As Massachusetts food stamp agency tries to fix flaws, experienced welfare workers retire

Massachusetts welfare officials promised the federal government that they will take steps to correct problems with the state's food stamp program, including hiring more staff. However, the food stamp program just lost around 11 percent of its staff to an early retirement incentive.

"You have truly a brain drain with a system that's extremely new and extremely flawed," said Patricia Baker, senior policy analyst at the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute.

Michelle Hillman, a spokeswoman for the Executive Office of Health and Human Services, said, "We continue to assess the positions vacated due to early retirement and will prioritize based upon need and compliance with our corrective action plan."

The state has the authority to use up to 20 percent of the savings from the retirement incentive to hire new employees to fill critical jobs. It has not yet determined which positions will be filled.

The problems date back to a modernization of the food stamp program, officially called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, instituted in 2014, in response to reports of welfare fraud. The Department of Transitional Assistance created a new electronic management system that checked multiple sources of data to determine a recipient's eligibility, then began to automatically cut off benefits based on the results of online checks. The department instituted a new phone system. It centralized case processing, replacing a regional system.

As The Republican / MassLive.com previously reported, the modernization resulted in a huge drop in food stamp caseloads. Advocates for the poor said people were being needlessly kicked off the program and were having trouble reaching caseworkers to reinstate their benefits.

Via: Mass Live

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Food Stamp Beneficiaries Drop From 45,682,411 to 45,641,762; Still Outnumber Population of Canada

(CNSNews.com) – The number of beneficiaries of the federal government food stamp program dropped from 45,682,411 in February to 45,641,762 in March, but they still outnumber the population of Canada.

The number of beneficiaries on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) dipped below 46 million for the first time in 42 months in February 2015, according to data released by the Department of Agriculture (USDA). The last time the number was below 46 million was in August 2011 when there were 45,794,474 beneficiaries.

Households on food stamps received an average benefit of $257.53 during the month. Total benefits for the month cost taxpayers $5,796,900,767.

While the number of individual beneficiaries declined in March, the number of households on food stamps increased, from 22,489,450 in February to 22,509,396 in March.

The decline in individual beneficiaries from February to March was 40,649. Even so, the number of beneficiaries in March outnumbers the populations of several mid-sized countries.

According to the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) World Factbook, the estimated population of Canada is 34,834,841. Kenya has an estimated population of 45,010,056, Ukraine 44,291,413, Argentina is 43,024,374, Algeria 38,813,722 and Poland 38,346,279.

Via: CNS News

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Food Stamp Fraud Scheme Sending Money to Yemen

Authorities made multiple arrests in a food stamp fraud investigation in Alabama where some of the money was being sent overseas to Yemen.

Jefferson County District Attorney Brandon Falls announced last week that 20 arrest warrants on 257 charges were filed for Wednesday and a series of raids were performed on 11 Alabama convenience stores.

The charges range from fraudulent use of a credit card, theft of property and public assistance fraud.

AL.com reports, the massive probe targeted those who allegedly have been cheating the food stamp system to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars and sending at least some of the profits to Yemen.

Central to the scheme were Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) cards, a government-issued debit card that replaced food stamps issued through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

Falls said they learned owners of several convenience stores in the Birmingham, Alabama area had been buying EBT cards from those who have been issued the cards for roughly 50 cents on the dollar.

Once in possession of the cards the storeowners and managers would then go to a wholesale store where they would buy goods and bring them back to their stores to sell at an inflated price.

“Several of the store owners are Yemenese and in conjunction with this, the investigation revealed that these same persons were sending wire funds - cash back to Yemen.”

In return, the person who sold their EBT card now had cash to buy items restricted from purchases under the SNAP system, such as alcohol, tobacco and drugs.

"They're selling their cards to get those things,'' Deputy District Attorney Cynthia Raulston told AL.com.

"Part of the problem, in my opinion, is now they don't have their food stamps card so they don't have the money to take care of their families or themselves,'' Raulston said. "I think it's a huge cycle of remaining impoverished."

