Following the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, which saw food stamp programs nearly lose their funding, President Donald Trump and his administration are moving to eliminate fraud and abuse in the program. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced last week that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will be requiring Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) beneficiaries to reapply for the program after her department found thousands of instances of fraud and abuse.
Upon taking office, Rollins sent letters to state governments requesting data on the administration of SNAP benefits. While only 29 states responded, she found ample evidence of fraud and abuse. “We know there’s a lot of fraud; we need to help partner with you all to figure out how to make sure that this money and these benefits go to those who truly need it and not rife with fraud and corruption,” Rollins said of her outreach to the states. Based on information she received, Rollins reported that over 185,000 dead people were registered to receive and were receiving SNAP benefits, and over 500,000 people were receiving benefits twice under the same name. “Here’s the really stunning thing: this is just data from those 29 mostly-red states,” she noted. “Can you imagine when we get our hands on the blue-state data, what we’re going to find?”
In one case, Rollins said, someone had used the same Social Security number (SSN) to register for electronic benefit transfer (EBT) cards in six different states. “These are the things that we’re uncovering that, for years, no one has really ever dug into because the feds didn’t have the system in place to do it. But we do now,” Rollins asserted. “The president has made this a priority. We will fix this program,” she added. The secretary further pledged that the USDA will “fundamentally rebuild this program, have everyone reapply for their benefit, 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.”
…
Read Full Article Here…(washingtonstand.com)
Home | Caravan to Midnight (zutalk.com)
Live Stream + Chat (zutalk.com)
Be First to Comment