Stamping out food stamp fraud

OPINION:

Food stamp fraud is plunging, with 4 1/2 million scammers losing benefits since last July. That’s great news because it’s saving money for taxpayers. The bad news is that another 30 million are either scamming the system or who shouldn’t be getting free groceries on our dime in the first place, not least because 70% are obese.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is packed with all manner of abuse and outright fraud, but the Trump administration’s investigations into the system are finding — and removing — the freeloaders.

For example, according to a recent tally, a whopping 14,000 SNAP beneficiaries own luxury cars, including Ferraris and Bentleys. After all, nothing says food insecurity like a whip with a six-figure price tag.

These findings, and many more like them, come from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which has implemented new rules for SNAP, including tighter work requirements, tighter citizenship rules, and better fraud audits, all courtesy of last year’s Big Beautiful Bill.

It’s exactly the opposite of what the Biden administration did: loosen requirements while drastically increasing benefits, which enticed millions of people to mooch off the taxpayer instead of working.

But the new rules say anybody 18 to 64 years old must show 20 hours a week of work, volunteerism, or school to remain eligible. Additionally, you need to be a citizen or green card holder — no more of Joe Biden’s humanitarian parolees munching on your paycheck.

To address fraud, the USDA now cross-checks Social Security death records since it turns out SNAP was feeding hundreds of thousands of dead people, who we can only assume were very hungry.

They’re also checking duplicates, i.e., someone lives in New York but signed up to collect food stamps in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut — and maybe signed up in New York again under a maiden name. It may sound crazy, but it’s how you get TikTokers bragging about receiving $4,000 a month in SNAP benefits.

It’s a good start, considering fraud is roughly one in four SNAP dollars, according to states that report honestly, but it also should’ve happened decades ago. In states that implemented all the new USDA reforms, caseloads plunged — Arizona reported a 42% drop in cases, Georgia and Florida dropped a half-million each.

Alas, 19 blue states — where most of the fraud happens — sued to block the rules since welfare recipients are a cornerstone of the Democrat base. Cash for votes is their “mother’s milk.”

Moreover, eliminating fraud and restoring reasonable work requirements is just half the battle. This doesn’t include billions going to illegal aliens, some the old-fashioned way with stolen Social Security numbers, but most when there’s an anchor-baby, opening the entire welfare suite to the family.

And then there’s the much bigger number of people who don’t actually need SNAP, like those who could work more but choose not to or those who are paid under the table, so they pay no taxes but get food stamps.

To estimate these, we can just look at historical numbers. Twenty-five years ago in Massachusetts, just 3.5% of residents were on food stamps. Today, it’s 15.4% despite inflation-adjusted incomes having risen over that time.

Given that people were not actually starving in Boston in 2001, that suggests 80% of SNAP beneficiaries are cashing food stamps they don’t need. So, how did it get so bad? Basically, Democrats spent 60 years trying to enroll as many people as possible, using recessions to suspend rules.

This drove food stamp cases from 3 million in 1969 to 26 million by 2007. Then Barack Obama nearly doubled it to 45 million by the time he left office. That was seven years after the financial crisis and recession ended. 

Mr. Obama even bragged about the increase in SNAP enrollment, claiming it was somehow a sign of success that more Americans depend on the government.

The original Trump boom, and tighter rules, reduced beneficiary count, but COVID jacked it right back since they were giving food stamps out like candy. Then, the numbers soared again under Mr. Biden.

Today, SNAP is a hundred-billion-dollar mess. But extrapolate across all welfare programs, and it’s closer to a trillion dollars a year going to fraud and freeloaders. That’s enough to exempt 90% of Americans from income tax — everything up to $100,000 per year.

Work rules and cross-checks are a great start, but shuttering SNAP entirely would be even better, and return to the days when churches and actual charities fed the genuinely hungry—while the scammers and frauds had to get jobs.

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Peter St. Onge is senior economist and E.J. Antoni is chief economist at the Heritage Foundation.