Via: CNS News

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Democratic Lawmaker Says Benefit in $74 Billion Food Stamp Program is ‘Too Low’

(CNSNews.com) – The federal government food stamp program benefit is “too low,” Rep. James McGovern (D-Mass.) said during a House Committee on Agriculture hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday. According to the Department of Agriculture, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) program cost $74,137,240,000 in 2014.

“Let me say something that should be crystal clear to all of my colleagues: the SNAP benefit is too low,” McGovern said.

“It is not enough to take care of the food and nutrition needs of those on the benefit. SNAP recipients must rely on food banks and charities to have enough food for the month.”

Speaking during a hearing entitled, “Past, Present and Future of SNAP: The World of Nutrition, Government Duplication and Unmet Needs,” McGovern also took aim at food banks.

“I would like to have a discussion about how we put food banks out of business and one of the ways to do this is to make sure that those who need SNAP have an adequate benefit,” he said.

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“A lot of my frustrations over the last few years is that I think Congress has been so focused on trying to demonize the program and try to find some fault with the program, even when there’s no fault.”

McGovern asked panelists taking part in the hearing if the food stamp benefit was adequate to meet basic needs.

“I do believe that the SNAP benefit is adequate for a large number of households that are participating,” said Angela Rachidi, a research fellow in poverty studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

“For a family of four it is $650 dollars a month and that’s the maximum benefit,” she said. “We did a study in New York City where we looked at benefit redemption patterns over the month and we found that the majority of families actually did not spend down their benefit levels early in the month and still had benefits left over at the end of the month.”

Rachidi said the government’s food assistance programs were “an important part of our nation’s safety net.”

At the same time, however, “spending on food assistance programs has grown substantially over the past three decades, most dramatically in the past several years, in absolute terms as well as relative to other means-tested programs.”

Committee chairwoman Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-Ind.) also voiced concern about the cost of the program and overlap of food nutrition programs.

“According to GAO, there are at least 18 different nutrition assistance programs, and together they spend over $100 billion annually of taxpayer funds,” she said. “While SNAP accounts for three out of four dollars of that today, it’s not alone in providing nutrition assistance.”

“The reality is that a majority of SNAP households are also eligible and receive benefits from one of the other major nutrition assistance programs,” Walorski added. “In some cases, multiple programs might be funding the same meals. For example, recipients may receive USDA commodity food packages through the Commodity Supplemental Food Program, while also receiving SNAP benefits.”

“Our job today is to figure out where overlap, duplication, or inefficiency exists,” Walorski said. “Then, we can more expertly target our limited resources to places with potential unmet needs or weaknesses in the system.”

Via: CNS News

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WHITE HOUSE SLAM GOP'S FOOD STAMP REFORMS IN THANKSGIVING MESSAGE

On Wednesday, President Barack Obama's White House politicized Thanksgiving to promote the reauthorization of the SNAP (Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program) or "food stamps" as part of the farm bill at a time when a record number of Americans are receiving assistance. 

In an email, the White House urged Americans sitting down for Thanksgiving Dinner to remember: "For decades, Congress has authorized SNAP in a bipartisan fashion through the Farm Bill. They don't have to do it in a way that hurts children, seniors, veterans, and vulnerable families. Learn more, and pass it on."

The White House linked to a report about how SNAP is boosting the economy and accused Republicans of undermining the program's reauthorization. 

Congress could not agree on a bipartisan farm bill because Democrats would not agree to make reforms to SNAP. Robert Rector, the godfather of the landmark welfare reform bill in the 1990s, has suggested the food stamp program be reformed by moving the program from the Department of Agriculture to the Department of Health and Human Services, because "the food stamp program is a means-tested welfare or anti-poverty program, not an agricultural program," and "the USDA’s expertise is in farming, not welfare."

He has also recommended means-testing, anti-fraud measures, drug testing, and converting the program to a "work activation" program while ensuring benefits do not go to illegal immigrants. 

As Breitbart News has reported, food stamp enrollments "have remained over 47 million for an unprecedented 13 consecutive months." And that number has indeed benefited a certain sector of the economy. As the nonpartisan Government Accountability Institute (GAI) discovered, corporations are also incentivized to pressure the government to maximize the number of people on food stamps because of the profits companies like J.P. Morgan make from EBT card transaction fees. 

