WASHINGTON, D.C. – Puerto Rico’s Governor and a handful of Senate Democrats said the territory’s residents have been treated differently when it comes to receiving federal food benefits. There’s a renewed effort in Congress to get SNAP benefits for Puerto Ricans.
Puerto Rico is home to more than three million Americans but they don’t get the same federal food program benefits as those on the mainland.
The island currently has NAP, or the Nutrition Assistance Program. According to the USDA, it’s a block grant nutrition program that has capped funds, targets households with the greatest need for assistance and generally provides lower maximum benefit amounts than SNAP, or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
The island has had its fair share of hurricanes. We’re told benefits like disaster-SNAP could help provide residents with disaster-related expenses like food loss, power outages and home repairs.
“In the case of Puerto Rico, we don’t have that,” said Governor of Puerto Rico, Jenniffer Gonzalez-Colon. “In the areas of disaster, we have to come back to House, Senate and then we can approve the money. That means that regularly, those people that receive more resources for food and nutrition than the ones not living on the island.”
For years Puerto Rico has pushed to transition from NAP to SNAP benefits. There’s a new push on Capitol Hill by Senators Kirsten Gillibrand (D- NY), Chuck Schumer (D- NY) and John Fetterman (D- PA) to make that change.
“These benefits are important because people are still struggling to make ends meet because the costs of groceries have skyrocketed, the cost of housing is still too high, the cost of medical treatment is too high,” said Sen. Gillibrand. “So, getting a benefit to defray cost for essential food is something we should do for Puerto Ricans.”
According to a 2025 USDA study, they estimate it would cost $249 million to $414 million per year to administer SNAP in Puerto Rico. They a lso estimate the cost of benefits would be $4.5 billion dollars annually.
Governor Gonzalez-Colon said for years they’ve invested in technology, training and other measures to transition Puerto Rico from NAP to SNAP.
“There are transition items that need to be taken care of,” said the Governor. “We ask for the government of Puerto Rico to use part of the federal funds to invest in that and technology and that’s the reason we will support the bill 1720 we know this change will not happen overnight but we want to make sure there’s language in the report that allows that transition to happen.”
