Republican state lawmakers advanced a budget plan on Tuesday that would revive proposals Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs has already vetoed, like new requirements on people seeking Medicaid and SNAP benefits.
The budget bills advanced by GOP lawmakers make across-the-board cuts to state agencies, savings Republicans propose using to pay for massive tax cuts.
The GOP budget would also fold in new eligibility requirements to SNAP benefits and the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, also known as AHCCCS, the state’s Medicaid program. With fewer Arizonans able to claim those benefits, Republican lawmakers estimate they’ll save roughly $180 million in the first fiscal year and even more after that.
Republicans argue the stricter requirements will weed out fraud in government programs.
“This budget does ensure that people have to follow the rules of AHCCCS and SNAP and qualify, and if they are not eligible, they don't get benefits,” Rep. David Livingston (R-Peoria) insisted.
Nurse Kristi Korn warned lawmakers in a Tuesday’s hearing that cutting AHCCCS will hurt Arizonans, and especially rural hospitals.
“The changes to AHCCCS proposed here make healthcare more expensive for everyone. As a nurse, I must tell you we have a duty to care,” she said.
Hobbs criticized the GOP budget as “reckless” and has already vetoed similar efforts in separate bills sponsored by Republican lawmakers earlier this year, including stricter work requirements and more frequent eligibility checks for Arizonans applying for those benefits.
The SNAP and AHCCCS changes are based on H.R. 1, the federal budget bill that Congress passed last year.
The state Department of Economic Security has already implemented changes to the SNAP application process, leading to a reduction of more than 450,000 Arizonans no longer part of the program — that’s about half of the people who received benefits a year ago.
Hobbs and DES say the agency is facing a backlog of applications and the agency needs more staff and resources to implement the changes from H.R.1 while still processing applications.
But Republicans said Tuesday that they don’t believe DES needs more resources. In fact, they propose cutting the DES budget by 5%, along with most other state agencies.
Livingston said he and other lawmakers visited a DES office earlier this year and although they were behind, they don’t need more help.
“We absolutely disagree that we need more staff to do this job. … Things are going in the right direction,” he said.
Transcript
LAUREN GILGER: State lawmakers are at odds with our Democratic governor over how to spend the shrinking state budget. Cuts need to be made, but the budget proposed by GOP members of the Legislature this week added up to $800 million less than what Gov. Katie Hobbs had proposed.
The Republican plan includes a across-the-board 5% cuts to just about every state agency, including adding new eligibility requirements to food stamp benefits and Arizona’s Medicaid program. Republicans say it will save the state $180 million and weed out fraud in government programs — but the governor has already vetoed new restrictions like this. And it comes at a time when a record number of people have been dropped from SNAP, Arizona’s food stamp program, to the tune of more than 450,000 Arizonans at last count. More than half of those are children.
KJZZ’s Camryn Sanchez is covering it all for our politics desk and she joins me now in studio to tell us more. Good morning, Camryn.
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Good morning.
LAUREN GILGER: All right, so Camryn, let's start with these massive losses to the state's SNAP program — 450,000 people sounds like a lot of people.
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Yeah, especially since we had about 900,000 people before that, so we’re talking about roughly half the folks getting slashed and that’s just now. The number is still climbing.
LAUREN GILGER: OK. So there — this is I understand bigger losses to a food stamp program in our state than any other state has seen, even though we’re all kind of doing this because of conformity to this HR1, the "Big Beautiful Bill," so-called.
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Right. And that’s what’s so especially weird about it. So HR1, which passed last summer in the federal Congress, said that we had to change the SNAP process and they want us to bring our error rate down in Arizona. Which is something that the governor says DES — which is our state Department of Economic Security, which administers the SNAP program — is already in the process of doing. But whatever DES is doing is is different from what all of the other states are doing because we’ve cut way more people way more quickly.
LAUREN GILGER: Right. OK. So these are — what do we know about what’s leading to this? What have they told you?
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Well, DES has said they’re just doing what they had to do to conform with federal law and that they’re not doing anything beyond that. And they’re also saying, "Well, we’re understaffed, we’re overloading, you know, we’re we’re dealing with this backlog." They acknowledge that there is a large backlog of folks who are saying that they have issues with the program.
But from folks we’ve spoken to who have been trying to get their benefits, especially people who have been on SNAP for a really long time, they’ve said, "Well, no, you know, I’m still eligible and I’m bringing all of my correct documents and things to DES, but I’m no longer able to complete the application process because they won’t answer the phone or their system lags or it doesn’t work, and then I get rejected, and now I’m hungry and my family is struggling." ... And it’s not because of waste, fraud and abuse, which is ostensibly what this was also supposed to get rid of.
