USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins’ claims about SNAP funding under Biden don’t add up

In late 2025, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins made repeated claims about costs for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — colloquially known as food stamp assistance — increasing drastically under former President Joe Biden’s administration. 

On Oct. 31, 2025, she presented a graph that went “back to October of 2023,” which purportedly showed “an almost 30% increase in the cost of the SNAP program over the four years that President Biden and the USDA was overseeing it” (see 24:40). 

Just a few days later, she claimed in an appearance on Fox News that SNAP increased “almost 40%” in “just a couple of years under the Biden administration.” She did not specify whether she meant enrollment, average monthly benefits or total spending.

In December 2025, she repeated the 40% figure in reference to an increase in “food stamp funding” while “Joe Biden was working to buy an election.” 

Rollins’ inconsistent claims led Snopes to dig into the numbers — with substantial help from experts at The Hamilton Project (the economic policy initiative of the Brookings Institution think tank) as well as the nonpartisan Pew Research Center — to see if what she said was true. 

It wasn’t. 

Total federal spending on SNAP actually decreased under the Biden administration; adjusted for inflation, costs increased slightly, but nowhere near 30% or 40%. Substantial increases to SNAP spending did, however, happen under the first Trump administration as part of an emergency relief package during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

When we first covered Rollins’ claim about SNAP benefit increases, we asked the USDA to verify its secretary’s allegations. The USDA sent via email a link to its SNAP datasets, which Snopes used to disprove Rollins.  

Here’s the evidence: 

Can the data be manipulated to fit Rollins’ narrative? 

As we previously reported, in an April 2020 news release (archived) the USDA said it increased “overall monthly SNAP benefits” on an emergency basis by 40% after Trump signed a law in 2020 allowing larger allotments for most SNAP households temporarily (see Page 11).  

That jump shows up in USDA year-to-year data from 2020 — the end of Trump’s first term — to 2021, the start of Biden’s term, when total spending during that time period increased by 43%, from about $79 billion to $113 billion (see “National Level Annual Summary”). Adjusted for inflation — using Pew Research data that was independently verified by Snopes — that’s a 38% increase. 

But it’s inaccurate to say Biden had anything to do with that increase. Furthermore, a closer look at USDA’s month-to-month data — which matches more closely with Biden and Trump’s terms — indicates that at no point did SNAP costs rise close to 40% while Biden was president. 

The real math doesn’t add up 

Biden’s presidency began on Jan. 20, 2021, and ended Jan. 20, 2025. From February 2021 to January 2025, total benefit costs decreased by 12%. If adjusted for inflation, total costs increased by 6%, as first calculated by The Hamilton Project at Brookings Institution. Snopes independently verified the Hamilton Project’s calculations using SNAP Data Tables, downloadable via the USDA website. We used the dataset labeled “National and/or State Level Monthly and/or Annual Data.” 

Comparing the start and end of Biden’s term doesn’t get close to that 40% number, either: Total spending was 17% lower in calendar year 2024 than in calendar year 2021.

In contrast, Trump’s first term began on Jan. 20, 2017 and ended on Jan. 20, 2021. The Hamilton Project and Snopes, using USDA data, found benefit costs rose by 64% from February 2017 to January 2021. 

In year-to-year terms, the largest increase in total SNAP costs during the Biden administration was from 2021 to 2022 — and the costs increased only by 3%, or 11% adjusted for inflation. 

Average monthly benefits didn’t increase, either. From February 2021 to January 2025, the average monthly benefit went from $412.45 per household to $350.67 per household. Total participation went from a little more than 42 million people to nearly 43 million during that time period, representing a slight increase. 

Analysts at the Brookings Institution project reproduced the graph Rollins presented and determined it did not show participation or costs increased by 30% from October 2023 to October 2024, as she claimed. In reality, the graph showed a 4% increase in participation and a 8% increase in total costs. 

A recreation of Rollins’ graph, which did not indicate that SNAP costs increased 30% under Biden. (The Hamilton Project at Brookings Institute)

Snopes also created a data visualization showing month-to-month SNAP percent change increases throughout Biden’s entire term, adjusted for inflation, which demonstrated that at no point did Biden increase spending by 40%. 

Why did costs increase under Trump and decrease under Biden? 

Biden did sign legislation to increase SNAP benefits during his administration, even though total costs don’t show it. Under him, Congress authorized a 15% increase in monthly SNAP benefits in March 2021 until September 2021 via the American Rescue Plan. 

That year, the USDA recalculated the Thrifty Food Plan, which determines the maximum benefit for a SNAP recipient. This happened because the 2018 farm bill, which passed during Trump’s first term, required a reevaluation of the formula for calculating benefits within five years. Ultimately, USDA increased the maximum allotment to 21%. 

But Trump’s emergency SNAP benefits in 2020 were “so generous,” total SNAP costs and average monthly benefits still decreased under Biden’s administration, said Lauren Bauer, associate director for The Hamilton Project and SNAP researcher. 

Trump’s emergency benefits allowed everyone eligible for SNAP to receive the maximum possible benefit. In other words, according to the USDA, an average five-person household in early 2020 received $528 a month in SNAP benefits — but the maximum benefit for five-person households with no income was $768. The emergency benefits allowed the average household to receive $768 per month instead. 

Bauer said that encouraged more families to apply for the program, especially those on the higher end of the eligibility spectrum. 

“Going through the hassle of applying for SNAP only to get $16 is maybe not worth it, but doing it for $500? Totally worth it,” Bauer said in a phone call. 

In addition, several states sued the Trump administration because the emergency allotments did not help the poorest people on SNAP. In April 2021, the USDA announced a settlement with Pennsylvania that provided $95 per person at minimum in emergency assistance to all SNAP households, further increasing spending on SNAP. 

Once those emergency allotments ended — nationwide in March 2023, but earlier in 18 states — people left the program, said Bauer, an expert witness on the Pennsylvania case. 

In sum … 

The math doesn’t support Rollins’ claims. In reality, SNAP spending decreased during Biden’s administration by about 12% — adjusted for inflation, it increased by 6%. Monthly benefits didn’t increase under Biden, either. In contrast, SNAP spending increased by about 64% under Trump, largely as a result of emergency COVID-19 SNAP allotments that went into effect in 2020 and expired a few years later, depending on the state. 

Snopes reporter Anna Rascouët-Paz contributed to this report. 

Sources