Why Sen. Pat Roberts is sounding the alarm on a new kind of food stamp fraud
Here’s a tale about food stamp fraud with a new twist: It has nothing to do with welfare recipients and everything to do with state administrators of the federal program known as SNAP, or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
Some of those administrators reportedly are engaged in deceptive practices that are costing taxpayers millions. And it looks like Missouri could be one of the states doing the gouging.
Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts deserves credit for sounding the alarm. He did so last week at a hearing that once again raised the specter of welfare fraud. Only this time, he placed the blame squarely at the feet of state bureaucrats across the country. In doing so, he stripped away the veneer of cost efficiency that once was the hallmark of the food stamp program.
“The integrity of the SNAP program cannot be verified,” he said that day. “If we are unable to verify that this program is making every dollar count ... then something needs to change.”
The issue is that some states — Kansas is not reported to be among them — are gaming the system in a bid to obtain bonuses or avoid penalties. At stake are questions about how states determine who’s eligible for food stamps and whether those eligible are receiving the proper amount of benefits.
“We are talking about states cheating ... the system, resulting in an inability to even measure how many taxpayer dollars are being spent in error,” Roberts said. “This is not fair to taxpayers, and it is certainly not fair to those who depend on this program.”
The timing of all this isn’t good for anti-hunger advocates who back SNAP. Lawmakers are piecing together the next farm bill, and food stamp spending accounts for more than 75 percent of the spending in that legislative package.
This week, Alaska became the third state after Wisconsin and Virginia to be fined millions of dollars to settle allegations that they violated the False Claims Act in administering their programs.
That state, like several others, apparently including Missouri, used Osnes Consulting to help reduce error rates. But a whistleblower reportedly told the FBI that the firm was pressuring employees to use suspect methods, including discouraging beneficiaries from cooperating. A Missouri Department of Social Services spokeswoman did not return a request seeking comment.
All this amounts to another image nightmare for programs that so often are wrongly maligned. For instance, two of every three food stamp recipients are children. And benefits are on the slim side. The average benefit last year in Kansas was $114 a month — about a week’s worth of food.
Roberts needs to keep pushing on this issue. And states, including Missouri, need to come clean.
This story was originally published September 21, 2017 at 8:00 AM with the headline "Why Sen. Pat Roberts is sounding the alarm on a new kind of food stamp fraud."