The deep-red state of Alabama is staring down the barrel of having to repay millions of dollars back to the federal government as a result of President Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill. Now, Alabama.com reports Sen. Tommy Tuberville — who approved the bill — is frantically trying to do damage control.
“Sen. Tommy Tuberville is working with the state to ‘reduce the error rate’ in the local SNAP program, a metric that could lead to the state picking up a massive bill for the project in the near future,” reports AL.com. “Tuberville’s office made the statement Tuesday after Alabama food banks urged him and Sen. Katie Britt to support a two-year buffer before the state must begin making cost-sharing payments for its SNAP program.”
After Trump signed his signature One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law in July 2025, states with SNAP payment error rates greater than 6 percent must pay a share of benefit costs, with the amount depending on how far a state’s error rate exceeds that threshold. Poverty-stricken red states like Alabama and Mississippi are more likely to feel the sting of the loss while crunching their budgets in the next legislative session.
Alabama had a payment error rate of 9.52 percent in the fiscal year 2025 and would be responsible for 10 percent of its SNAP costs, or approximately $174 million.
In August, AL.com reported leaders and partners of Alabama food banks urged Tuberville and Britt to support a two-year waiver that would spare the state’s SNAP program from paying millions in cost-sharing payments until fiscal year 2029, and Tuberville’s office immediately signed on with delaying the worst damage of he and Trump’s budget law.
“Sen. Tuberville’s team is in talks with the state agency that manages the SNAP program to determine what efforts they can make to reduce the error rate,” stand-in Alabama governor’s communications director, Mallory Jaspers told AL.com
Tuberville and most Republican members of the U.S. House and Senate approved slapping states with reimbursement demands to fund the extension of Trump’s tax breaks, which critics say largely go to higher income brackets. But the errors they target rarely result from fraud, according to Michael Ledger, CEO of Feeding the Gulf Coast.
“We are talking about penalties to states because of administrative errors. Administrative errors are not fraud. Fraud only runs 1 percent to 2 percent,” Ledger told AL.com, adding that Alabama’s Department of Human Resources is laboring to lower the state’s error rate, but it will “take time for results to appear.”
In the meantime, AL.com reports Alabama faces two possible outcomes if the waiver is not approved: the state will fund the cost-sharing payment, or it potentially could lose its SNAP program.
“To pay the cost share, state lawmakers would need to identify $174 million in the fiscal year 2027 budget. If lawmakers cannot or will not allocate the funding, Alabama would have to reduce the number of SNAP participants or opt out of the program entirely,” said AL.com reporter Michael Yielding.