The program also has been riddled with fraud, and those with EBT cards have often offered to sell them for cash on social media sites like Twitter. 

Via: Breitbart

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RECORD: OVER 47 MILLION ON FOOD STAMPS FOR ENTIRE YEAR

Food stamp enrollments have remained over 47 million for an unprecedented 13 consecutive months. 

According to the most recent figures available from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), which oversees the food stamp program, in August 2012, 47,102,765 individuals were enrolled in the program, known officially as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Enrollments never fell below 47 million in subsequent months and as of August 2013 stood at 47,665,069, representing nearly one out of every seven people in America. 

Recent years have seen an explosion in food stamp enrollments. Since January 2009, the number of individuals on food stamps has skyrocketed from 31.9 million to 47.6 million. 

Via: Breitbart

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Obama using food-stamp cash to fund Michelle’s ‘Let’s Move’

As you dig into your Butterball with all the trimmings this Thanksgiving, remember that millions of famished schoolkids around America may be forced to forgo classic turkey — and chow down instead on vegan black-bean patties and organic locavore quinoa salad.

On Nov. 1, sizable cuts were gouged into the federal food-stamp program (or, as it’s now called, SNAP, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), which feeds 47.6 million people, or nearly one in six Americans. In the city, 1.9 million folks get the bulk of their Jell-O and Campbell’s Soup from stamps.

But news has spread among the poor, like leafy green vegetables, that it wasn’t heartless Republicans who triggered the cuts.

Rather, some of the food-stamp cash was snatched to pay for Michelle Obama’s pet project, Let’s Move. What?

It’s come to this. Some 76 million meals a year will vanish from this city — poof! — partly because the president diverted money from SNAP to the first lady’s signature program, part of her Let’s Move anti-obesity initiative — the bean-sprout-heavy, $4.5 billion Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act.

The rest of the $5 billion annual food-stamp cuts was taken when 2009 stimulus funds dried up. But with ObamaCare woes stealing the oxygen in Washington, there’s little urgency to replace dandelion greens served on recyclable trays with family-friendly buttered mashed potatoes.

Via: NY Post

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After last month’s shopping frenzy, Louisiana governor looks to strip food stamps from abusers

The Louisiana governor's office said Wednesday night that it would strip food stamp benefits from anyone who took advantage of an EBT card malfunction that in some cases caused an all-out shopping frenzy in some stores across the state, The Advocate reported.

It is unclear how many recipients stand in line to lose benefits for a year, but more than 12,000 received an insufficient funds notice when the EBT card system was corrected on Oct.12, the report said.

"We must protect the program for those who receive and use their benefits appropriately according to the law. We are looking at each case individually, addressing those recipients who are suspected of misrepresenting their eligibility for benefits or defrauding the system," Suzy Sonnier, the secretary of state at the Department of Children and Family Services, said in a statement.

The frenzy at some stores was likened to the busiest shopping day of the year. "It was worse than any Black Friday,” Springhill Police Chief Will Lynd told local station KSLA-TV.

Shelves were picked clean in a mob scene that left employees rattled. Walmart spokeswoman Kayla Whaling told the station the company made a conscious decision to keep ringing up goods rather than to cut people off.

Via: Fox News

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Obamacare could increase food stamp rolls

Republicans have another reason to hate Obamacare: It could grow the number of people on food stamps.

The Obama administration has ordered a study to determine whether the Affordable Care Act, by increasing the number of people eligible for Medicaid, will also increase the number of people enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program based on how states enroll people

The outcome of the study could show an increase of 3 percent to 5 percent in food stamp recipients in some states from people who were already eligible for SNAP benefits but had not enrolled in the program — which could translate to millions or even billions more in federal spending, Greg Mills, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute who is conducting the study, told POLITICO.

“So in percentage terms, it’s not going to be very large, but we’re talking about a very large program,” said Mills, who is investigating the effects of the health care law on SNAP on behalf of the Department of Agriculture’s Food Nutrition Service, the agency that monitors food stamps.

(See POLITICO's full Obamacare coverage)

“It would have a substantial financial effect.”

