Doug Jones: “We Are on a Cliff When It Comes to Hunger in This State”

Birmingham, AL — Doug Jones said during his weekly Ask Doug Live livestream Sunday that, as governor, he will work to protect food assistance for Alabama families as new federal changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program could leave the state facing millions of dollars in additional costs.

“We are on a cliff when it comes to hunger in this state,” Jones said. “And we got to do something about it, because let me tell you, that’s your friends and your neighbors.”

SNAP helps about 648,000 Alabamians, roughly one in eight people in the state, afford groceries each month. Alabama's 2025 payment error rate was 9.52 percent, below the national rate of 10.62 percent. Under the new federal law, if Alabama does not lower that rate, the state could have to pay approximately $174 million a year beginning in October 2027.

Tuberville has called SNAP “overrun with fraud” and said some recipients need to “get off their butts and go back to work.” But the payment error rate is not a measure of fraud. It includes mistakes from both overpayments and underpayments.

Nearly 82,000 fewer Alabamians, including more than 23,000 children, are receiving SNAP than before the federal law passed last summer.

“They’re not talking about it. You don’t hear Tuberville talking about it,” Jones said. “The legislature went out of session. They knew it’s coming.”

Jones called on Tuberville, who sits on the Senate Agriculture Committee, to give Alabama more time to lower its error rate before the new costs take effect.

“We are going to do everything we can in the Doug Jones administration to make sure we get those federal dollars to help people,” Jones said. “And we’re going to enact policies that are going to lift people out of poverty.”

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