[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Wire.]
By Adam Andrzejewski
Real Clear Wire
Food stamp spending has doubled from $60 billion in 2019 to $120 billion in 2022, and part of that is due to people who are ineligible for the program receiving benefits anyway, The New York Post reported.
Since 2019, there were more than 65,000 substantial lottery winners who continued collecting food stamps, even despite being over the federal income threshold for the program.
Looking at data from 13 states, recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, commonly known as food stamps, took home substantial lottery winnings ranging from $4,250 to $2 million, all of which put the winner above federal asset threshold to qualify for the government assistance program.
“It shocks the conscious and defies belief,” Hayden Dublois, data and analytics director at FGA, told Fox News Digital. “And this is data from only 13 states. The 50-state number is likely titanic. The scale of the problem is staggering — even by government standards.”
It’s fraud like that that has contributed to the doubling of food stamp costs between 2019 and 2022, and is why Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) introduced a bill called The Snap Back Inaccurate SNAP Payments Act, to reduce spending by nearly $1 billion a month by “requiring all errors, regardless of the amount, to be counted and directing state governments to stop giving out ineligible benefits or they will have to eat some of the costs,” Fox News reported.
“Families across the country are going hungry while bureaucrats are jumping the line to gobble up SNAP dollars, either as a meal ticket to beef up state budgets or a self-serve buffet of benefits for themselves or others who do not qualify,” Ernst said in September. “It’s time for states at fault to pay the piper and eat the costs of their taxpayer waste. Instead of overserving bureaucrats, let’s end the waste and set a place at the table for hungry families.”
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