FNS Documents & Resources

This notice sets forth the interpretation that the U.S. Department of Agriculture uses for the term “Federal public benefit” as used in Title IV of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. In doing so, this notice supersedes any prior interpretation in any notice or other document issued by any USDA agency. This notice also describes and preliminarily identifies the USDA programs that provide “Federal public benefits” within the scope of PRWORA.

We work in partnership with state agencies to provide nutrition assistance to Americans in need through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. It is imperative that USDA eliminates bureaucratic duplication and inefficiency and enhances the government's ability not only to have point-in-time information but also to detect overpayments and fraud.

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. 

This rule rescinds an unnecessary reporting requirement for the school meals application verification process.

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 are committed to upholding Secretary of Agriculture Rollins’ priority to take swift action to minimize instances of fraud, waste, and program abuse, and to ensure American taxpayer dollars are spent with integrity and accountability. We are issuing this memo, both in support of that priority and in response to requests from SNAP state agencies and FDPIR administering agencies, for additional guidance on preventing dual participation and ensuring comparable disqualifications are applied in SNAP and FDPIR.  

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.