OPELIKA — U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Auburn) said he'd use artificial intelligence (AI) if elected as governor to re-evaluate state and federal welfare program recipients.
Alabama's SNAP payment error rate (PER) increased to 9.52% in fiscal year 2025. The U.S. Department of Agriculture in June released each state's PER, which measures how accurately states determine who is eligible for SNAP and how much they should receive.
States with error rates at or above the 6% threshold will be responsible for covering 5%, 10% or 15% of their states' benefits due to a recent federal rule change. Alabama had a 9.52% PER in fiscal year 2025; 8.82% was from overpayments and .7% from underpayments. Alabama's PER in fiscal year 2024 was 8.32%.
Tuberville recently told the Alabama Sheriff's Association in a speech in Opelika that Alabama's current error rate could cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars.
"We passed the Big Beautiful Bill. I just want to tell you one problem that we're getting ready to have. The Big Beautiful Bill says that we're going to make sure that states are accountable with the SNAP program, food stamps. We need to be; everybody needs to be," Tuberville said. "If your error rate, in other words if you've got people on there more than 5% that don't belong on there, you're going to have to pay for it through the state. If we use the error rate that we have today, which is 9%, my first year we'll have to pay $288 million of your money back to the federal government. So, how are we going to do that? We've got A.I. that's going to come in and evaluate everybody that's getting anything from the federal government or the state. We want to help our veterans. We want to help our elderly. We want to help kids that need help. We want to help anyone that needs help, but it's time to go back to work. It's time to get off that couch. COVID almost put us under. We've got to take advantage of A.I. and re-evaluate everybody that's on any kind of entitlement and go back to work and get this state going back in the right direction. That will help in a lot of mental health areas, putting people back to work instead of sitting around and not doing anything during the day."
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