'True Ebenezer Scrooge stuff:' Final spending bill leaves SNAP beneficiaries open to theft

Congressional budget watchers concerned with food insecurity are lamenting the loss of a provision impacting the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in the final spending deal Congress passed Saturday, which very narrowly averted a government shutdown. The measure is a continuing resolution that will keep the government funded through mid-March at current levels, and includes funding for a few select priorities, like disaster relief.

The final bill did not extend protections for victims of SNAP benefit theft after it was axed from an original spending deal — a move that Bobby Kogan, the senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, called "true Ebenezer Scrooge stuff." Kogan laid blame at the feet of billionaire Elon Musk, who whipped up opposition to the earlier, bipartisan version of the spending deal.

Under the original deal, the SNAP benefit theft protections would have been continued for another four years, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

SNAP benefits, a far-reaching social program that helps low-income Americans buy groceries, is vulnerable to theft through "skimming" — a practice where thieves can take advantage of the relatively low security on SNAP EBT cards by hiding devices in payment machines that allow them to clone card information, including users' PINs.

"Today, I'm thinking about the low-income families across the country who are about to discover that the SNAP benefits they were counting on to buy groceries were stolen after 11:59 pm last night—and who no longer have a way to get those benefits replaced because of this decision," wrote Katie Bergh, senior policy analyst on the food assistance team at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, on Saturday.

Congress approved federal funding for states to reimburse the stolen benefits in 2022. A couple of states reinstate skimmed SNAP funds using state money, according to NBC. Federal funds have so far replaced $53.5 million in stolen SNAP benefits, a dollar amount that has impacted 115,596 households, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

"Ending the process to replace stolen benefits for victims will also make it more difficult to track and stop the individuals behind these crimes, because fewer people will report the crime," wrote Ty Jones Cox, vice president for food assistance at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, in a statement Monday.

Cox said that omitting this protection will lessen SNAP benefits by roughly $1.5 billion over the next ten years, citing Congressional Budget Office estimates.