The likely increase would come from a greater overlap in eligibility between Medicaid under Obamacare and SNAP.

Via: Politico

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Deep cuts to country's food stamp program start Friday

WASHINGTON –  Forty-eight million Americans will have their food stamps benefits slashed starting Friday, when a recession-era boost in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistant Program expires.

The move to cut back benefits will be the first wide-scale change to the program affecting nearly every single participant. The 13.6 percent cut comes out to about $36 a month less for a family of four getting government assistance or $420 a year, according to the Department of Agriculture.

Since 2000, the costs for the plan have increased more than 358 percent.

Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, cites lax eligibility requirements as one of the reasons behind the increase.

Enrollment in the food-stamp benefits also rose during the 2007-2011 recession.

Many anti-poverty groups have warned that cutting the program will leave millions of Americans vulnerable.

"People are living at the margins," Ellen Vollinger, legal director and SNAP advocate at the Food Research and Action Center, an anti-hunger organization, told Reuters. "It's not an abstract metric for people. It's actual dollars to keep food in the refrigerator."

The slash in the program also means less money for discount grocers, dollar stores and gas stations that rely on low-income shoppers.

SNAP is the largest anti-hunger program in the country.

Via: Fox News

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JAY CARNEY: FOOD STAMPS ARE THE ‘MOST EFFECTIVE WAY TO COMBAT HUNGER AND FOOD INSECURITY’

\Anticipating what Democrats have already called the “food stamp cliff” reduction in benefits to take effect on Nov. 1, White House spokesman Jay Carney said Thursday that food stamps are “the most effective way of to combat hunger” and accused House Republicans of wanting to “punish” people who receive them.

He was also clear that the Obama administration wants Americans receiving benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to be able to get off the program the right way by reaching a better economic condition.

The “food stamp cliff” is the expiration of the temporary increase in SNAP funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, better known as the stimulus act. Without an increase, a single adult’s benefits will reportedly be cut by $11 a month to a total of $189.

White House press secretary Jay Carney, wearing a cap of the World Series baseball champion Boston Red Sox, arrives for the daily press briefing a the White House in Washington, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2013. (AP)

“These cuts come at a time when many hardworking American families are still struggling to make ends meet in the wake of the worst recession in decades and last year the additional resources provided by the SNAP lifted 7 million people out of poverty,” Carney said. “That is why the president acknowledged this need when he proposed an extension of the recovery act adjustment through 2014 or until March 2014 in his 2014 budget request and why the strategy currently under way in the House to reduce SNAP by removing millions of low income families from the program does not make sense.”

Via: The Blaze

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Americans Support Stronger Work Requirements for Food Stamps

Nearly three-quarters of Americans believe that the food stamps program should include stronger work requirements, according to the October Food Demand Survey (FooDS) out of Oklahoma State University.

Other surveys similarly show that Americans support work requirements for welfare.

A 2012 Rasmussen survey revealed that 83 percent of Americans favor “a work requirement for welfare recipients,” with only 7 percent opposing. (The remaining 10 percent were undecided.)

And a 2009 nationally representative survey conducted by The Heritage Foundation found thatmore than 95 percent of Americans agreed that “able-bodied adults that receive cash, food, housing, and medical assistance should be required to work or prepare for work as a condition of receiving those government benefits.” High levels of support were found by those on both sides of the political aisle, with 96 percent of Democrats and 97 percent of Republicans agreeing with this statement.

On top of this, a survey conducted earlier this year by Rasmussen reveals that 80 percent of Americans agree that work is the best way out of poverty.

Yet the reality today is that the vast majority of the government’s 80 means-tested welfare programs—including the large and rapidly growing food stamps program—do not encourage work. Most act as a one-way handout.

The Foundry

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MORE NEEDING FOOD STAMPS MAY BE NEW NORMAL

BOSTON, Oct. 27 (UPI) -- 
Enrollment in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program has more than doubled in the past decade even during times of economic growth, U.S. researchers say.
SNAP enrollment in the last 10 years more than doubled to 47 million but, for the first time, the number of Americans receiving food stamps increased even when the economy was growing.

