For sixty years, the food stamp program has operated under an arrangement no family and no business would ever accept: one level of government runs the program, and another level of government pays for it. States sign people up, calculate benefits, and process the paperwork while federal taxpayers cover the bill. When the people writing the checks and the people doing the work are in different buildings, nobody watches the register.

The results are exactly what you’d expect. In fiscal year 2024, the federal government spent roughly $100 billion on SNAP, and at least $10.5 billion of it was lost to improper payments, according to the Government Accountability Office. That’s at least one dollar out of every nine going out the door in the wrong amount, to the wrong people, or both. Year after year, the error rates barely move because for the states responsible for them, errors are free.

This lack of accountability is what feeds the fraud we’ve seen in states like Minnesota, where fraudsters stole as much as $9 billion in taxpayer money while state officials either neglected to do their job or turned a blind eye. Some of the money may have even ended up in the pockets of terrorist groups like al-Shabaab. As the inspector general responsible for investigating the SNAP program recently testified to Congress, “Proceeds of SNAP fraud have gone to individuals linked to terrorist groups, foreign adversary nations, and transnational criminal organizations.”

President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act finally fixed the incentive by requiring states with payment error rates of 6 percent or higher to pay 5 to 15 percent of benefit costs, and every state will cover a larger share of administrative expenses. For the first time since the program was introduced, a state that tolerates sloppy rolls will feel it in its own budget. Senate Agriculture Chairman John Boozman, describing why the provision exists, put it plainly: “It is clear that improvements were needed to ensure SNAP is administered as intended to support those truly in need while protecting taxpayer dollars.”

And here is the remarkable part: the reform is working before a single dollar changes hands. Because the 2028 cost share is calculated from each state’s error rate in fiscal year 2025 or 2026, the measurement window is open right now. States that spent decades shrugging at their error rates are suddenly tightening income verification, cleaning ineligible recipients off their rolls, and investigating why errors happen. That is the mechanism doing exactly what it was designed to do.

So naturally, Washington wants to kill it.

Senate Democrats, led by Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar, are pushing to use the farm bill to delay the cost share for every state before it ever takes effect. Call it what it is: a repeal in disguise. Democrats are hoping that they can win in 2028 and sweep accountability under the rug forever.

The accountability window is the current fiscal year. Pushing the start date back resets the clock, blunts the incentive, and tells every state agency that just started cleaning house to stand down, because Washington will blink again before the bill comes due. That’s why the non-partisan Washington Post editorial board is calling for Republicans to hold the line and keep the cost-sharing.

I’ll go further. If you believe in the safety net, you should want this reform most of all. Nothing corrodes public support for food assistance faster than the sense that nobody is minding the store. The strongest case for SNAP’s future is a program that pays the right benefit to the right person every time.

Voters across the spectrum understand this. In a national survey, the Rainey Center Freedom Project published this week, 67 percent of registered voters supported the cost-share requirement, including 79 percent of Republicans, 64 percent of independents, and a majority of Harris voters. Majorities of every partisan group agree that states should cover some of the cost of the benefits they administer. And the support survives contact with the opposition’s best argument. When we put the case for the requirement head-to-head against the claim that it punishes states for paperwork errors and could lead to food aid cuts, voters sided with accountability 63 to 21 percent.

The delay fares even worse. Offered the choice between implementing the requirement now and giving states more time to comply, voters chose implementation by 50 to 34 percent. When they learned that a delay would break the farm bill’s budget neutrality and add to the federal debt, they rejected it nearly two to one. There is no framing of this fight in which voters want the Senate to retreat.

Republican senators should take note of two more numbers. Among GOP voters, reducing food stamp waste, fraud, and abuse is an extremely or very important voting issue for nearly seven in ten. And 45 percent said they would be more likely to support a primary challenger against a senator who voted to overturn these anti-fraud reforms. The Republican base did not fight for this bill so that a Republican Senate could unwind it eighteen months later.

Congress has spent decades promising to get serious about waste, fraud, and abuse. For once, the mechanism is on the books, the incentive is live, and the states are responding. All the Senate has to do is nothing. Leave the reform alone, pass a farm bill that keeps it intact, and let accountability arrive on schedule.