The Federal government has pushed questionable tactics to fill its food stamp rosters over the past several years, disregarding asset and income requirements in some cases.
A recent Federal audit of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program says that because people who make too much or have too much worth in assets have been allowed to receive food stamps, some of the more than 45 million recipients aren’t even needy.
From the report:
In fiscal year 2010, an estimated 2.6 percent (approximately 473,000) of all households receiving SNAP benefits nationwide would not have been eligible for the program without BBCE [broad-based categorical eligibility] because their incomes were greater than the income limits defined in federal law.
The average monthly income of those that shouldn’t have been receiving benefits was $1,965.
Since 2008, Federal spending on food stamps has doubled to about $80 billion annually, an increase some people attribute to aggressive marketing campaigns promoting the assistance programs.
Recently, the food stamp program came under fire for partnering with the Mexican government to be sure that Mexican immigrants to the United States were aware of the availability to nutritional assistance.
Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) said of the initiative in a statement to the Department of Agriculture: “It has become increasingly clear that, in recent years, the mission of the food stamp program has been converted from targeted assistance for those in need into an aggressive drive to expand enrollment regardless of need. USDA’s activities suggest that the program administrators take personal offense when people who technically qualify for their largesse decline to accept–and see it as an obstacle to overcome.”