Welfare fraud has become a hot topic in both Louisiana and the nation at-large in recent years.

According the US Government Accountability Office (GAO), the Federal government lost an estimated $233 billion and $521 billion annually to fraud between 2018 and 2022. What’s more, the GAO reported that over $100 BILLION in improper payments occurred in fiscal year 2025 for just three government programs—Medicare, Medicaid, and SNAP (a.k.a. food stamps). Both outright fraud and mistaken payments for government and welfare programs are costing American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars each year, and this issue is getting worse as these government programs continue to grow.

This issue has hit Louisiana in recent years as Louisiana’s SNAP payment error rate was over 8% in FY 2025 according to data from the Brookings Institute’s The Hamilton Project.

For  context, Louisiana received nearly ~$1.9 billion dollars in FY2025 from the Federal government for the SNAP program, so there was roughly $150 MILLION in improper SNAP payments in Louisiana within just one year.

Just as a note, not all improper SNAP payments are necessarily related to fraud. However, the high error rate in Louisiana’s SNAP payments is about to become a major problem for Louisiana taxpayers.

Currently, the federal government pays for all of Louisiana’s SNAP program funding (excluding some administrative costs). However, Louisiana is projected to be on the hook for close to a hundred million dollars starting next year (October 2026) due to a major change in federal law. Due to provisions in the 2025 “One Big Beautiful Bill” legislation, all states with SNAP payment error rates above 6% will have to have to pay between 5-15% of their total SNAP payments until their respective payment error rate falls below 6%.

Louisiana’s SNAP payment error rate has remained over 6% every year between 2022 and 2025. Consequently, the Louisiana state government will likely have to pay an estimated $100 MILLION (~5% of ~$2 billion in SNAP payments) out of the state’s general fund for SNAP every year until the payment error rate is below 6%.

Earlier this year, the Louisiana Division of Administration (DOA) published a Five Year Baseline Projection report for the state government’s budget, and the DOA estimated that the Louisiana state government is projected to have deficits between $500 million and $1.2 billion for each of the next three fiscal years.

In the notes to this projection, the LA DOA also notes that a significant portion of the state government’s projected deficits between 2027 and 2030 is due to changes in federal funding for Medicaid and SNAP. Thus, the elevated error rates for Louisiana’s SNAP payments is going to cause additional strain on the Louisiana budget and taxpayers.

This issue is completely avoidable at the end of the day, and we can only hope that our state officials will possess the political will to resolve this issue rather than kicking the can down the road.