Food stamp cheating states

The feds pay $6.5 billion to states who in turn have an 11% error rate.

The stereotype of food stamp (also known as SNAP and EBT) as porkers complaining about not being able to buy potato chips (or as we called them as kids, chata chips) next year. This poor lady had to cancel her vacation because food stamps no longer cover junk food.

But food stamps are a $100 billion program with plenty of money to siphon by everyone. The feds changed its rules to allow fast food joints (KFC, Rally’s and Taco Bell to name a few) to accept food stamps.

Dollar General and just about any other store accepts them. The healthy stuff is in the back. The chata chips and sodas are in the front. They call them convenience stores for a reason. Imagine having to walk all the way to the back of the store to get the day’s supply of empty calories.

Jack Kennedy sold food stamps as a way to fight hunger in Appalachia, which legitimately was a problem.

The USDA reported, “Mr. and Mrs. Alderson Muncy of Paynesville, West Virginia, were the first food stamp recipients on May 29, 1961. They purchased $95 in food stamps for their 15-person household. In the first food stamp transaction, they bought a can of pork and beans at Henderson’s Supermarket.”

That $95 was the equivalent of more than $1,000 today. But good golly, that was for 15 people.

Mom used money she earned to buy chata chips.

Originally, recipients bought the stamps for a token amount but bureaucrats later sold the taxpayers on the idea that it cost more to collect the money than it was worth. However, this eliminated the incentive to be careful in spending food stamps.

In August, his nephew RFK Jr., told reporters:

The U.S. taxpayers should NOT be paying to feed the poorest kids in the country food that will give them diabetes.

We are spending $405 MILLION a day on SNAP. 10% is going to sugary drinks. If you add candies to that, it’s about 13% to 17%.

We all believe in free choice. We live in a democracy. People can make their own choice about what they are going to buy and what they are not going to buy. If you want to buy a sugary soda, you should be able to do that, but the U.S. taxpayer should not pay for it.

I am starting to like this guy.

There is a third entity that benefits from food stamps—state governments. The Department of Agriculture, which is in charge of doling the money out, splits administrative costs with the states. Last year, the USDA have $6.5 billion to the states to administer food stamps.

With all the efficiency of a Rube Goldberg Machine, the states posted an error rate of 11%.

Thus, one out of every $9 in food stamps should not have been paid out. That’s $11 billion in error. Close enough for government work.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins is reining the program in. Her first step was to allow states to stop allowing food stamps to buy junk food. West Virginia’s ban on soda pop begins on January 1.

Now the administration and a Republican Congress are tightening the rules for states.

NYT reported:

President Trump’s sweeping domestic policy law fundamentally alters how food stamps are funded, leaving states to bear some of the cost for the first time in six decades.

The move all but ensures that states across the country will adopt a patchwork of policies for a crucial aspect of the social safety net. Whether they can find the money in their budgets—estimated, in some cases, to surpass a billion dollars—will have wide-ranging, and likely uneven, consequences for some 42 million people who participate in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

Some states warn that the entire program is at risk of being eliminated if legislatures cannot come up with their share. Others are weighing whether to impose additional state taxes or cut costs elsewhere in their budgets. And some are considering imposing barriers that will all but certainly reduce the number of recipients on their rolls.

Snipping SNAP should be no problem because states collect $3.4 trillion a year in taxes. That’s morethan enough to cover the new expense.

But greedy Democrat governors want mo’ money, mo’ money and eve mo’ money.

NYT said:

In late August, Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado signed a bill that amended a ballot proposal to include funding for SNAP. The measure, which voters will consider in November, will tax high-income earners to pay for free school meals and, if there is excess revenue, fund the SNAP program.

Others still are warning that they may have to cut enrollment or end their program entirely.

North Carolina’s Department of Health and Human Services said that if local lawmakers were unable to allocate the necessary funding—$420 million for benefits and $14 million for administrative costs—the state would “have to stop offering the SNAP program altogether,” eliminating benefits for 1.4 million residents.

No one is going to end their food stamps program. NYT is indulging in lefty hysteria again. As for eliminating recipients, that over the rise in administrative costs is more lefty lying because North Carolina could easily cover the money from existing revenues. It will spend more than $33 billion next year.

And of course, the deportations and self-deportation of illegal aliens will reduce the recipients by up to 425,000.

Cracking down on fraud is doable. Idaho plans to put photo IDs on EBT cards. So much for the selling of cards for cash or drugs.

Now I am supposed to say something nice about reforming food stamps because we have to think about the kids, but you know what? We have free school lunches year-round. The government is not a charity. This is why we have churches. Those tax-exempt NGOs that lobby for food stamps should instead provide food to the hungry.

For you see, even with food stamps we have churches distributing items from food pantries.

But suddenly feeding 42 million people is impractical and a non-starter politically. President Trump and Secretary Rollins are doing the best they can.

Crooks go where the money is and right now food stamps overflows with money. $11 billion worth of “error rate” shows that.