Stolen SNAP replacement - update after Congressional action on Friday

We are reaching out with an upsetting and frustrating update before the holidays. We will follow up with more information after January 1, but wanted to update the Coalition in the meantime. 

 

Low-income families struggling to put food on the table are a major casualty of last week’s political maneuvering to avoid a government shutdown. 

 

In December 2022, Congress required states to replace most stolen SNAP with federal dollars. Since then, DTA has issued approximately $10 million federal dollars to replace stolen SNAP for about 21,000 households. The federal mandate to replace stolen benefits expired on December 20, 2024. 

 

Congress extended federal replacement in the bipartisan Continuing Resolution bill Congress released on December 17, but did not include it in the final, stripped down, bill. This means DTA cannot replace SNAP stolen on or after December 21, 2024 with federal dollars.  

 

MLRI’s press release on this issue is here. 

 

Most urgently, please encourage families to:

  1. Change their PIN as often as possible, and at least before every SNAP issuance (between the 1st and 14th of each month, depending on the last digit of the head of household’s SSN)

  2. Use DTA’s new lock/unlock feature on DTAConnect 

  3. Continue to report stolen SNAP to DTA.

Learn more at Mass.gov/ProtectYourEBT