During the 2003-07 expansion, the SNAP case load, -- in a break with historic trends -- rose 24 percent, the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College reported. CRC economists Matt Rutledge and April Yanyuan Wu said one reason is a change in the longstanding correlation between poverty and the unemployment rate.

Poverty used to fall in tandem with the jobless rate, reducing the need for food stamps but the researchers found poverty did not decline as the economy grew in the mid-2000s -- and in the recovery following the Great Recession, the number of people receiving food stamps kept rising.

Via: Breitbart
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Food stamp benefits going down before the holidays

Millions of American families could face a sparse holiday table when food stamps benefits get reduced in November, and that could be just the start of deeper cuts to the program to feed poor families.

The modern-day food stamp plan, now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, is scheduled to scale back benefits for all recipients on Nov. 1 because a recession-era boost in benefits is expiring.

The cut comes as lawmakers also are considering billions of dollars of reductions to the overall SNAP program, which has grown substantially in recent years amid the weak economy and high unemployment.

The program is now serving more than 23 million households, or nearly 48 million people, according to the most recent government data through June. The USDA says the average monthly benefit is about $275 per household.

The exact reduction depends on the recipients’ situation, but a family of four with no other changes in circumstances will receive $36 less per month, according to the USDA. At today's average prices, that translates to four fewer whole chickens each month.

Stacy Dean, vice president for food assistance policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said that can be a major hit for a family that is already struggling with such low wages that they can’t afford food on their own.

Via: NBC News

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EBT America

Walmart’s food-stamp shoppers and Washington’s big spenders have so much in common.

“Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher,” Justice Louis Brandeis famously pointed out in his Olmstead dissent. “For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example.”

When the government acts like a banana republic, the people will behave as though they live in one. Juxtaposing the chaotic footage of EBT cardholders conducting a legal looting at a Louisiana Walmart this past weekend with the constant cable-news loop of lawmakers conducting a legal looting of future generations affirms this. Both demonstrate the perils of letting one set of people spend another set of people’s money. 

“I saw people drag out eight to ten grocery carts,” Springhill police chief Will Lynd told ABC News. “It was definitely worse than Black Friday. It was worse than anything we had ever seen in this town.” The catalyst for the food riot was an EBT computer shutdown in 17 states. Rather than shut off EBT purchases, the Walmart allowed EBT purchases without reference to account limits. The store, rather than the government or the EBT cardholders, will now make up the difference between the amounts on the cards and the amounts at the cash register.

The police chief observed one customer leave with $700 in groceries and most others simply abandon overflowing carts once informed that the government’s computer system had come back online. The devastation left in the food frenzy’s wake evoked the visual of Mad Max set in a Stop & Shop. “There was no food left on any of the shelves, and no more meat,” Chief Lynd explained. “The grocery part of Walmart was totally decimated.”

Study: Food Stamps Most Rapidly Growing Welfare Program

Food stamps are the most inefficient, vastly expanding social welfare program in the country, according to a new study.

Forty-seven million people participate in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly known as food stamps, and costs have increased over 358 percent since 2000.

The increase in recent years cannot be attributed to the economic recession, according to Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, but lax eligibility requirements and an aggressive campaign by governments to boost their rolls.

“This program has expanded rapidly over the last decade in a way that is not justified by the recession that we went through,” Tanner said.

“There’s very little bang for all this increased buck.”

Tanner’s report, “SNAP Failure: The Food Stamp Program Needs Reform,” finds that in 2000 the cost of the food stamp program was just $17 billion. It has risen in cost to $78 billion today.

Spending on advertising and outreach for food stamps by federal and state governments has also increased, now amounting to $41.3 million a year.

States like Florida have hired “food stamp recruiters,” who have a quota of signing up 150 new recipients each month. Rhode Island hosts “SNAP-themed bingo games,” and the USDA tells its field offices to throw parties to get more people on their rolls.

Despite the additional spending, the USDA claims 18 million Americans are still “food insecure.”

Tanner notes the program is more successful in breeding dependence on government, which was apparent last weekend when the EBT system shutdown in several states, resulting in chaos.

Via: WFB

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