Topic: States Deliberately Qualify Non-Poor People for Food Stamps ...

[Pandora]

... to Get Federal Money; Obama Administration Blocks Reforms

As a Bloomberg News commentary notes, large numbers of people who are not poor are getting food stamps, due to perverse incentives that encourage states to deliberately classify people as eligible in order to draw federal money to their state.  People are eligible in some states even if they are not poor at all, but merely received an “informational brochure” for welfare, or a tiny amount of state money that the state deliberately gave them that they didn’t even need, in order to qualify them for food stamps:

As the article notes, food stamp rolls have risen by 29 million people in recent years:

    [A] troubling reason for the increase is that state governments have found it easy to get their constituents federal money — that is, money mostly raised from current and future taxpayers in other states — by making more people eligible for food stamps. According to a mid-2010 report from the Government Accountability Office, 35 states have no limit on the amount of assets a food-stamp recipient can possess. More and more states — the count was 36 at the time of the report — are providing “categorical eligibility” for food stamps to anyone who receives welfare services. Merely getting an informational brochure from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program counts as receiving a service.

    Another way that states and localities can get federal money flowing to them is by providing token amounts of assistance with home heating bills. Even a dollar of energy subsidies can make someone eligible for food stamps, or increase the benefit level for someone already on SNAP. Vermont, for example, sends $5 checks to public-housing residents, even though their subsidized rent already covers heating, to qualify them for food stamps. Liberal activists call this strategy for getting federal money “heat and eat.”

The Obama administration didn’t create these perverse incentives, but it did magnify them (in legislation such as the $800 billion stimulus package, which largely repealed the 1996 welfare-reform law, as Slate’s Mickey Kaus and the Heritage Foundation have noted). The Obama administration is busy cracking down on states that attempt to reduce food stamp fraud, as James Bovard noted in The Wall Street Journal. Food stamp fraud costs America billions of dollars. This is remarkable, since eligibility requirements are so lax that no fraud is even needed for many undeserving people to collect food stamps. As Bovard noted in the Journal, the Obama administration has encouraged states to abolish asset tests for food stamps, leaving even unemployed millionaires able to qualify: “Millionaires are now legally entitled to collect food stamps as long as they have little or no monthly income. Thirty-five states have abolished asset tests for most food-stamp recipients. These and similar ‘paperwork reduction’ reforms advocated by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) are turning the food-stamp program into a magnet for abuses and absurdities.” There are now a record 47 million people on food stamps.

As the Bloomberg article notes, some Republican lawmakers want able-bodied adult food stamp recipients “to abide by work requirements,” “but the Obama administration hasn’t been interested.”

If food stamp handouts were low in dollar value — just enough to avoid hunger — middle-class people who don’t need them wouldn’t find it worthwhile to apply for them. But food stamps are not stingy, which is why growing numbers of people who are in no danger of ever going hungry have applied for them, and now receive them. Recently, “The average food stamp benefit was $133.80 per person” — which is more than I spent on food as a bachelor — “and $283.65 per household”  — which is more than my family typically spends on food in a month.

There's more, if your BP can stand it, including Wisconsin recipients selling their "foodstamps" on Facebook.

H/T John Locke LockerRoom

[IronDioPriest]

My BP cannot handle it.

 

[Glock32]

There was a story a few days ago when Steyn was filling in for Rush. A woman somewhere in Massachusetts was busted buying soft drinks with EBT or whatever you call it, then immediately putting them in the machine that accepts cans for a return of the 5 cent deposit. These were unopened cans still full of soda, and obviously that quickly brought the machine to a halt.

Is it not typical? The taxpayer pays full price for junk food then the grifter throws it away for a mere nickel on each can.

[Pandora]

There was a story a few days ago when Steyn was filling in for Rush. A woman somewhere in Massachusetts was busted buying soft drinks with EBT or whatever you call it, then immediately putting them in the machine that accepts cans for a return of the 5 cent deposit. These were unopened cans still full of soda, and obviously that quickly brought the machine to a halt.

Is it not typical? The taxpayer pays full price for junk food then the grifter throws it away for a mere nickel on each can.

I heard something similar a bit ago, except the grifter was dumping the bottle contents in the parking lot.

Does this not demonstrate perfectly the skewed time orientation of some people, than she couldn't wait so she wasted.

[Libertas]

I just don't know how much more of this crap we're expected to take without kicking asses?!?!?!?!