have to pay 15% of the total SNAP benefit costs, which, according to the governor’s office, would be $705 million a year.

The reason the state is on the hook for 15% of benefit costs is because of its high SNAP payment error rate, which stood at 11.56% in fiscal year 2024, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The state’s error rates for underpayments to SNAP beneficiaries was less than 1%, but its overpayment error rate was 10.6%.

The new federal law requires that states with SNAP payment error rates of 10% or higher must pay 15% of SNAP benefit costs. The state will struggle mightily to afford that, so lots of people may lose their food aid if things don’t change.

Eleven states, including New York and New Jersey plus the District of Columbia, had higher error rates than Illinois, but 38 had lower error rates.

If Illinois could reduce its error rate to above 8% but below 10% — on par with states like Michigan, Ohio and Texas then it would pay 10% of benefit costs, or $470 million a year.

Reducing Illinois’ error rate to a recent 15-year average of what the Food Resource and Action Center says was 7.1%, would make its annual penalty 5% of benefit costs — or $235 million a year.

And if Pritzker’s administration could decrease the error rate below 6%, then the state would face no additional state penalties at all.

Illinois achieved those lower error rates five times between 2011 and 2017. Eight smaller states, including Wisconsin, had error rates below 6% in FY24.

* Now, this post isn’t about Israel and Palestine, but you’ll see how it develops in a bit. From Gov. JB Pritzker’s gaggle today…

Reporter: Can you talk about how that vote opposed to sending weapons to Israel? Your take on it? Should Palestine be recognized as a state, and how should the next administration treat it?

Pritzker: I’ve responded before, so I’m not going to spend a lot of time, and I’ll just say this. I think the purpose of that resolution, I didn’t introduce it, but the purpose of the resolution seems to have been to send a message that Israel needs to deliver food aid to people who are starving in Gaza. And I wholeheartedly agree with that sentiment. People are dying because they can’t get food aid there. Oh, by the way, people in the United States will die when they can’t get food aid because of SNAP cuts. So I’m all for us making sure that the Israelis work with us and international community to deliver food to people in need. […]

Isabel: Has there been any progress with reducing the SNAP error rate?

Pritzker: So I don’t know if you understand the SNAP error rate. I just want to give you a little tutorial. I promise it will be short. The SNAP error rate on average in the United States, average state SNAP error rate about 11 percent. Guess what Illinois is, about 11 percent.

What they’re doing, the Republicans, is they’re setting a new bar at 6 percent and saying, If you can’t get to 6 percent we’re going to take SNAP away or charge you a whole bunch of money. So how do they want us to get to 6 percent by cutting people off of SNAP? That is what they’ve done.

So we are working very hard to make sure that we’ve got a process for determining the eligibility of people, making sure we hit the error rate that we need to as best we can. And we’re working very hard every single day to effectuate that. But it’s going to take money to do that. The federal government is not giving us any money to do that, never has before, by the way, but now they’re costing us money. So we want to make sure that we’re actually delivering to the maximum number of people that need SNAP.

I would add one more thing about the error rate. It’s not just an error, as if we’re giving too much money to people. Sometimes the error is we’re giving too little money to people because they don’t report all of their expenses, and so we don’t know exactly how little they actually are taking home. And so that is considered part of that error rate. Once again, Republicans don’t care that we’re under providing. They just want to cut everybody off of SNAP. That is why they’ve set this SNAP error rate so low.

1) Condescending much?

2) As pointed out above, 6 percent is the rate where no penalty is incurred. But increasingly smaller penalties will be assessed at various levels below 10 percent. And, as noted above, Illinois has achieved error rates of 6 percent or lower several times in the past. Yes, times change, but states have had no incentive until now to lower its error rates. Not saying this is a good thing, just saying there’s a new reality afoot and it could cost taxpayers a lot of money or cut people off nutrition assistance.

3) And finally, as mentioned above, the under-payment error rate last year for Illinois was miniscule.