Federal Food Stamps Program Hits Record Costs In 2022
ZeroHedge, Jan 28, 2023 – Excerpts:
In early January, The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board warned that one peril of a large administrative state is the mischief agencies can get up to when no one is watching.
Specifically, they highlight the overreach of the Agriculture Department, which expanded food-stamp benefits by evading the process for determining benefits and end-running Congressional review.
Exhibit A in the over-reach is the fact that the cost of the federal food stamps program known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) increased to a record $119.5 billion in 2022, according to data released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture…
Food Stamp costs have literally exploded from $60.3 billion in 2019, the last year before the pandemic, to the record-setting $119.5 billion in 2022.
In 2019, the average monthly per person benefit was $129.83 in 2019, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That increased by 78 percent to $230.88 in 2022.
Even more intriguing is the fact that the number of participants had increased from 35.7 million in 2019 to 41.2 million in 2022…
All of which is a little odd – the number of people on food stamps remains at record highs while the post-COVID-lockdown employment picture has improved dramatically…
Source: Bloomberg
If any of this surprises you, it really shouldn’t given that ‘you, the people’ voted for the welfare state. However, as WSJ chided: “abuse of process doesn’t get much clearer than that.”
In its first review of USDA, the GAO skewered Agriculture’s process for having violated the Congressional Review Act, noting that the “2021 [Thrifty Food Plan] meets the definition of a rule under the [Congressional Review Act] and no CRA exception applies. Therefore, the 2021 TFP is subject to the requirement that it be submitted to Congress.” GAO’s second report says “officials made this update without key project management and quality assurance practices in place.”
Abuse of process doesn’t get much clearer than that. The GAO review won’t unwind the increase, which requires action by the USDA. But the GAO report should resonate with taxpayers who don’t like to see the politicization of a process meant to provide nutrition to those in need, not act as a vehicle for partisan agency staffers to impose their agenda without Congressional approval.
All of this undermines transparency and accountability for a program that provided food stamps to some 41 million people in 2021. The Biden Administration is using the cover of the pandemic to expand the entitlement state beyond what Congress authorized.…
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Watchdog Says 66,000 People Kept Getting Food Stamps Despite Disqualifying Lottery Wins
ZeroHedge, Oct 22, 2023 – Excerpts:
Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
A watchdog has revealed that over 66,000 people stayed on food stamp rolls despite winning enough money in lotteries to make them ineligible—and that’s just based on data obtained in just 13 states—with the figure for all 50 states “likely in the hundreds of thousands.”
The Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA) submitted Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to all 50 states, seeking information on the number of people in the food stamp program since 2019 who won big in the lottery, according to Hayden Dublois, data and analytics director at FGA.
“We aren’t talking about the proud owners of $20 prizes from scratchers. We’re talking about those who won at least $4,250, which, under federal law, makes a person ineligible for the taxpayer’s help,” Mr. Dublois said in an Oct. 20 op-ed for Fox News.
He said that, through a combination of state negligence and federal loopholes, over 66,000 substantial lottery winners continued to receive food stamps in the 13 states for which the FOIA request yielded survey data.
“Across all 50 states, the number is likely in the hundreds of thousands,” Mr. Dublois said, with the stark figures being the latest sign of persistent food stamp program abuse that FGA has been sounding the alarm on for a long time.
“Congress should get lottery winners off this low-income program when passing the Farm Bill later this fall,” Mr. Dublois added.
Loophole In Focus – In the past several decades, food stamp enrollment has skyrocketed.
In 2000, there were 17 million people on the rolls, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data. By 2023, that number had swelled to 42.4 million.
The cost to taxpayers has, over the same time period, soared by nearly 600 percent, according to an August review by FGA.
Part of the problem, according to FGA, is that 41 states and Washington DC ignore the federal income and asset limits, letting millions of ineligible enrollees to keep getting food stamp benefits while opening the system to waste, fraud, and abuse.
Roughly 5.4 million food stamp recipients who enrolled through BBCE don’t meet eligibility requirements because states have used federal loopholes to overlook eligibility criteria, according to FGA.
Households that managed to qualify under BBCE were nearly three times as likely to have payment errors than other households, according to the FGA study….
The food stamp program is losing roughly $1 billion per month because of fraud and errors, according to Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), who in late September introduced legislation aimed at reducing the tidal wave of money being lost from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which is the official name of the food stamp program….
Food Stamp Expansion Blamed for 15 Percent Rise In Grocery Prices
An earlier FGA study blames increased food stamp spending—including a massive expansion of the program under President Joe Biden—for contributing to soaring grocery prices.
In 2021, under the Biden administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) introduced updated nutritional guidelines for federal food stamp benefits. These changes led to an approximate 27 percent expansion of the Supplemental Assistance Nutrition Program (SNAP) compared to its pre-pandemic scale….
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