Posted on 06/25/2012 11:03:52 AM PDT by Hojczyk
Americans spend $80 billion each year financing food stamps for the poor, but the country has no idea where or how the money is spent.
Food stamps can be spent on goods ranging from candy to steak and are accepted at retailers from gas stations that primarily sell potato chips to fried-chicken restaurants. And as the amount spent on food stamps has more than doubled in recent years, the amount of food stamps laundered into cash has increased dramatically, government statistics show.
As a result, fraud is hard to track and the efficacy of the massive program is impossible to evaluate.
As the House debates the once-every-five-years farm bill, the majority of which goes to food stamps, there is a renewed and fervent call from a broad spectrum of camps that the information - some of the most high-dollar, frequently requested and closely held secrets of the government - be set free.
The District said it would be illegal to tell the newspaper how many food stamp dollars were flowing to each local vendor, but first offered to sell The Washington Times the information for $125,000.
“Why don’t you just pay the charges? Your paper has a lot of money,” said David Umansky, spokesman for the District’s chief financial officer.
Told that the newspaper would not pay, the CFO’s office then said that only JP Morgan, to which it contracted out operations, had access to the store totals and that the office had never looked at them. After six months of the local government attempting to extract the information from JP Morgan, the District finally said that releasing the information would be illegal.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Do away with the whole stupid program and ship a care package to their doors each week. Basic, not fun, and motivation to go find work.
Plus, it will save the US treasury billions or possibly trillions.
but now Krogers, Safeway and Piggly-Wiggly all have a lobbying interest, so we’re all SCROOOOOOOD!
Deal with that every day - people offering me food stamps in exchange for cold hard cash. Pisses me off.
And ...supporters of the same government entities running the food stamp program — and the almost defuct postal service as well, want the government to take over YOUR healthcare!
It is my understanding that what can and cannot be purchased with food stamps is determined by the state overseeing it. This includes things like Slimfast and Ensure (vary by states), etc. Some states allow you to buy things at restaurants, some do not. While you aren’t supposed to be able to buy “hot foods,” according to the government site:
“In some areas, restaurants can be authorized to accept SNAP benefits from qualified homeless, elderly, or disabled people in exchange for low-cost meals.” I believe that this too, varies by the state’s rules.
Here’s a link to the eligible food item site. It doesn’t mention states variations, but if you do a internet search, you’ll find that different states DO allow different items.
http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/retailers/eligible.htm
I hope that clears that up.
The USDA Food Stamp program has been screwed-up and fraudulent since the early 1970s. The university study showed how and why...but the honchos at the USDA stuck the report in the file and said “thanks”.
The real scammers register in multiple counties and redeems in out-of-the-way locations. Stores that have more redemptions than they have inventory purchases....hummm sounds hard to do.
Shrimp IS food and at Aldes I could buy a 1 lb bag ror about $4.99 which also happens to be what hamburger costs where I live. AND, I could get at least 2 meals from it which made it extremely economical.
I never got any cash award along with foodstamps. EVER. Any cash award I may have received was in the form of child support when the kids were little. And, I never had to pay back any unused foodstamps, because there weren’t any. I ALWAYS had to add cash to the grocery purchase because there weren’t enough foodstamps to cover a month’s groceries. At one time I actually had to purchase my food stamps. It was pretty darmed hard too. When your childsupport is $270 per month, and your rent is $250, and $117 worth of foodstamps costs $47.00 plus you need diapers, pay the electric bill, laundry soap, laundry machines, and other misc. items one needs with children, well, the numbers don’t add up. So, you buy the smaller allotment of FS which at the time cost $17.00 for $65.00 worth of FS...
I don’t know where folks get off lying about how ‘good’ life is on fs. It’s not unless folks are doing other illegal activities to make extra cash. But when you fly right and legal, it’s damned difficult and not easy at all.
What some folks DO do is sell some fs for 50 cents on the dollar for some cash. A person has to buy diapers and soap somehow, as well as gasoline in order to participate in the ‘volunteer service’ one has to perform in order to receive them if one isn’t disabled, but is out of work.
As for that recipt..it means nothing. How do we know the person who purchased those goods wassn’t re-imbursed for them while the person who did the reimbursement was spared having to pay the food tax that does exist in some places?
I don’t believe it’s as much a matter of won’t as can’t.
Studies were done during the Bush era that looked at the specific issue of salted snacks and soft drinks. They found that food stamp customers purchased less of these (both in the absolute and as a proportion of their spending) than cash customers did. This was one reason why the programs did not bother to ban these items, as requiring retailers to identify and exclude them would raise the cost of the programs.
Here in Indiana one of the tv stations got a file of all the ATM withdrawals made with Indiana Supplemental Assistance. That’s basically “welfare” over and above EBT.
It was interesting: NYC, Vegas, Calif, Puerto Rico, casinos all over the country, Disney Orlando, Nevada brothels, Hawaii. Glad these “victims” are able to take nice vacations.
No more righteous a move on your part than it would have been on theirs. FWIW I have never, ever been approached with such a proposal.
New York City ain’t the same thing as a casino, but the latter certainly seems to bespeak heartbreaking fraud.
What really burns is out and out fraud. You were using the program as officially intended. That shows you had conscience. So many people living at the bowery level DON’T have much conscience.
At the grocery store checkout a teen in front of me whips out a texas lone star card an buys a snickers bar ... Gets 98$ an change cash back ..... Asked the clerk wth ?
She said a common practice ....
That is what the EBT cards were supposed to curtail or stop. It has to a big extent, but druggies will find ways around as the previously mentioned woman tried. Back in the late 70's early 80's, I remember there were lots of places in Jacksonville, FL where you could get 50 cents on the dollar (and higher) on your food stamps if you knew the right people......................
How hard can it be when it is all digital? A banned item gets scanned and is kicked to a “cash” list or is excluded. That doesn’t do anything to the cost of the program.
Its funny: Costco can tell me how many of something I bought in a year but we can’t keep up with food stamps? We can definitely know where the money is going if there is the will to know.
I wonder if the Obama campaign will start a web page where folks can pledge their EBT $$ to Baraq’s re-election?
I know, but I paid for the groceries in the first place..................;^)
‘Will”?..........How do we know they haven’t already?.........................
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