Pursuant to the provisions of the Privacy Act of 1974 and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular No. A-108, notice is hereby given that the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) proposes to create a new system of records (SOR) entitled USDA/FNS-15, “National Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) Information Database.”
This collection is based on the final rule titled, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program: Program Purpose and Work Requirement Provisions of the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 published on Dec. 17, 2024, in the Federal Register. Since it has been a while since the agency sought public comments, the agency is opening the Paperwork Reduction Act requirements for 30 days.
We are proposing to rescind Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program: Revision of Civil Rights Data Collection Methods regulations, issued as a final rule on Dec. 14, 2023.
This memorandum adjusts the total number of exemptions available to each state for FY 2025. This includes adjustments in the number of exemptions available to states in which caseloads change by more than 10 percent.
We periodically examine how SNAP households use their monthly EBT benefits, including number of purchase transactions per month, average purchase amount, types of retailers frequented, and rate at which households exhaust their benefits over the month. This study, the fourth in the series, was done to assess monthly EBT redemption patterns during FY 2022 when SNAP EBT benefits were much larger than usual due to pandemic funding. By FY 2022, SNAP households could also use SNAP EBT to purchase groceries from authorized online retailers, so we analyzed benefits redeemed through online purchasing.
We periodically examine SNAP benefit redemption patterns related to the timing, number, and dollar amount of transactions and the rate at which households spend down and exhaust their monthly benefits. These studies also report on the number of transactions made and the share of benefits redeemed at various types of stores.
To ensure that tax dollars do not fund SNAP benefits to illegal aliens or other ineligible aliens, State agencies should carefully examine their identity and immigration status verification practices and make necessary enhancements.
This collection is for providing SNAP households advance or concurrent notice of state agency action to store unused SNAP benefits offline due to three or more months of account inactivity and for those households to seek reinstatement of benefits prior to permanent expungement. Additionally, this collection is for providing SNAP households advance or concurrent notice prior to the state agency expunging unused SNAP benefits from the household's Electronic Benefit Transfer account due to nine months of account inactivity.
Generally speaking, immigration status has changed recently for many aliens and state agencies are encouraged to continuously verify immigration status of all aliens in the state who receive SNAP.
This memorandum reiterates these fundamental objectives and their interaction with the Secretary of Agriculture’s authority to grant state SNAP agencies requests to waive the time limit on receiving SNAP benefits by ABAWDs who do not meet statutory work requirements.