New Mexico #1 food stamp recipient state

In a recent interview w/ Source New Mexico Gov. Lujan Grisham whined about potential federal reductions in the generosity of SNAP (also known as food stamps). The Gov. said in part:

You’ve got $1 billion that we get into the state for SNAP… These are radical cuts. It’s a little bit different and I don’t think people quite understand the nuance of it, but we could be on the hook for up to $300 million if the cuts, as we know them, were voted on today.

So, we were curious as to which states have the highest percentage of their populations on SNAP benefits. In a surprise to absolutely no one New Mexico has the highest percentage of residents on SNAP of any state in the nation (and it’s not really close). According to this from US News 19.9% of New Mexicans are on the program. The next highest is Louisiana with 18.5% of its residents on SNAP (that’s a 7 percent difference).

Shockingly, New Mexico’s SNAP population is 4 times the percent of Utah and more than double that of Texas and Colorado.

Of course, New Mexico is “not a poor state,” but it IS a poorly-governed one and its people are poor even though the State is sitting on $61 billion. New Mexico can obviously afford to take up the slack on SNAP, but it shouldn’t have to. If the Gov. and Legislature would enact long-overdue policy reforms to bring economic growth to the State we wouldn’t have so much dependency and thus such a large SNAP population.