The federal food stamp program, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP, has been victimized by millions, probably hundreds of millions, even billions of dollars in abuse.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said there’s already evidence of 185,000 dead people registered to get benefits, and more than 500,000 are getting benefits twice. One person had registered the same Social Security number for benefits in six states
And the solution will involve, at least in part, a new program to have beneficiaries reapply for the program.
That cash handout was what was at risk by the Schumer Shutdown, the Democrats’ agenda to shut down the government to force Republicans to reach into taxpayers’ pockets for $1.5 trillion for the Democrats’ specific agenda points.
That didn’t happen, but SNAP resumed operations when the Democrats eventually caved in and allowed the government to reopen.
Now according to a report originally in the Washington Stand, the requirement to reapply is coming.
When Rollins took office, letters were sent to state governments requesting information on the program’s use of money. Only 29 states responded, mostly from Republican administrations, but even that confirmed there’s “a lot of fraud,” Rollins said.
She said the stunning results included hundreds of thousands of recipients who are dead, many more getting paid twice.
“Here’s the really stunning thing: This is just data from those 29 mostly-red states. Can you imagine when we get our hands on the blue-state data, what we’re going to find?” she said.
She continued, “The president has made this a priority. We will fix this program.”
And that includes people reapplying for benefits to “make sure that everyone who’s taking a taxpayer-funded benefit through SNAP or food stamps that they literally are vulnerable, and they can’t survive without it. That’s the next step here.”
She said, “I do think what the Democrats did not include in their calculation, in their insane government shutdown, was the fact that this spotlight was going to [shine] upon one of their favorite government welfare programs that, under Joe Biden, increased 40%. All of this money that the federal government, the taxpayers are paying for food stamps, we don’t even know where it goes, what happens, what they’re doing with it.”
In fact, four in five recipients are “able-bodied Americans” who could work.
“They don’t have small children at home, they’re not taking care of an elderly parent, they can work and they choose not to work, of course, because they’re getting significant benefits from the taxpayer. … So this … is perhaps one of the most corrupt, dysfunctional programs in American history that—we are working now… We are cracking down. We now have a plan to fix it.”
A researcher for the Heritage Foundation told the Stand there’s probably $9 billion in SNAP overpayment errors for just 2024.
“Individuals commit SNAP fraud by: providing false information on their SNAP applications to increase their benefit amount (e.g., claiming they have lower income and/or higher costs than they actually do or claiming more people live in the household than actually do), stealing another person’s identity to claim benefits, selling SNAP benefits for cash or other goods, or running up a balance on their SNAP card and then reporting the card stolen so they can receive more benefits,” the researcher explained.
Other parts of the resolution may be to have states fund part of the costs, so they have “skin in the game.”