LAUREN GILGER: And we should say you talked to those folks in line at the food bank, right?
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Yeah, I did. I’ve spoken to those folks in a couple of places, but the food bank was one of them, and everybody actually said the exact same thing, which is rare when I’m talking to a group of people. But yeah, one after the other, everyone who said that they had tried applying for SNAP said that the process had gotten harder and/or that their benefits had been taken away.
LAUREN GILGER: OK, now Republican lawmakers are proposing new eligibility requirements more than already exist or came down from the federal level. What kind of impact could this have?
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Yeah, they’re slipping that into this proposed GOP state budget, and these are bills that came to Gov. Hobbs in separate bill form earlier in the year which she already killed. There’s two things there. Partly she’s saying, well, it’s not necessary because DES is already doing what they’re supposed to be doing, so we don’t need to add on to that. And second of all, they want to go like beyond what the federal law has required. So, for example, the federal changes say we have to have our error rate down to 6%. The federal bill puts penalties on that, but the state legislation that’s proposed by Republicans would bring it down to 3%. So that’s even stricter.
And they’re saying we need to do things even harder. Have people check in even more frequently, apply even more often, meet even, you know, the strongest possible work requirements, everything. And Hobbs is saying no.
LAUREN GILGER: OK. As you said, she has already vetoed legislation like this. Do we anticipate that to happening again, or is this sort of a jumping off point to negotiate over what a budget might look like if they come to the middle?
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: I mean, the fact that they’ve snuck in a lot of things in this budget that she’s already vetoed and not just in this portion makes me think that it’s not going to be popular with her. Although we’ve gotten mixed messaging from Republicans. They say, "Well, this is a budget that has bipartisan gains, it’s not just a starting off point, we really do think that this can pass, we’re not just, you know, going through the motions of putting it up."
But I mean, I there’s not been any enthusiasm from Democrats. It passed yesterday out of committee on party lines. Every single Democrat voted no and there were some pretty nasty conversation, too, where they basically said, "Well, we don’t need you and we don’t care what you think."
LAUREN GILGER: The GOP plan here though and and the governor’s plan to some extent are trying to address a real problem, right? That we do need to cut spending. The state is facing a budget deficit.
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Yeah, this is not the year where people are going to get to pay for their pet projects. The budget, you know, either way we’re going to have tax cuts. Democrats want a certain portion of tax cuts and Republicans want full what’s called tax conformity. Which means that we have to find a way to pay for that stuff and there’s not going to be a lot of new revenue. So they’re looking at ways to slash, and one of those ways is agency cuts. So that means, for example, DES, the program that administers SNAP, would be taking a cut to their budget.
LAUREN GILGER: As they’re saying they’re facing this big backlog.
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Yes.
LAUREN GILGER: Republican lawmakers, what do they want to do with this $180 million in spending that they say they’ll they’ll save here?
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: I mean, largely it is to pay for those tax cuts. So the tax cuts would cost a lot and that $180 million number is just for the first fiscal year, I believe it’s fiscal year 2028. So it’s a variety of things. They’re also looking to cut other programs. They want to cut funding to the Commerce Authority; they want to cut tax incentives for solar; and that hodgepodge of all of those cuts put together will pay for tax cuts.
LAUREN GILGER: We mentioned that they want 5% across the board cuts to just about every state agency, but not all. Which ones would be spared?
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: It’s the ones they consider to be essential for public safety. So that’s the Department of Public Safety, obviously, the Department of Child Safety and the Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry.
LAUREN GILGER: OK. So the one thing that the Legislature has to do every year — the only thing they have to do, right — is pass a budget. ... What do you think this proposed budget from the Republicans and how it compares with the governor’s proposed budget earlier on — what do you think that says about how far this will take to get a budget passed?
CAMRYN SANCHEZ: I mean, this whole thing of like going through the process of they have their budget and she has her budget, we did this last year. Last year was actually awful, because they made us go through like two or three iterations of the budget before they finally passed something and then there was threats of another budget.
Anyway, that was exhausting. I think this year, you know, everyone knows this is their fourth year dealing with Hobbs, this is the fourth year in a divided government, they know what they have to do. They’re going to get there eventually. And the fact that they don’t have extra money to play with this year actually in some ways makes it easier. Because people are not going to die on the hill of their special project. So I think we’re actually, you know, maybe even a little bit closer than we were last year, but still not at the finish line.
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